Basic Information

  • Course Code: PH534
  • Course Name: Quantum Information and Computing
  • Course Offered In: Spring semesters
  • Instructors: Prof. Himadri Shekhar Dhar
  • Prerequisites: No hard pre-reqs, though I would recommend having a strong grip on linear algebra (Keep MA106 fresh in your mind)
  • Difficulty (on a scale of 5): 5

Course Content

  • Explanation of how we deal with quantum objects mathematically. The postulates of quantum mechanics. Linear algebra basics: Inner products, Eigenvectors, Tensor products, Operators etc. POVM measurements.
  • Quantum information: Quantum operations, distance majorization, classical and quantum information theory and their interrelation (Shannon entropy and Von Neumann entropy), the holevo bound.
  • Quantum Circuits : different types of gates, the existence of universal gates.
  • Quantum algorithms: The concept of an Oracle, phase kickback, qunatum fourier transform Communication: Noiseless coding theorems, communication over noisy channels

Feedback on Lectures

My suggestion would be to be very attentive and if you have time, come a little prepared for the lectures. Request the instructor to post notes on teams ahead of the lecture, and read through them to know what’s coming at you.

You can get lost easily during the lecture, especially as the content can come off to be a bit dry. The instructor does stumbe along the lecture sometimes, but if you are able to understand it, the lecture moves at a good pace.

Feedback on Evaluations

As hard to understand the content is, the evaluation is easy. Most of it will test whether you have once understood the material and apply the correct formula from the 1 or 2 pages of cheat sheets allowed. There may also be surprise assignments, depending on the attendance of the class :)

Study Material and Resources

The standard book for QCQI by Nielson and Chuang. I also recommed using youTube and Google if you’re not able to understand the contents after a reading. Having a peer group is really recommended here, and my friends were honestly the best resource I had when trying to understand it all.

And of course, I cannot forget to mention: https://siddhant-midha.github.io/teaching/ph-534/ This contains revision material for nearly the first fourth of the course, and it’s the best you’re probably going to find, unless Siddhant decides to tutor this course again.