Quantum Computing Resources

This is a collection of online resources useful for learning and experimenting with Quantum Computing (QC). The internet has quite a few resources on this subject, ranging widely in quality, attention to detail, and accuracy. This is a curated list of the best resources available, several of which I have found personally helpful in learning more about quantum computing. If you are here, you’re probably interested in learning about QC. I hope you find this collection useful as a starting point on your journey to master this subject.

Courses and Lessons

Intro to Quantum Software Development by MITRE

This is the single best learning resource I’ve found for quantum computing so far. It’s an excellent source for someone who already has some CS, programming, and math background, but who is completely new to QC. They even include some lessons on the background math: complex numbers, vectors, matrix multiplication, etc. This would be my first recommendation!

IQM Academy

This is also an excellent resource. This one is a little more “dumbed down” compared to the MIRE site. This is where I’d recommend starting if you have little-to-no CS / programming background.

Learn Quantum Computing: A Field Guide by IBM

This is also a good resource as well. It goes into a bit more detail than IQM Academy, but is not quite as information-rich as MITRE. It also ties in nicely with IBM’s Quantum Composer tool, which allows you to easily run quantum simulations in the browser. Good Lesson / IDE integration.

Books

Quantum Computing For Everyone

This is an excellent book for someone who already has a bit of math and CS background to learn the ropes of quantum computing. For the most part, the book skips the use of complex numbers, which simplifies the mathematics a bit.

Video Series

IQIS Science by Artur Ekert

An 80+ video series on probability amplitutes, qubits, quantum computing algorithms, and more!

Circuit Editors and Simulators

Quirk by Craig Gidney

This is one of the best quantum circuit designers and simulators on the internet. The UI is not the prettiest, but it has a wide variety of gates to choose from as well as helpful visualizations as to what is going on with your circuits and qubits.

Composer by IBM

Composer feels a bit more like a quantum circuit IDE rather than simply a editor. It provides a clean circuit editor, phase visualizer, probability display, and allows you to submit jobs both to quantum simulators as well as to real quantum computers via the cloud.

Quantum Javascript by Stewart Smith

Quantum Javascript is both a circuit simulator and Javascript library for circuit creation and simulation. It is bare-bones in comparison to Quirk and Composer, but is a good option is you want something very simple to toy around with. Given the way it is implemented, it’s also easy to incorporate into other tools or websites. IQM academy uses this as their go-to simulator, for instance.

The Quantum Land Simulator

Similar in style to the IBM Composer, this is an easy-to-use simulator for simple quantum circuits. It doesn’t have the same “fancy” features as Composer or Quirk, but is still a great tool. It is also lacking in the visualization department. It does not do Bloch sphere visualization, for example.

Visualizations

Visualizing Qubits from Bard College

I found the “1 Qubit Pure States” visualization to help understand how a position on the Bloch Sphere corresponds to the probability of a 0 or one outcome. No other visualization has exemplified this more clearly, so I am including this here. I did not find the 3D doughnut visualizations as helpful.

Open Source Tools and APIs

JSQubits Github

Have not played around with it personally, but a nice and simple Quantum simulator in Javascript.

Q.js Github

This is the source for the Quantum Javascript Simulator and GUI.