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Abstract
Shor and Grover demonstrated that a quantum computer can outperform any classical
computer in factoring numbers and in searching a database by exploiting the parallelism
of quantum mechanics. Whereas Shor's algorithm requires both superposition and entanglement
of a many-particle system, the superposition of single-particle quantum states is
sufficient for Grover's algorithm. Recently, the latter has been successfully implemented
using Rydberg atoms. Here we propose an implementation of Grover's algorithm that
uses molecular magnets, which are solid-state systems with a large spin; their spin
eigenstates make them natural candidates for single-particle systems. We show theoretically
that molecular magnets can be used to build dense and efficient memory devices based
on the Grover algorithm. In particular, one single crystal can serve as a storage
unit of a dynamic random access memory device. Fast electron spin resonance pulses
can be used to decode and read out stored numbers of up to 10^5, with access times
as short as 10^{-10} seconds. We show that our proposal should be feasible using the
molecular magnets Fe8 and Mn12.