Winter 2020: Quantum Computers: Fundamentals, Architectures, and Programming

Quantum information has long outgrown the limits of academic exploration of a new kind of secure cryptography realized by quirky features of quantum systems. Theoretical investigations revealed that quantum computers while defying the common approach to programming may greatly outperform classical architectures. The emergent new generation of information processing has given birth to the emerging multi-billion-dollar industry by utilizing different approaches to processing quantum information. Quantum architectures designed by D-wave, IBM, Google, Rigetti Computing, Intel, and Ion-Q exploit a wide gamut of innovative technologies to implement disparate paradigms of quantum computation. On the application side, Google, NASA, Microsoft and other companies heavily invest into development of quantum artificial intelligence, machine learning, and complex optimization problems.

The present course aims to meet the industrial interest in engineers with a specialized training capable of creating and developing new applications utilizing quantum information processing architectures. An indispensable part of the course is a series of programming assignments that will be designed to impart practical experience with quantum computers: starting from basic operations with qubits utilizing individual quantum gates to applications with complex functionality. Students will use commercial graded simulators such as Qiskit, QX, and PyQu to implement their programming assignments. All technical formalism needed for the topics covered in the course will be introduced in the course.