Quantum Computer Science: An Introduction

I'm not a big fan of the whole 'we leave it as an exercise to show...', 'it can be shown with straightforward algebra manipulation that...', and other rubbish that one finds in physics books. I'm a working professional that wants to learn a new discipline in a very limited amount of time, and if I had the time to derive everything from scratch, I I wouldn't need to purchase a textbook.This book nails it. The author shows his work. I'm not spending hours trying to fill in skipped steps or trying to figure out notation that's unclear or introduced without definition.Wonderful work. Highly recommended.

Mermin's explanations are among the clearest available, as is usual for him, and his treatment has many original features (including alternative quantum gates), and nuggets of insight. Some of his insights are not found in other books, but some are quoted by all of the other textbooks on quantum computing that appeared after his. Some of his terminology is favored by logic, but is non-standard: Qbit for what others write as 'qubit'. The only missing topic is Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing, which can be viewed as an outgrowth of error-correcting codes for quantum computing, which he treats very well. This is one of the indispensible books on the subject.

Uses matrices and circuits but not Python libraries. Sovers the basics and the canon of algorithms. Of the fields of quantum information (computing, communication, sensing), this book is about computing.

The book itself is fantastic, five stars for content, but the kindle version has some serious issues-- many symbols that should be superscripts are not, some mathematical expressions have distorted layout, or worse, appear as scanned images--sometimes of such low resolution as to make the indices illegible. For the forty dollars I paid it's a slap in the face. Again I want to stress the high quality of the writing and content, but think twice before investing in the kindle version.

A must read for every IT and/or Cyber Security Professional as a major shift in computing will occur within the next 5 to 10 years. Now is the time to embrace quantum computing as those in the know will reap the benefits of being part of a small group of people who will be in a position to change the world. Great introductory book and can be considered a stepping stone into the quantum computing world.

Great Intro ...Mermin gets right into the thick of it quickly ...this is one of the best physics/computer science books I have ever read over the past 50 years !

This book is fantastic. Wonderfully clear and short enough to actually read. I wish all science texts were like this.A course in quantum mechanics is recommended. It might not be necessary but I doubt much could be understood without some understanding of the physics behind the building blocks of the theory and what might be required in actually building a functioning quantum computer. I know it's not necessary and someone who accepts the superposition of states easily could get through the book, but I don't think they would really have grokked the fullness (but for that matter nor do I).The book builds up some basic QM and the actions of the various gates acting on a Qbit, then goes through several introductory problems to demonstrate how a quantum computer is capable of fundamentally different computations than its classical counterparts. This works up to Shor's Algorithm (with a very nice demonstration of why it is robust to small errors in the phase), Grover's search, and Quantum Error Correction.The appendices are also full of some of the best explanations I have ever read for many small calculations, tools, and puzzles. Bell states, GHZ, and other examples of quantum weirdness are covered well and it drives home the point that the most fundamental aspects of QM are easily illustrated without the bookkeeping associated with infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces.

Inconsistent with definitions and several terms are used before they are defined.