QCQI Lecture Coverage

Week 1

• Tuesday, August 26, Course intro; Measures of information (read Barnett, Ch. 1)
• Thursday, August 28, Thermodynamics of information

Week 2

• Tuesday, Sept. 2, Qubits (photon, spin, atom)
• Thursday, Sept. 4, Homework 1 discussion; Hilbert space, X and Z basis sets, operators (read SW ch. 3.1-3)

Week 3

• Tuesday, Sept. 9, Expectation values and measurement (read SW ch. 3.4-5)
• Thursday, Sept. 11, Homework 2 discussion. Communication, cryptography and bit commitment (read SW ch. 4)

Week 4

• Tuesday, Sept. 16, Entanglement. (read SW ch. 6.1-4)
• Thursday, Sept. 18, Homework 3 discussion. Conditional states (read SW ch. 6.5-7)

Week 5 (pre-recorded Sept. 18 and 19 - Prof. out of town)

• Tuesday, Sept. 23, EPR, Bell and GHZ "paradoxes". Read Mermin What's wrong with these elements of reality?
• Thursday, Sept. 25, Homework 4 discussion. No cloning theorem and teleportation (read SW ch. 7.1-4)

Week 6

• Tuesday, Sept. 30, Density operators (SW ch. 8.1-3)
• Thursday, Oct. 2, Homework 5 discussion. More density operators (SW ch. 8.4-7)

Week 7

• Tuesday, Oct. 7, Generalized measurements (Barnett ch. 4)
• Thursday, Oct. 9, Midsemester Exam

Midsemester Break Oct. 13-17

Week 8

• Tuesday, Oct. 21, (pre-recorded Oct. 17 - Prof. out of town) Quantum computing hardware: NMR
• Thursday, Oct. 23, Homework 6 discussion. Quantum computing hardware: superconductors and more. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_qubit

Week 9

• Tuesday, Oct. 28, Quantum annealing; SAT problems. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabatic_theorem and https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo6587
• Thursday, Oct. 30, Homework 7 discussion. Principles of quantum programming (read Mermin ch. 2)

Week 10

• Tuesday, Nov. 4, Democracy Day, no class
• Thursday, Nov. 6, Homework 8 discussion. Algebra of factorization (read Mermin Appendix I and ch. 3 or read Nielsen and Chuang, chapter 5)

Week 11

• Tuesday, Nov. 11, Period finding, Shor's algorithm (postponed to 11/13 to let students attend seminar, links to factoring of 15 and 21)
• Thursday, Nov. 13, HW 9 discussion. Grover search algorithm (read Mermin ch. 4) (recorded on Zoom Nov. 13 and 17)

Week 12

• Tuesday, Nov. 18, Error correction (read Mermin ch. 5)
• Thursday, Nov. 20, (Recorded Nov. 20 - Prof. giving seminar) HW 10 discussion. Quantum simulation and phase estimation (read Universal Quantum Simulators)

Week 13

• Tuesday, Nov. 25, Open system dynamics (read SW ch. 9.1-3)
• Thursday, Nov. 27, Thanksgiving Break

Week 14

• Tuesday, Dec. 2, Quantum entropy (read SW ch. 19.1-3)
• Thursday, Dec. 4, More thermodynamics (read SW ch. 9.4, 19.5-6)

Final Exam

• Monday, Dec. 8 at 5:30pm in Wean 7316

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