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Quantum Computing through Comics

Follow here for comics and classes on Quantum Computing updates every week.

Instructors artbyphysicistkittyartbyphysicistkitty
Thursday, August 24, 2020 12:00 am GMT - Sunday, November 1, 2020 12:00 am GMT Local time zone:
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UPDATE: 

Check out the latest updates:

***April 2021

  1. Customized quantum learning experience
  2. New community-written book

*** Nov. 2020

Class of 2020 had finished.  I learned a lot by teaching the class on Sunday since March and digesting complex ideas into drawings. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. All the recordings can be found here.

We also have a cartoon "textbook" which can be found in 13 markets on Amazon. Search for ASIN : B08HGLPZXP Quantum Computing & Some Physics

See you in future classes!

***

We discussed a new topic for 30 mins every week. The topic is based on my comics of the week below in the log. You can also follow progress of the drawings on my website, LinkedInTwitterInstagram and YouTube.  Hackaday is adding the classes gradually to their channel here: Intro to Quantum Computing playlist

You can send questions and requests in the comments section below. I'll address them in the comics, in the comments or during the class. Past recordings are in the description of the slides under the "Files" areas.

***

Quantum computing has been a hot topic since the past couple of years, especially with recent progress made in industry. However, there hasn't been enough materials to lead hobbyists into the subject, as most books and papers are written for professional academics and media articles are technically shallow. These hobbyists include scientists, engineers, developers and hackers who are highly technical but may not have a background in quantum computing. Even with a PhD in Applied Physics who studied quantum properties of materials, I did not know how quantum computers worked. As I started learning the subject, I realize that one does not need a degree in physics to understand quantum computing. All they need is some necessary math and physics foundations. This subject can be taught in a straightforward way at the right level. Once people know what goes into quantum computing, they will be able to dig deeper and demystify the subject.   

As I've been teaching our employees at Microsoft, I've built up a series of systematic materials from basic concepts to algorithms to hardware systems, and a tutorial on Q# (Q-sharp) - a domain-specific programming language used for expressing quantum algorithms. Typically we took a few months to go through all the basic concepts. Every class was followed by a few Q# exercises. But it is do-able for a 2-hour workshop, such as the one at Hackaday Supercon. On November 15, 2019, I gave a workshop on a hands-on introduction to Quantum Computing at Supercon. Here are the slides for everyone.  It might felt like a lot to people who encountered the concepts for the first time. But if they go back to the slides now, they'll be able to recall and digest at their own pace. The workshop was also on high demand. We didn't have enough space for more people. So anyone who missed it can take a look at the slides which hopefully can give them directions to study further.  

Please feel free to post any questions and discussions in this project page. And any mistakes to correct in the slides. I'll try to answer them here. Enjoy!

***

About the instructor:

Dr. Kitty Yeung, Sr. Quantum Architect at Microsoft Quantum Systems; Producer of MS Learn quantum modules and the Quantum Learning website with customized learning materials; Creator of comic series Quantum Computing through Comics; Lecturer at HackadayU and Microsoft Reactor on Introduction to Quantum Computing; Founder & Designer of sustainable and STEAM fashion brand, Art by Physicist; Creative Technologist & Lead of the Fashion Hack at Microsoft; Public Speaker on quantum computing and fashion tech. Harvard University 15′ Applied Physics; University of Cambridge 10′ Natural Sciences – Physical.

Slides Nov 1.pdf

Session 25: Quantum Error Correction by Dr. Michael Beverland Recording: https://youtu.be/5zFpLLaVmAs

Adobe Portable Document Format - 1.89 MB - 11/01/2020 at 20:51

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qcvv_Chris.pdf

Session 24: Quantum Tomography by Prof. Chris Ferrie Recording: https://youtu.be/utH6YcaoGTE

Adobe Portable Document Format - 887.31 kB - 10/19/2020 at 15:17

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Slides Oct 18.pdf

Session 24: Quantum Tomography by Prof. Chris Ferrie Recording: https://youtu.be/utH6YcaoGTE

Adobe Portable Document Format - 1.02 MB - 10/19/2020 at 15:18

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qml_maria.pdf

Session 23: Quantum Machine Learning by Dr. Maria Schuld Recording: https://youtu.be/DGNc0gmtumE

Adobe Portable Document Format - 3.57 MB - 10/13/2020 at 09:47

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Slides Oct 11.pdf

Session 23: Quantum Machine Learning by Dr. Maria Schuld Recording: https://youtu.be/DGNc0gmtumE

Adobe Portable Document Format - 778.06 kB - 10/11/2020 at 19:44

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  • Comics: Quantum Computing & some Physics

    artbyphysicistkitty03/22/2020 at 13:06 0 comments

    In the mist of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am bummed that I don't have a 3D printer and my sewing machine is still to be shipped from SF to my new home in Germany, with no supplies to join the PPE making :( But to contribute, in addition to donating to non-profits, I want to provide some support to people staying at home, with what I can do the best. 

    Every Sunday and Wednesday, I'll post a comic about quantum computing and some physics concepts. Watch out here for updates. I'll also post on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and possibly other media. I hope this can be of help for people spending time to learn new things. It will certainly be an exciting challenge for me as well. Feel free to share the contents and discuss in the comments. Also let me know any questions and topics you'd like me to draw.

  • Pages 5 & 6

    artbyphysicistkitty03/25/2020 at 21:21 0 comments

    First Wednesday update. More to come to explain these various concepts.

    For interested readers, Wikipedia articles on binary systems, early computers and Ada Lovelace are very good backgrounds.

  • Pages 7 & 8

    artbyphysicistkitty03/29/2020 at 14:20 0 comments

    (First Sunday update) The contrast between "amplitude" Vs "probability" is very important, which helps build intuition to interpret measurements - will be explained later.  

  • Pages 9 & 10

    artbyphysicistkitty04/01/2020 at 14:28 1 comment

    Emphasizing a bit more on amplitude. What's coming up is very exciting.

  • Pages 11 & 12

    artbyphysicistkitty04/05/2020 at 13:23 0 comments

    Quantum mechanics explained with interference. With all the possibilities in our world, we are just observing the events that are the most likely, resulted from interference!

    I should probably make some additional pages on complex numbers. But will prioritize the next few topics that are more urgent. 

  • Page 13 & 14

    artbyphysicistkitty04/08/2020 at 14:30 0 comments

    Since there's been so much confusion on this entanglement, I'll show what it is NOT.

  • Pages 15 & 16

    artbyphysicistkitty04/12/2020 at 14:10 0 comments

    We won't delve into decoherence any time soon. If you are interested to learn more about it, just take a search online. 

    We will next lean how to control and manipulate qubits. 

  • Pages 17 & 18

    artbyphysicistkitty04/15/2020 at 14:14 0 comments

    This week, we will start talking about how to manipulate qubits to build quantum algorithms.

  • Pages 19 & 20

    artbyphysicistkitty04/19/2020 at 14:09 0 comments

    While an infinite number of gates can be used to change a state (and move it around on the Bloch Sphere), some gates are special cases that are commonly used in algorithms. 

  • Pages 21 & 22

    artbyphysicistkitty04/22/2020 at 14:16 0 comments

    A couple build-ups for what's to come: using the gates to construct algorithms, and using Q# quantum programming language for large numbers of qubits (when the circuit representation doesn't scale).

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Discussions

Hanaki Onu wrote 02/19/2024 at 14:06 point

Is there a specific website that lets you use this data - other than Hackaday? I was thinking that scratch would, but it does not. also, I love how easy she makes it to understand.

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newblicious wrote 10/13/2020 at 21:50 point

I love the illustrations

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 10/20/2020 at 12:50 point

Thank you so much!

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Davide wrote 09/08/2020 at 12:36 point

Hi Kitty, I was reviewing class #5/ comic #23 (teleportation) and I can’t figure out why, when Alice entangles her new qubit |A'> to the previously entangled pair |A> |B>, she firstly applied the CNOT gate then secondly the Hadamard gate: that is the reverse order of gates to obtain entanglement, isn’t it? May you please elaborate on this step a bit more?

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 09/08/2020 at 17:00 point

Great question, Davide. The best way to see it would be to go through the math at each step. What happens if you reverse CNOT and H? Would it work for some states?  |A'> in general is a superposition state of |0> and |1>. What happens if you apply a H gate? Another place to look is jumping to Session 13: Teleportation + codingRecording: https://youtu.be/nPJeI-J5934 and try coding the circuit with Q#.

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Barry Burd wrote 07/02/2020 at 20:26 point

My question is about the Basic Gates kata, Task 2.3. Two-qubit gate - 3. I can do it by thinking intuitively about what gates do, but I don't want to rely on intuitions. I'm looking for a way to do it using only matrices (maybe by writing down the matrix for the multi-qubit transformation that I want to achieve, and factoring that matrix into the matrices for basic gates). Is there a way to do something like this?

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 07/03/2020 at 10:11 point

Hi Barry, for sure, you can express all quantum gates as matrices and qubits as vectors. For this question, you can write down the CNOT matrices and control and target qubits. 

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Barry Burd wrote 07/04/2020 at 01:59 point

I have no doubt that I can express a sequence of basic gate operations with matrices. My question is, are there mathematical tools to find a sequence of operations to go from an arbitrary start state to a desired target state. The basic gates H, CNOT, and Phase45 are universal -- so is there a method to determine which of them to apply?

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 07/05/2020 at 14:18 point

Interesting thought. We can use the arbitrary general matrices that are described by each qubit's angles and then calculate what the angles are. Then we will find out which universal gates they are. We can calculate manually or express in a generic tool like Mathematica or MatLab. 2x2 matrix would be easy but as the matrices grow bigger, it can get messy.   

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syscomax wrote 06/24/2020 at 06:11 point

Enjoyed reading the article above , really explains everything in detail,the article is very interesting and effective.Thank you and good luck for the upcoming articles https://www.syscomax.com/

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 07/03/2020 at 10:07 point

Thank you.

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Ramkumar wrote 06/20/2020 at 08:50 point

Hi, I'm currently in class 3 where you explain quantum entanglement. Say, there are 3 quantum particles in entanglement. Is this ( 1 ∕√2 | 000> + 1 /√2 | 111> ) the only possible configuration. I guess they can be entangled in any possible ways.

If yes, consider the state ( 1 ∕√2 | 010> + 1 ∕√2 | 011> ). Here if we observe the first two particles, the third particle's state cannot be determined. On the other hand, it is enough to observe only third particle. Is this valid entanglement?

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 06/20/2020 at 14:24 point

Hi, thanks for asking. We can entangle them in many different ways. ( 1 ∕√2 | 000> + 1 /√2 | 111> ) is a maximally entangled state. The amplitude in front of each term can also be different. The example you gave does not have the three qubits entangled though. When we measure the third qubit (or any qubit), we still won't know what the other two qubits are. It is not different from writing 1 ∕√2 | 01>(|0>+|1>) then we can see the first two qubits are not correlated with the last qubit. Whereas in the case of ( 1 ∕√2 | 000> + 1 /√2 | 111> ) we cannot write them as separate qubits.

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Ramkumar wrote 06/21/2020 at 04:30 point

Now I understood the correlation part. Thank you for the clear explanation.

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mulder-48 wrote 06/10/2020 at 12:13 point

Found the first on the YouTube channel. Thanks

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 06/11/2020 at 13:32 point

Thank you :)

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mulder-48 wrote 06/10/2020 at 09:02 point

Hi, Sorry to asked but I can not find the link for the first recorded session, Supercon quantum computing workshop share_Kitty Yeung.pdf. Thanks

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Hirmay Sandesara wrote 07/20/2020 at 05:53 point

Here's the link adress, https://youtu.be/ZShBy-vAUAc

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olivialsn wrote 06/09/2020 at 06:03 point

there is superposition like 1/2(|00⟩+𝑖|01⟩−|10⟩−𝑖|11⟩), how to understand when there is imaginary part? for |01⟩, i^2 = -1, does it have a negative probability to appear? or we only consider the real part, so the probability of |01⟩ and |11⟩ is 0?

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 06/11/2020 at 12:59 point

Great that you are asking about this! Thank you. I have not mentioned this part in order to reduce the math for beginners. We cannot have negative probability. In fact, it should be the modulus | i |^2 that we calculate for probability, so the amplitude can be any number. If you express an imaginary number with magnitude and phase, you will see that it is the magnitude (always positive) squared that gives the probability. I can show this detail in one of the next classes. Glad we are ready. 

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Barry Burd wrote 06/08/2020 at 20:58 point

Can anyone help me with setting up the katas on my local computer? I'm working on Windows but I can also try using a Mac. I was able to open a notebook but I kept getting messages that the server couldn't obtain a lock (apparently from dotnet). Then I saw a note about uninstalling microsoft.quantum iqsharp and installing a particular version. When I try to reinstall iqsharp, I get an error message Failure to install and it gives four possible reasons.

Frankly, I'm lost because I'm not an experienced dotnet or jupyter user. If anyone has time for a brief online help session, that would be great.

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 06/11/2020 at 13:32 point

Hi Barry, sorry to hear your experience with the installation was not smooth. Let me know which instruction you were using and I can see how to update it. There are several ways to run quantum program locally: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/quantum/install-guide/ I personally prefer the Q# command line application option. The instruction guides you to install VS Code and install the QDK extension there. Then you can clone the katas repo and run the .qs files lovally. No iqsharp is need for this one. You can also try this hands-on guide: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/qsharp-create-first-quantum-development-kit/ where it walks you through the above step by step. It also teaches how to build a quantum random number generator if you are interested in finishing the whole tutorial.

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John Cronin wrote 05/24/2020 at 10:53 point

Kitty,

your presentation at the Makers' Faire was excellent. And actually your second about fashion was interesting. 

I have a question, what is your recommendation for a beginning quantum mechanics text and a good math review text. I feel comfortable with restarting my undergrad calculus.

Thank you

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 05/24/2020 at 11:23 point

Hi John, thank you for attending both sessions. 

For quantum mechanics, a widely used one is Introduction to Quantum Mechanics by David Griffith. 

A book on quantum computing that everyone uses is: Nelson and Chaung, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information – 10 th Anniversary Edition (you can find free PDFs to download). It's not the most easy to read though. I heard this one is pretty good: Quantum Computing: An Applied Approach, and Quantum Computing for Software Engineers.  

If you are interested in hardware (not specifically for quantum computers), I loved Introduction to Solid State Physics by Charles Kittel.

For math...maybe the standard high-school and undergrad textbooks from China? See if they have translations into English. I haven't used textbooks for math for a while. My undergrad was in England and can't remember what we used there. The lecture notes were pretty good. Are you in the UK? 

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John Cronin wrote 05/25/2020 at 12:41 point

Thanks for the book recommendations.

I live in Delaware, recently retired from pharma industry, PhD in analytical chemistry. Now I can pursue my intellectual hobbies. I needed a refresher in linear algebra and matrices.

I looked at the chem quantum stuff. It is above my knowledge but it is the same old boring stuff with H atoms. As an analyst I am more interested in finding signals in the noise.

Thank you for your help

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John Cronin wrote 05/22/2020 at 23:32 point

oops I just happened to find it

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John Cronin wrote 05/22/2020 at 23:31 point

Look Kitty is at the Maker Faire 

https://makerfaire.com/virtually-maker-faire-2020/schedule/ 

Saturday morning at 7 am EDT

I'm looking forward to her talk

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 05/23/2020 at 08:59 point

Thank you! Looking forward to having you~

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Helen Ma wrote 04/27/2020 at 01:26 point

Hi class, this is a good class. I also recommend you to join weekdays/Saturday free virtual meetup events to meet quantum computing experts from Xanadu, Rigetti, Harrisburg University, QC Ware , Udemy, BEIT, Cambridge Quantum Computing and so on. Here are my groups: 1. https://www.meetup.com/Washington-Quantum-Computing-Meetup/ 2. https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Harrisburg-Quantum-Computing-Meetup-Group/ 3. https://www.meetup.com/zen4maker/ 4. https://www.meetup.com/association-quantum/ 5. https://www.meetup.com/quantum-computing-and-big-data/

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 04/27/2020 at 08:58 point

Thank you, Helen!

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mraarone wrote 04/26/2020 at 21:55 point

I was looking for a good book as a handbook for my Quantum Theory studies to review and discuss Lie groups, Clifford Algebras, SU(2), tensors, spintors, and just a bunch of fundamentals that are spotty in my past. I found this book where the author shares it freely on the Internet (I'm buying it from Amazon because I'm a nice guy).

If you're interested, the book is called "Quantum Theory, Groups and Representations: An Introduction" by Peter Woit.

He makes it publicly available a la his professor's site at Columbia:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/QM/fall-course.pdf

Maybe more technical than most would want, but for those looking to read deeper with a companion handbook for the formalism behind the physical application, this seems to cover a lot that I have been looking for in a bunch of other books.

Enjoy!

Aaron

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 04/27/2020 at 08:59 point

Thanks, Aaron. If you like to give a presentation when you are ready, let me know.

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Robert E. Griffith wrote 04/15/2020 at 13:07 point

Hey Kitty, I was reviewing past slides and I have a question about number 11 (about the weather).  I dont understand why there is a nagative amplituded in the quatum calculation. Is it a real example in that for these number this must be the correct calculation or is the negative case one of several possibilities. I wonder if the point of this slide is that there are solutions represented by both negative and positive terms and this just illustrates one example of what the solution could be.

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 04/15/2020 at 13:26 point

Yes, the negative sign was put there on purpose to show what happens if the amplitude can be negative, since in the quantum case the amplitude can be positive or negative.

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Barry Burd wrote 04/12/2020 at 22:12 point

Thank you, Robert. That's a good division of my question into parts.

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 04/13/2020 at 10:46 point

Thanks Barry and Robert. 

There is a set of gates that can be combined to produce any arbitrary amplitude of a qubit. With three qubits, you will apply those gates to them individually so you get the a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h, you want.  A way to visualize a qubit is the Bloch sphere - a 3D representation of a qubit vector. You can write any arbitrary gates into a gate (matrix) to move the vector along the Bloch sphere.  This will exactly be the topic for the coming week. Watch out for my comics on Wednesday and Sunday. 

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Robert E. Griffith wrote 04/12/2020 at 21:50 point

(this is in response to the question Barry asked at the end of class and in the chat application)

Barry, I wonder if your question can be broken down into two parts. 1) given a 3qbit system with state amplitudes (a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h), what at the 3 qbit states that produce it and 2) how do you manipulate a qbit to have a particular state other that 0,1 and root(2)? 

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Barry Burd wrote 04/10/2020 at 23:46 point

Will this coming week's session be on Zoom again? I heard talk about moving to a more secure platform.

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artbyphysicistkitty wrote 04/11/2020 at 09:00 point

Thanks for asking. Yes, we will use Microsoft Teams moving forward. See updated link in the project description and instruction. 

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Robert E. Griffith wrote 04/07/2020 at 20:00 point

Hi Marcelo, in the Files section above you will find  the first two video classes and their accompaning slides. Note that the video  URLs do not come in as links for me so I had copy and paste them.  The third meeting will be next Sunday.

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