Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists

This text served as my first formal introduction to the exciting field of quantum computation. I must say, that I couldn't have asked for a better text to guide me through this wondrous arena of science. The concepts presented within the book were done so in an incredibly clear and concise fashion. The notorious difficulties associated with quantum mechanics were washed away by the very intuitive explanations presented in the book. Whether or not you are a computer scientist, if you have an interest in learning the rudiments of quantum computing this is a fantastic introductory book that presents these ideas in a very friendly way. No previous knowledge of quantum mechanics is necessary either really, as many of the core concepts are explained throughout. Of course, having a basic understanding going in is helpful. Book Scope: The book begins with a look at complex vector spaces and some basics on linear algebra. Most of the mathematics stays within this vicinity with some basic statistics sprinkled throughout later, and only one or two instances of calculus. This makes the text a fantastic introduction to someone who has not yet encountered some of the higher levels of mathematics. They also introduce tensor products early on so that when the section of composite quantum systems arises, the reader is able to go back and intuitively understand how tensor products can be comprehended in this physical sense. What I found especially helpful on the mathematical side of things is that the steps to arrive at certain problems were not omitted, and in fact are provided in great detail. This is especially beneficial to those not familiar or rusty with mathematical concepts presented in the book. From there, the book covers aspects of computer science. For the computer scientists who picked up this book, a lot of this will serve as review. However there are elements presented in the text that do not necessarily come up in the general computer science curriculum. These include actual physical components of computing, and ride more along the pretenses of information theory. After covering the preliminary computational material, the book progresses into developing some quantum mechanical notions. This includes rudimentary experiments such as the double slit experiment, Stern-Gerlach, etc. They are presented in a very friendly manner and also are accompanied by helpful illustrations and written out mathematical explanations. Afterward, the actual concepts of quantum computing are presented. They begin with the notion of a qubit, Bloch sphere, entanglement, etc. From this point on, the book does not really require to be read linearly. Once the core concepts are established, the next few chapters cover topics such as Quantum Circuits, Quantum Algorithms, Information Theory, Theoretical Computer Science, Quantum Cryptography, Quantum Programming etc. So whatever aspect of quantum computing you happen to be especially interested in, you can dive right in and begin learning. Of course you could also continue in a linear fashion and read it all (as I did) for a good overview of the branching of quantum computation. Throughout the text, there are a series of exercises for the reader. Most of these are answered in the back of the book (a huge aid to those self-learning). There are also programming drills sprinkled throughout the text. Since the premise of the book is for interested computer scientists, they allow you to establish and reinforce your comprehension through these programming exercises. What is really beneficial about this is that these exercises are cumulative. So by the end of the book if you continue to work alongside of the text, you will have created a quantum computational emulator. I did this as well during my reading, and it was incredibly beneficial for gaining an intuitive understanding of the subject matter. I've always thought that you don't really understand something, until you can tell it to a computer. Why? Because it involves covering large sets of cases and explaining it in excruciating detail. All in all, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in quantum computing. Whether you are a beginner or novice, this book serves as an outstanding primer to comprehending a beautiful subject.

I very much like the book, but I made the mistake of buying it for my large-sized Kindle. Kindle can't handle some of the fonts in the equations, so some of them have missing terms. In other cases, characters from the missing fonts were embedded inside the text as raster images. Sometimes a bra appears embedded in the text as a giant image, while the matching ket appears as a normal-sized character. The underlying problem is that the typesetting for the Kindle is often extremely sloppy. In this case, there is no evidence of proof reading. For example, in lists of subscripted variables embedded in the text, some subscripts are correctly typeset and some appear as conventional characters. That doesn't cause much confusion, but it is a clear sign that the typesetting was never checked. Elements of mathematical expressions that had been dropped in typesetting, either because of typos or incompatible fonts, had not been spotted, and I spent enough time guessing about missing terms that I am now looking for a hardcopy. These problems can't be explained by the technical limitations of the Kindle. It's just plain sloppy. Given that I paid $44 for the Kindle version, I think we can expect better. I think the authors of the text can expect better, and I hope they complain about it. I've seen similar problems with other Kindle versions of books that have equations. When talking about the Kindle with friends, I cite typesetting of anything but plain text as a significant limitation. Comment Permalink Addendum 1/22/2012: I now have a hard cover copy and I have studied it thoroughly and enjoyed the book immensely. I have found it to be much more accessible to computer scientists than competing books I have looked at. One of the readers pointed out that it seemed unfair to give my original rating of four stars over a production issue that does not affect the hardcover version. I found out it's possible to revise a review after it's been posted, and I am changing my rating to five stars.

I am studying quantum computing by myself. Before this book, I studied this field with other school's class website. Even though the slide and on-line documents I obtained is great, it was hard to understand by just reading! This book is totally different from other books. It focued on people who are weak to mathematics and have little knowledge of quantum computing. Even some chapters are still hard (because of the nature of this field), most chapters are so well written that you can read lying on the couch and feel like you read some kind of story. Since I have been in the technical field for a while,(I am a CS PhD student studying Data Mining and Machine Learning), this book is one of very rarely well written books containing sufficient depth but keeping simplicity. For anyone who wish to start to study Quantum Computing WITHOUT much pain, this is THE book.

I am a computer programmer with a math background. I periodically try reading about quantum mechanics, but still am confused by it. I found this description of quantum computing understandable. I have been trying to work through all of the exercises and like that the solutions to many of them are included in the book. I also like that the book has a number of nicely worked examples. I think I've found some errors in the descriptions in the text, in statements of problems, and in solutions. My list is up to a couple pages even though I have only made through 5.5 of 11 chapters so far. I'm a little surprised at the number of errors (but it's quite possible that it's me that is wrong). I still have really enjoyed the book and am quite happy with this purchase.

Very good book. It presents the topic from a very wide variety of angles. It has the correct level of abstraction: enough detail to get the point across, but also enough simplification to avoid intimidating the reader with too complex math or calculation. An enjoyable read too. On the downside, I would like to have more information on high-level programming languages for quantum computing. I also found the "programming drills" pointless.

Very good and pedagogical in my point of view. Could be perfect in a next edition with some practical small examples calculates by hand or with code (C++ or Java) so we can use these book to teach QC to IT engineers.

I have been studying quantum computing from different sources but this book is the best book I have seen which well written to understand the concept without physics knowledge. I have found after reading this book, the other books or the online resource of quantum computing filed will be easy to understand. Big recommendation: if you are new to the field, start from this book

I thank the authors for writing this book. It is a very well written book and I am really enjoying reading it. I am only halfway through the book but the tone, the amount of learning and the practical hands-on "programming drills" are all really awesome. It helped to me start reading papers in Quantum Computing and making sense of them. Great book.