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Schedule

Lecture 13
Exam Review

Lecture Handouts

• Lecture Notes- Chapter 14, Quantum Information (PDF)
• Lloyd, Seth. "Quantum-Mechanical Computers." Scientific American 273, no. 4 (October 1995): 140-145.
  An early, very readable description of quantum computation.
• Spiller, T. P. "Quantum Information Processing: Cryptography, Computation, and Teleportation." Proc IEEE 84, no. 12 (December 1996): 1719-1746.
  Although this paper is now more than four years old, it provides an excellent introduction for students.
• Lloyd, Seth. "Quantum-Mechanical Maxwell's Demon." Physical Review A 56, no. 5 (November 1997): 3374-3382.
• "The Cost of Forgetting." The Economist (December 13-19, 1997).
• Chuang, Isaac L., Lieven M. K. Vandersypen, Xinlan Zhou, Debbie W. Leung, and Seth Lloyd. "Experimental Realization of a Quantum Algorithm." Nature 393 (1998): 6681.
• "Quantum Information." Physics World (March 1998): 35-57.
  Some popular articles covering various aspects of quantum information, including quantum communication, quantum cryptography, quantum computing, and some possible ways of implementing the ideas.
• Steane, Andrew M., and Wim van Dam. "Physicists Triumph at Guess My Number." Physics Today (February 2000): 35-39.
  A charming introduction to superdense coding, in which the transmission of a classical bit can convey more that a bit of information if the channel is set up in advance using quantum entanglement.
• Kane, Bruce. "Scalable Quantum Computing Using Solid-State Devices." The Bridge 32, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 5-8.
  Technologies that might support quantum information processing and scale to a reasonable number of qubits.
• Hiltzik, Michael. "Harnessing Quantum Bits." Technology Review 106, no. 2 (March 2003): 58-63.
  Story about implementations of quantum computers from several laboratories.

Assignment

• None for this unit

Resources

Technical

• Prof. John Preskill teaches a course on quantum information at Caltech; lecture notes.
• Centre for Quantum Computation, University of Oxford.
• An extensive set of links to tutorials on quantum information.
• One of the most active industrial research groups in quantum information is at IBM Research Yorktown. This was the home of one of the early leaders in the field, the late Rolf Landauer, and younger people including Charles Bennett, who is known for his work on quantum teleportation.

Historical

• Rolf Landauer obituary
• Richard P. Feynman biography. Feynman, an MIT graduate, was curious about the nature of quantum information.
• James Clerk Maxwell biography. Maxwell really opened up the relationship between information and entropy by proposing the Maxwell's Demon, which would apparently violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Books

There are already many books and conferences on quantum information, even though the field is new.

• Lo, Hoi-Kwong, Sandu Popescu, and Tim Spiller. "Introduction to Quantum Computation and Information." World Scientific, Singapore (1998).
  The book is based on a lecture series held at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK, November 1996 - April, 1997.
• Nielsen, Michael A., and Isaac L. Chuang. Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2000. ISBN: 0521632358.
  This is probably the best of the books intended for scientists and engineers.
• The Physics of Quantum Information: Quantum Cryptography, Quantum Teleportation, Quantum Computation. Edited by Dirk Bouwbeester, Artur Ekert, and Anton Zeilinger. Berlin, Germany; New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, 2000. ISBN: 3540667784.
• Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computing. Edited by Jeffrey H. Shapiro and Osamu Hirota. Princeton, NJ: Rinton Press, 2003. ISBN: 1589490304.
• Johnson, George. A Shortcut through Time: The Path to the Quantum Computer. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. 2003. ISBN: 0375411933.
  This book, written by a New York Times science writer, is for the general public and may not be technical enough for some readers.

Maxwell's Demon in its many forms has captured the imagination of both scientists and the general public.

• Brillouin, Leon. Science and Information Theory. 2nd ed. Burlington, MA: Academic Press Inc, 1962. ISBN: 0121349500.
  Topics include Brownian motion, thermal noise, information theory, entropy, and the author's personal view of Maxwell's Demon.
• Leff, Harvey S., and Andrew F. Rex. Maxwell's Demon: Entropy, Information, Computing. Edited by Adam Hilger. England, Bristol BS1 6NX, 1990. ISBN: 0750300566.
  General historical discussion with many reprints of original papers but not, regrettably, any of Maxwell's own publications.
• von Baeyer, Hans Christian. Maxwell's Demon. Random House, New York, 1998. ISBN: 0679433422.
  A good review for the general public, by a Professor of Physics at the College of William and Mary, this book was written before the quantum version of the demon was understood as well as it is today.