The Quantum World
Contents
The Quantum World¶
An Introduction to Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing¶
We can all agree that the computers today are more powerful than ever before. Our desktops, laptops and phones allow us to perform tasks quickly at the touch of a button. For most of us, these devices are much part of our daily lives - for our social communications, for commerce, for education and science, for our leisure and everything in between- and technologies are constantly evolving! There’s always some upgrade, a new model phone with new features, or a software update, as technologists look for even better ways to carry out specific tasks.
For scientists, computers are critical for mathematical calculations, modeling and simulations, in order to better our understanding of the natural world. Computers help us to find solutions to problems in science, engineering and medicine, much faster than we ever could without them. The world’s most powerful supercomputers are right now being used for weather forecasting and climate change prediction, seismic research, oil and gas exploration, cancer and biological research, pharmaceutical drug design and research, materials modelling, simulating fluid dynamics, virtual nuclear testing, data mining, training AIs and more.
Yet within these research disciplines, there are still problems that we are not able to solve on the best of supercomputers in any timely fashion. Such problems are too large, too complex, having very many variables and so many possible outcomes, that it would take years upon years to compute their optimal solutions. This is where the hope for Quantum Computing arises.
In this Introduction to Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computing, we’ll discover what Quantum Computing is all about, how we can access a quantum computer right from our own devices through the ‘cloud’ and even some basics in quantum programming.