What is the swap gate?

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What is the swap gate?

The swap gate, also known as the CNOT gate or controlled-not gate, is a fundamental gate in quantum computing. It is a two-qubit gate that exchanges the states of two qubits. When applied to a quantum system, the swap gate swaps the states of the target qubit with the control qubit. It is commonly represented by the matrix:

[[1, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 1, 0],
[0, 1, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 1]]

The swap gate is essential for various quantum algorithms and protocols, such as quantum teleportation and quantum error correction.