What this book covers

Introduction to Quantum Computing, provides an overview of quantum computing and defines some important terms.

Chapter 1, New Ways to Think about Bits, shows how matrix operations can be used to describe logic gates in classical computing. This chapter also introduces Jupyter notebooks as an environment for writing and running computer programs.

Chapter 2, What Is a Qubit?, describes superposition – a strange characteristic of quantum entities that’s vastly different from the behavior of classical bits. This chapter also introduces Qiskit – IBM’s quantum computing software development kit.

Chapter 3, Math for Qubits and Quantum Gates, provides a way of using matrices to represent qubits’ states.

Chapter 4, Qubit Conspiracy Theories, introduces entanglement using multi-qubit gates.

Chapter 5, A Fanciful Tale about Cryptography, shows how quantum superposition can be used to ensure secure communication between two parties.

Chapter 6, Quantum Networking and Teleportation, describes a way in which one qubit’s state can be transferred to another qubit. This is an essential element in the transmission of quantum information from one place to another.

Chapter 7, Deutsch’s Algorithm, explains how a quantum computer can use superposition and entanglement to solve a simple problem in one step.

Chapter 8, Grover’s Algorithm, shows how a quantum computer can search through a list without examining each of the list’s elements.

Chapter 9, Shor’s Algorithm, describes the way quantum computers will be able to break some of our commonly used cryptographic schemes.

Chapter 10, Some Other Directions for Quantum Computing, describes some alternative approaches to quantum computing.

Assessments contains answers for questions from all the chapters.