First Lecture.

Repositories have been created.

The Zoom link for the lecture is: 

https://iu.zoom.us/my/adrian.german
Lectures are daily 8:45-10am (except federal holidays on 06/19 and 07/04).

When the recording is available it will be posted here.

I'm also going to make a shorter version and post it here, too.

We have office hours daily, you can sign up here, at your convenience.

Please make an appointment when you need help or have questions.

(Note: for HS teachers, please sign up with the first eight letters in your last name).

Each week will have a theme and an individual exit interview will be scheduled at the end.

Except for the last week we will be very flexible about these interviews.

Please schedule those with me via e-mail.

Meeting Monday for the previous week is also fine.

Today I am going to give a description of the entire class (all six weeks).

We will also get started programming. Let's start with this document.

We start with probability:

Mainly I am interested in a programmatic solution (not pure math).

So now let's discuss the class, week by week:

Week 1.

Probabilities and Simulation in Python (Colab). github.com repositories. Simple Qiskit setup. Terry's video. Superposition, phase, interference in the Misty State Formalism. One qubit quantum gates: X, Z, H. Proving simple properties. Andrew Helwer's video and the Unit Circle state machine. John Watrous. Tommy Wong's textbook. Qubit Touchdown. Martin LaForest's material prepared for QCSYS at IQC at the University of Waterloo, in Canada. Mathematica. Teaching Quantum with the Wolfram Quantum Framework (John McNally, Wolfram Research and the Wolfram Academic Innovation Group). The first (of six) Weekly Exit Interviews.

Things that the guest lecture this week will address:

The grade in this class will be the average of six weekly exit interviews.

Week 2.

Mathematica vs. numpy vs. WolframAlpha. Burd. Sutor. Dancing with Python. Two-qubit quantum gates: C-NOT, SWAP, C-Z. Phase kick-back. The first case of quantum advantage: Bernstein-Vazirani and the Extended Church-Turing Thesis. Matrices in Python. Linear algebra chapter from Martin LaForest. The Berkeley CS191 Diagnostic Quiz. Entanglement. Bell states. GHZ states. Time evolution of a quantum system with the MSF. Implementation in Qiskit. The other Wong book. The second (of six) Weekly Exit Interviews. What is a good summary for the class thus far?
Week 3.

Quantum circuits: the Deutsch-Josza quantum algorithm, the Grover quantum search algorithm. Entanglement and entanglement-based protocols: superdense coding (introduction). The S gate. Complex numbers chapter from Martin LaForest. The controlled-Hadamard gate. What is the simplest meaningful case where the MSF does not work any more? What are the W-entangled states? As always, the week ends with individual Weekly Exit Interviews (third of six, this week) and the requirement to produce a summary for the class thus far. No class(es) on Thu 07/04.
Starting next week Maria Violaris will give a guest lecture per week from Oxford University (UK).

Week 4.

On July 10, Maria Violaris Lecture 01:
The Quantum Bomb Tester and the Basics of Quantum Computing
In this lecture I will explain the quantum bomb tester thought experiment, and use it to introduce the basic components of quantum computing, such as superposition, entanglement, decoherence and quantum gates. I will show how to turn it into a quantum circuit that you can code and run using Qiskit. The aim will be to show people one of the most counterintuitive quantum phenomena of interaction-free measurement; provide a simple way to visualise quantum gates and the physical meaning of quantum computing; and to provide an example of a workshop that the audience can replicate themselves as an introduction to quantum computing. It will be similar to the workshop outlined in the final part of my paper on quantum thought experiments as an educational tool.

I'll provide some follow-up activity suggestions to explore the ideas of each lecture (probably based on my Quantum Paradoxes code tutorials for the associated topics in each one).

Other things we will discuss this week:

Quantum teleportation. The Quantum Mechanics chapter from Martin LaForest book. The No-Cloning (and no broadcasting) Theorem. The books by Valerion Scarani (2), Yuly Billig and Ciaran Hughes. The Vazirani Lectures on Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation. The IQC 2020 Schroedinger's Class videos (by John Donohue). Fourth (of six) Individual Weekly Exit Interviews. Updated class summaries (meaning that the weekly exit interviews are, in some sense, cumulative).
Week 5.

Quantum Mechanics for Everyone (EdX, James Freericks, Georgetown). From Vazirani: double-slit experiment, qubits, geometric representation, k-level systems, bra-ket notation, unitary transforms, single qubit gates, two-qubit gates and tensor products, no cloning theorem, Bell inequalities, CHSH game, nonlocality of correlations, measurement, realism and physics, the GHZ game. Fifth (of six) individual exit interviews; updated class summaries (ch. 20 in Papadimitriou, Dasgupta, Vazirani).

On July 17, Maria Violaris Lecture 02: Collapse vs Many-Worlds:

Demystifying Schroedinger's Cat, the Double-Slit, and Quantum Observers
In this lecture I will use quantum computing to explore the implications of quantum measurement, and whether or not observing a quantum system causes it to irreversibly collapse into a single state. I will use the Schroedinger's cat, double-slit and Wigner's friend thought experiments to explore these ideas, presenting them as quantum circuits that can be implemented on quantum computers. The audience will gain a fundamental understanding of quantum measurement, its role in decoherence of quantum computers, and the historical origins of quantum computing. It will follow a similar approach to these thought experiments as that presented in the first part of my paper on quantum thought experiments as an educational tool.
Week 6.

On July 24, Maria Violaris Lecture 03: Entangling Disciplines:

How Quantum Computing meets Relativity, Maxwell's Demon and Time-Travel
In this lecture we will use quantum computing to understand fundamental questions in other aspects of physics, which in turn help us understand the physical limits of quantum information processing. I will explain Einstein's EPR paradox, including why entanglement does not enable any influences to travel faster than the speed of light. Then I will present the classical Maxwell's Demon thought experiment, whereby a hypothetical demon appears to be able to reverse the arrow of time. I will show how it can be mapped onto qubits in a quantum computer, and discuss its implications for the energetics of quantum computing and quantum thermodynamics. Finally, I will explain how quantum mechanics can help us resolve time-travel paradoxes, and how the existence of time-loops would unlock computing power even more powerful than quantum computing. This session will provide the audience with interdisciplinary ways to understand and explain quantum computing, that they can tailor to the interests of their own audiences or connect with their existing educational syllabuses. It will also demonstrate topics of frontier quantum research, and help them understand in what sense quantum computers are more powerful than classical ones. The lecture will cover similar material (but in a more concise and simplified form) to my videos on the EPR paradox, Maxwell's Demon and time-travel in the Quantum Paradoxes playlist.

This is also the week we say goodbye.

Things to be discussed this week: Shor, QFT, VQE, QAOA, Quantum Mechanics for Smart Kids, Measurement-Based (that is, One-Way) Quantum Computation, Adiabatic Quantum Computing, Measurement and Decoherence, Entanglement Swapping, QKD, Simon's Algorithm, Quantum Phase Estimation, Quantum Cryptography, Mermin's book, Nielsen and Chuang, Rieffel and Polak, Ekert. Course wrap-up, the last (six of six) individual exit interviews with a final cumulative course summary. QSEEC 2024 and IEEE Quantum Week 2024 (in Montreal, Canada). Plans for next year.