Product Description
In the 1990's it was realized that quantum physics has some spectacular applications in computer science. This book is a concise introduction to quantum computation, developing the basic elements of this new branch of computational theory without assuming any background in physics. It begins with an introduction to the quantum theory from a computer-science perspective. It illustrates the quantum-computational approach with several elementary examples of quantum speed-up, before moving to the major applications: Shor's factoring algorithm, Grover's search algorithm, and quantum error correction. The book is intended primarily for computer scientists who know nothing about quantum theory, but will also be of interest to physicists who want to learn the theory of quantum computation, and philosophers of science interested in quantum foundational issues. It evolved during six years of teaching the subject to undergraduates and graduate students in computer science, mathematics, engineering, and physics, at Cornell University.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 1 review)

elegant explanations

Mermin is perhaps best known as the co-author of 'Solid State Physics', a longstanding text of its subject. But his interests are diverse, and one of these is presented here. He explains the intriguing use of quantum computing. Starting with the concept of a Qbit.

The text assumes you've done some non-relativistic quantum mechanics. After all, the entire subject is based on quantum effects producing different results than traditional computing. You should know the bra and ket notation, that was first introduced by Dirac. This notation is amazingly concise and pervades the text. It is probably fair to say that 90% of the discussion uses this notation.

The derivations are elegant and surprisingly simple, compared to the intricacies of other applications of quantum mechanics. There is relatively little discussion of experimental methods. This is primarily a theoretical text.

One conclusion is that this field is young. No serious computations are yet capable, compared to those on computers using traditional classical physics.
June 28, 2008

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