Quantum Computation

    Fall 2005, Hebrew University

    Instructor: Dorit Aharonov

    Office: Ross 72, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 02-6584611. Reception hour: Monday 5-6

    TA: Ido Bregman


    Announcements:

    The submission of the Ex 3 is delayed by a week, to Wednesday 28th of December.

    Question 4.2 in Exercise 3 is canceled since the explanation in the tirgul was mistaken.

    The next exercise is delayed by a week, and its submission will be due only on the 11th of January and not on the 4th as stated.

    2/2/06: Ex 6: question 4 is a bonus question - see remark below near the link to the exercise.

    2/2/06: The submission of all exercises is mandatory for the following rule to hold: The exercises grade is taken from the best five out of the six exercises.

    2/2/06: Exam: Kaplan (Near harman library...) The exam will take place on Friday, the 10th of March, at 10:00.

    2/2/06: If you want written solutions of specific questions from the targil, please email dorit.

    6/2/06: Please submit exercises at Ido's mail box, the ground floor at Ross. Ex 5 will be returned in an envelope near Dorit's office, before the end of next week.

    EXAM: The format of the exam: Two parts. First part: 4 out of 5 questions, each worth 10 points. (these are short and supposed to be easy and basic.) Second part: 2 out of 3 longer questions which would include some more thinking and understanding.

    The material for the exam is all that was studied in class and tirgulim, plus the exercises, without the bonus questions.

    Dorit will be available for questions Wednesday from 4-6:30 in her office.


    General Information:

    Time and Place:

      Hebrew University: Monday, 12:00-13:45, Shprintsak 201, Wednesday 13:00-13:45, Shprintzak 114

    Tirgul:
      Wednesday 14:00-14:45, Shprintzak 114

    Homework:
      There will be 5-6 exercises during the semester. Only the first exercise, which concentrates on definitions, needs to be submitted individually, so that each one of you gets a handle of the model. The rest of the exercises can be done in pairs or triplets.

    Exam:
      The exact format will be decided later on, and will also depend on the preference of the class as a group - a written exam, lectures, or something else.


    Exercises:

      ex1

      ex2

      ex3

      ex4

      ex5

      ex6 Correction: Ex4 is a bonus with two stars!!!! It is a difficult question. As a smaller bonus, with just one star (but still a bonus question!) you can treat the case where in the code the student claimed to have invented, the reduced density matrix of S_0 to the first qubit is the state 0 and the reduced matrix of the state S_1 is the state 1.


    Additional Material:

    Basics about complex numbers and linear algebra

    Proofs of Fermat's little theorem

    Completing the reduction from factoring to order finding

    Something about Continued Fractions (and pianos...) and something about Continued fractions and Chaos


    References:

    There are a few good places to look at:

      Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, By Michael Nielsen and Ike Chuang,Cambridge University Press. (Two copies preserved in the (math) library.)

      Quantum Theory : Concepts and Methods (Fundamental Theories of Physics, Vol 57), by Asher Peres, Kluwer Academic Pub. (Two copies preserved in the library.)

    Other than this, the lecture notes by Preskill (a link below) and my review article which can be found on my web page can be very helpful.


    Lecture notes

    of a similar course given in the Hebrew University in 2001. Note that these notes are very poorly edited by me and may very well contain mistakes!

    Week1 (postscript file)

    Week2 (postscript file)

    Week3 (postscript file)

    Week4 (postscript file)

    Week5 (postscript file)

    Week6 (postscript file)

    Week7 (postscript file)

    Week8 (pdf file)

    Week9 (postscript file)

    Week10 (postscript file)

    Week11 (postscript file)


    Links to quantum computation web pages.

    John Preskill's Home page.

      John's quantum course contains excellent and very coherent lecture notes.

    Umesh Vazirani's Course web page.

      We will follow Umesh's course quite closely, so you might find the lecture notes very useful.

    Isaac Chuang's Course web page

      at MIT.

    The Los-Alamos Archive.

      Also called quant-ph. You can find most papers on quantum computation there.