Quantum Computing: A Gentle Introduction (Scientific and Engineering Computation)

I'm a software engineer who has had a life-long interest in physics and have been trying to teach myself quantum mechanics for a couple years. I'm only 50 pages into this book so far, but I'm very impressed with it. The authors not only explain the concepts clearly, but they go out of their way to anticipate the questions and confusion that the student may have, and address them directly. For example, their discussion that neither the magnitude or the overall phase of a quantum state vector are physically significant cleared up some confusion for me. Also, their explicit statement that while an observable is represented as a linear operator, that operator is never used to multiply a state vector confirmed my observation. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject. An understanding of quantum mechanics is not required (although helpful), but a solid background in linear algebra is probably necessary.

This is a good introduction to quantum computing, modulo a few things. I'm a mathematician, and I often found the calculations and concepts explained in a needlessly complicated way. For example, the definition and derivation of the density operator material was very opaque. A density operator is a positive operator with unit trace, so why not say that before getting into rather complicated calculations to illustrate its connections to the quantum state? The formalism invoked really muddied the waters. The same could be said about the material on measurement, and in a few other places. Otherwise, the book is excellent. The exercises are useful, and explanations are well thought out and written. Recommended.

This is my first introduction to this subject and I cannot compare it to other books on quantum computers. For a subject this complicated and often counter-intuitive, this book is very readable. It contains enough examples to understand each topic before moving on. There are also a lot of useful warnings about incorrect assumptions that the readers might carry over from vector spaces and linear algebra. The authors seem very in-tune to common misconceptions that the reader might have and they take time to correct them. The authors are not stingy about repeating definitions, facts and expanding notations where it is helpful. Still, don't expect to casually browse through this book unless you already know a lot about the subject. It takes work.

Not sure what the point of this book is. This is not an "intro" book. I have a computing, math, and physics background (including quantum naturally). If I had to rely on this book to explain any of the concepts for the first time or funnel previous learning into quantum computing , I would be lost.Maybe this book works ok as a quick reference or refresher if you ALREADY know the material. It is funny reading some of the reviews by people pretending like they understand the material in the book and have limited physics or math backgrounds. The "wonder" and "coolness" of Quantum Computing with its current popularity does not allow the ego to admit the truth I guess.Also, there are no solutions, even just a few, for the end of chapter problems. There are few solved problems in the book in general. The issue is that authors at this level use their own idiosyncratic way to phrase a question. In the academic world, one would use "office hours" for clarification. There is nothing more frustrating than spending more time trying to understand what a question is asking than solving the problem once you understand the question.On a positive note, the book is relatively cheap compared to the other Quantum computing books out there.

Just what I asked for.

excellent

I used this book as a companion in my 4th year college nanoelectronics class, and it proved quite useful. The material is presented fairly well and has good examples and exercises. On the whole, it is a reliable introduction to the field; however the book has a few obvious shortcomings as a text, and for that I deduct some stars. Specifically,(1) There is almost no discussion, within the text, of actual experimental work. There is a *mountain* of very interesting work in QC, including even commercial applications. I found myself scrambling to breathe some life into this very theoretical text by mentioning experimental examples. There are some helpful footnotes, but...goodness gracious, why not acknowledge where we actually are in the field, right now?(2) As nice as the exercises are, most answers aren't provided! That's going to prevent a lot of teachers from adopting the book. However, the examples are nice and much appreciated.(3) I found the comparisons to classical computing and other alternatives e.g. adiabatic QC rather lacking. That's a shame because QC research is a lot more than simple theoretical two-state manipulations.On the whole, I didn't find this book as "gentle" for my students as I'd hoped! Without my PhD-level understanding of QM, I honestly would not have caught the most important points, myself. My students were completely lost at sea in several sections. That said, there are so few good texts on QC, this did provide a nice theoretical framework.

I wouldn't call this a 'gentle' introduction but I guess that would be relative. The material is presented fairly straight forward and cuts out a lot of unnecessary math. Don't misunderstand, you'll have to have some concepts of Linear Algebra to make it through the book. These are graduate level concepts so expect graduate level effort to understand these concepts. I purchased this book without adequate preparation in mathematics but I was able to follow the concepts. I'm now gaining the math knowledge needed and I'll go through the book a 2nd time.