Customer Reviews

Explorations in Quantum Computing

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is disappointing, because it could have been so much better.

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.

This is a very good introductory book for anybody with some technical or scientific background. It gives an overview of the major developments in the field of quantum computing and communications during the past decade. We find that the text is not intended for scientists working in the field or for physicists doing research in related fields.

Chapter 1 is well written and clearly presented. It describes in a comprehensive way the current trends in computer technology from different points of view. Everybody can immensely profit from reading it. Chapter 2 considers basic notions of computer science in a very understandable way with appropriate examples. Chapter 3 gives some ideas on quantum mechanics. It can be a useful introduction to this subject. Chapter 4 on simulations is very informative with many illustrative examples. Chapter 6 considers classical cryptosystems rather extensively and well. It also gives the basics of Shor's factoring algorithm. Chapter 7 describes the applications of random numbers, mainly in classical computing. Chapters 8 and 9 present quantum cryptography and teleportation respectively. This is a good and informative presentation for nonspecialist. Decoherence and error correction are considered in chapter 10 rather briefly and their description is not very much up to date. Chapter 11 gives a notion of the current experimental realizations of quantum computers and can be very informative for nonspecialists. A more extensive text on quantum algorithms (nature, examples, applications) is maybe also appropriate in the book, as is an explanation of the original ideas of Feynman (and their evolution) regarding the simulation of a quantum system on a quantum computer.

According to us the book is written intelligently and well. It responds to the current need to popularize the explosive developments in this field. The people who would profit the most of it are those who work in different areas of computer science and information technology. It provides a bridge between the ! world of computers and quantum physics with its possible applications.

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).

What modern researchers call a quantum computer is a circuit of elementary gates, primarily XOR gates and qubit rotations. These circuits represent operations to be performed on an array of qubits. This book introduces the circuit symbol for XOR gates amazingly late, on page 201 (and again in page 231). This is even more amazing if you consider that Shor's algorithm, a very advanced quantum circuit, is discussed on pages 114-145, long before defining XOR gates. This is just one of many reasons why I found this book confusing, incoherent and rambling. Very little effort is made to present a unified point of view.

It's basically a review that manages to mention a whopping ~300 references, but delves deeply into nothing. There are quite a few reviews on the web that do as good or better a job at reviewing the literature of the subject, and they are available for FREE.

Finally, I thought the software was very disappointing: a bunch of Mathematica macros. Not very general or easily extensible.

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.

This book is awesome!! It explains the ideas of quantum computing in terms I can really understand. It covers topics that are not covered in detail in the summary articles on the web. I specially liked the descriptions of Feynman's quantum processor, error propagation (from mistakes in manufacturing) and Shor's factoring algorithm. The description of the RSA algorithm for public key cryptography is the best I have ever seen. The book comes with a CD-ROM containing executable computer simulations of Feynman's quantum processor, quantum teleportation, Shor's algorithm, quantum cryptography and quantum error correction! It also contains hundreds of references that I have used to track down foundational quantum computing papers that pre-date the web based materials. The code in the BraKet.nb notebook is a mini-toolkit for manipulating quantum mechanical formulas. I was able to use and adapt the code easily, and it really brought the field to life in a new way for me. It is a pity that the book does not have a demo copy of Mathematica on board as this limits the executability of the code to people who already have Mathematica. Nevertheless, this book is an outstanding tour-de-force for Drs. Clearwater and Williams. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about quantum computing from scratch. I have not seen a book this original or exciting in a long long time.

I read almost all of the book so far and i have to say this is one of the best books a beginner can buy. The fact that it is for beginners doesnt make it a bad book.

It deals with almost all of the subjects and explains the connections between them. For those who doesnt know quantum physics ( or computing ) it is especially important to understand the basics and connections. This book first gives the underlying methods/concepts and then tries to show how it is/can be implemented on a quantum computer. If you are new in one of the 2 areas ( quantum physics or/and classical computing ), you should be paying attention to understanding of new concepts and connections coming in with the areas itself to gain a solid background in the field. I believe this book is giving the background a beginner needs.

It is true that the book has little mathematics perspective and is more like concepts oriented in physical subjects. So even if you are an undergrad physics student who took quantum pyhsics, the language or explanations used here might seem rather simplistic. Other than that it is perfect.

If you are interested in learning about Quantum Computation, Cryptography and/or Teleportation, this is the book for you. It describes all aspects of this new field in detail, accompanied by a CD with simulations, and a text file list of journal articles to further your study of quantum computation. If you are interested in quantum computing and have a background in physics notation, buy this!

This book comes with an extensive set of Mathematica workbooks that demonstrate different quantum algorithms. I used the Shor's Algorithm Mathematica workbook in my class. I am very impressed with this book.

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).