Appendix F - NOTES and CREDITS

By now there seem to be quite a few books on quantum computing. However, there are only a few which were recommended for the course. (These are in no particular order.)

• Visit http://www.qubit.org and click on “What is QIP?” There are several introductory articles there about quantum mechanics and quantum computing. There are other interesting articles as well.
• N. David Mermin’s book [11].

  Paraphrasing from the book: This book was written as an introduction to quantum computation which does not assume any background in physics. It evolved from his course on quantum computing for undergraduate and graduate students at Cornell and is for students from computer science, mathematics, engineering, and physics.

  I have heard him speak and read another book of his. His explanations are great.

• Shankar’s book: Principles of Quantum Mechanics

  The book contains topics which are more advanced, but starts fairly simply and the primary reason I list it here is that the first chapter has a lot of the mathematics that we will be using (and probably more) written at a fairly basic level, although it is somewhat abstract.

• Michael Nielsen and Isaac Chuang’s book [13].

  This book has a little bit about many different subjects. Its easy to read (for the most part) and contains very important and fairly basic information. This has been THE textbook and reference book since about 2001.

• John Preskill’s Course notes [9].

  Amazing! These notes were essentially THE textbook treatment before the book of Neilsen and Chuang book and are still very good for a variety of introductory topics as well as a good reference for a variety of topics. Some of them quite advanced. It’s available on the web!

• Frank Gaitan’s book [5].

  To my knowledge this is the first book on quantum error correction. Approximately the second half of the course will cover quantum error prevention methods.

By the time these notes, and the course, are finished, several people will have contributed. These are listed here:

• Mark S. Byrd
• C. Allen Bishop
• Nayeli Zuniga-Hansen
• Seyoum Tsige
• Max Herlache
• Philip Feinsilver
• Jalal Alowibdi
• Sarah Harvey
• Kevin Reuter
• Russell Ceballos