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Department of Computer Science

CS419: Quantum Computing

Lecturer: Tom Gur
Teaching Assistants: Marcel de Sena Dall'Agnol, Christopher Hickey.

Time and place
The class takes place on:
  • Mondays 9am (MS.03)
  • Tuesdays 4pm (LIB2)
  • Thursdays 4pm (LIB2)
Resources
Assignments
  • Assignment 1 (submission deadline: 28 January, Tuesday, 12pm)
  • Assignment 2 (submission deadline: 18 February, Tuesday, 12pm)
  • Assignment 3 (submission deadline: 10 March, Tuesday, 12pm)
Lectures

Part I: Quantum Mechanics
Lecture 1: Introduction to quantum computing
Lecture 2: Quantum complexity
Lecture 3: Superposition and qubits
Lecture 4: Measurement
Lecture 5: Unitary evolution
Lecture 6: The Elitzur-Vaidman bomb & MIP*=RE update
Lecture 7: Tensoring and composite qubit systems
Lecture 8: Entanglement
Lecture 9: Bell inequalities and the CHSH game
Lecture 10: Non-local games & the no-cloning theorem
Lecture 11: Quantum teleportation
Lecture 12: Mixed states

Part II: Quantum Algorithms
Lecture 13: Quantum circuits
Lecture 14: Reversible computing
Lecture 15: Quantum cryptography (Guest lecture: Subhayan Roy Moulik [Oxford])
Lecture 16: Quantum query complexity
Lecture 17: Deutsch's algorithm
Lecture 18: The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm
Lecture 19: The Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm
Lecture 20: Fourier analysis of Boolean functions & Fourier sampling
Lecture 21: Grover’s algorithm (Part I)
Lecture 22: Grover’s algorithm (Part II)
Lecture 23: Simon’s algorithm (Part I)
Lecture 24: Simon’s algorithm (Part II)
Lecture 25: Quantum Fourier transform
Lecture 26: Shor’s algorithm (Part I)
Lecture 27: Shor’s algorithm (Part II)

Part III: Topics
Lecture 28: Quantum money
Lecture 29: Quantum supremacy
Lecture 30: Ask me anything

Seminars

Week 1: Linear algebra review (vector spaces, basis, matrices and unitaries)
Week 2: Exercises (unitaries and measurements), tensor product
Week 3: Tensor product and superdense coding
Week 4: Principle of deferred measurement and projective measurements
Week 5: Phase queries, multi-qubit Hadamard and density matrices
Week 6: Applying gates to mixed states, Fourier transform examples
Week 7: Decomputing garbage, Deutsch-Jozsa variants
Week 8: (More) Fourier sampling
Week 9: Diffusion operator and Grover with k ones
Week 10: Mock exam

Announcements
  • We will have an online Q&A session on Thursday, 23 April, at 13:00 (link).
  • Some hints were added to the third assignment.
  • The third assignment is posted. The submission deadline is on 10 March.
  • The second assignment is posted. The submission deadline is on 18 February.
  • Lecture capture is available on the Moodle page.
  • Tom's notes are available on the Online materials page.
  • The forum is up.
  • The first assignment is posted. The submission deadline is on 28 January.
Research Projects

If you find quantum computing fascinating and you would like to start making your first steps in research, please feel free to shoot me an email or talk to me after class.