The Theory of Quantum Information | Hacker News Reader

The Theory of Quantum Information

cs.uwaterloo.ca

103 pointsmxschumacher13 comments

I took Watrous’s theory of (classical) computation course during my UW undergrad.

His lecturers were always very well prepared and engaging, the notes he released (iirc there were some supplementary notes) were great and his assignments were interesting. He also had consistently great type setting.

I guess I wanted to say that this book is probably cool.

I also read those notes, and to a large extent they were my first introduction to the field of quantum computing after studying some quantum mechanics

I'm slightly disappointed this book doesn't cover quantum computing -- which nowadays seems like a central part of quantum information. Any comprehensive resources to learn fundamentals of quantum computing? (without delving too deeply into particular applications)

Nielsen and Chuang is still canonical, albeit a little out of date. Has all the basics, and it's extremely well written.

Also becoming curious in quantum computing again (the current wave in classical software development is depressing IMHO so looking for an alternative for the futre). I read a good portion of Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists as an undergrad studying physics for a paper, but in searching for new texts, most people point to Nielsen and Chuang yet comment it is dated. Any good literature reviews out there to consider to get the new content Nielsen and Chuang don't have (while studying the Chuang's book as well)?

No, sorry, it's not really my field. However, my impression is that the results in Nielsen and Chuang haven't been superceded or anything, it's just that there's just more built on top of them. In other words, I think you're fine reading that cover-to-cover and worrying about further reading afterwards.

Quantum computing is still in the physical research phase, and it's not clear which qubit implementation will work and be scalable. It would be cool to see recent review papers and comparisons of current approaches, but I can't point you to any such.

On the theory side, the gate model is the standard approach for thinking about quantum computing and Nielsen and Chuang does a good job at covering it. If you need something more basic (to bring you up to speed), you can check out Ch9 in my book, which is an intro to Dirac notation and the quantum gate model: https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSguide2LA_previ...

Slightly OT, but I get annoyed when an idea is presented as "THE theory of ..." or "THE mathematics of ...", as opposed to "A theory/mathematics of ..."

As though that particularly bit of theoretical work is uniquely appropriate for the phenomenon it's meant to describe.

Am I alone in this?

No, not at all. I also don't like what the implies instead of a.

But it is supposed to be so! At least in physics or mathematics (and the "harder" sciences), if there are multiple descriptions, they better be completely equivalent in the answers they give, otherwise all but one of them are wrong. It is possible that different fundamentally equivalent frameworks might be more suited to different problems (eg: Newtonian mechanics -vs- Lagrangian mechanics)

"The" in this context is used as a general classifier for all the science and mathematics related to quantum information. It wouldn't make sense to use "A theory of..." unless you're speaking of a particular case that doesn't fall under the general classification.

Perhaps interesting: Shannon's original information theory article is titled 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication', and when later released in book form was renamed 'The Mathematical Theory of Communication', due to the generality of information theory.

I am always impressed by the amount of content posted about Quantum Computing on hn. As a subject I find really interesting, it's really encouraging to see other people with the same interest, even if it is just casual!

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