-
Book Overview & Buying
-
Table Of Contents
A Practical Guide to Quantum Computing
By :
The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
— Ecclesiastes 1:5
This is one of the most important chapters of this book, for it introduces what many consider to be the most relevant quantum algorithm ever conceived: Shor’s algorithm for integer factorization. This was one of the first quantum algorithms to not only show an advantage over any known classical algorithms, but to do it for a problem with enormous practical significance. Indeed, Shor’s algorithm has strong implications regarding the security of certain encryption protocols that are used on a daily basis on the Internet. For all this, it’s difficult to overstate the importance of Shor’s algorithm—and we shall study it in all the detail that it deserves.
To this extent, we will introduce a new tool (the quantum Fourier transform) and we will explain how many of the quantum phenomena we have been discussing...