Explorations in Quantum Computing

There are numerous inexcusable typos, e.g. "hbar" (Planck's constant over 2 pi) is invariably represented as "h", ellipsis "..." show up as "K", vectors appear as a letter with an "r" over them - very sloppy editing.

The presentation is uneven. A lot of time is spent introducing the weirdness of quantum mechanics along with its probabalistic nature - all at the elementary level, and then BAM! Here (Ch. 4) is a Feynman-like Hamiltonian that is a term with creation and annihilation operators plus its conjugate complex, and no explanation of it at all! Even if you have had undergraduate QM, this might be a bit much. Further, the concept of direct product spaces is important for quantum computing, but, although it is used, it is not explained. If you haven't seen it before, you will not figure out much of the stuff in Chapter 4 "Simulating a Simple Quantum Computer" which is the heart of this book. A bit more time spent on the essentials that go into the direct product space, and the use of creation and annihilation operators, Hermitian operators, etc., could have made this book so much better.

The Mathematica simulation is really just a movie. Unless you know enough about QM and Mathematica, you have no hope of doing anything with it other than just watching.

On the good side, the simulation does indeed help scratch the surface of what is different about quantum computing. Also a later discussion of Shor's algorithm for cracking an RSA code is excellent.

If you haven't had an undergraduate course in quantum mechanics, and even if you have, you may find that grasping this book is exceedingly difficult. However, if you skip the rough parts or just accept them, and take a look at the simulation, there is something there to be gained.


An excellent book on quantum computing   May 11, 2000
 1 out of 4 found this review helpful

This book is by far the best dedicated to quantum computing : it is suitable for you even if you are a beginner in quantum mechanics, and will be a good introduction to quantum computing.

I particularly appreciated the treatment of Bell's inequality, and of entanglement in general.


Excellent book, comprehensive, and surprisingly fun!   April 17, 1999
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

This is a good and pretty comprehensive book on an exciting subject. It interweaves ideas from computer science and quantum physics. That might sound dry but this book made it fun! I found the software an integral part of the experience. I recommend that the authors make more mention of it in the book. It's nifty stuff. I haven't seen another book like it.


Popularly written, but shallow and not up to date   March 26, 1999
Is this a good book? Yes if you want an informal and readable first introduction to quantum computation; No if you want a book that provides you with rigorous up-to-date descriptions of the main results of quantum computation. In particular on the side of computer science there are some errors and omissions. The presentation of complexity theory is not very good, and Grover's quantum search algorithm is not covered. Better grab a good free introduction from the web (for instance John Preskill's notes at Caltech).