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1. tabtab+(OP)[view] [source] 2020-04-27 15:06:44
What about some kind of interactive simulation, kind of like playing with a graphing calculator? People tend to relate to things better by tinkering and playing with parameters to observe the impact on results. Analog experimentation is how we learned most Newtonian physics.
replies(4): >>mjewke+Q2 >>garris+pn >>aetern+q11 >>ionflo+OSc
2. mjewke+Q2[view] [source] 2020-04-27 15:24:07
>>tabtab+(OP)
Strilanc, who works on the google quantum team, has a simulator here: https://algassert.com/quirk
3. garris+pn[view] [source] 2020-04-27 17:34:47
>>tabtab+(OP)
Several years ago, I gave a presentation on quantum computing to the Los Angeles Hacker News Meetup. The slides are at https://jimgarrison.org/quantumcomputingexplained/ . Unfortunately, there is no video recording so they are currently lacking explanations.

My goal was to explain quantum computing in a way that is mathematically precise but doesn't require one to learn linear algebra first. To do this, I implemented a quantum computer simulator in Javascript that runs in the web browser. Conceptually (in mathematical language), in each simulation I present, I've started by enumerating the computational basis of the Hilbert space (all possible states the qubits could be in) and represented the computational state by putting an arrow beside each of them, which really is a complex number. (This similar to how Feynman explains things in his book QED.) The magnitude of the complex number is the length of the arrow, and its phase is the direction it points (encoded redundantly by its color). I've filled out the amplitude symbol with a square so that at any given point, its probability of a measurement resulting in that outcome is proportional to the area of that square. Essentially, in this language, making a measurement makes the experimenter color blind -- only the relative areas of the amplitudes matter and there is no way to learn directly phase information without doing a different experiment.

I could make a further document explaining along these lines if people are interested. The source is on github too: https://github.com/garrison/jsqis

4. aetern+q11[view] [source] 2020-04-27 21:42:41
>>tabtab+(OP)
IBM has an amazing tool for this. Not only do they have a great simulator, but you can enter a queue to run your program on their real quantum computer:

https://quantum-computing.ibm.com/

replies(1): >>ksnape+MB4
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5. ksnape+MB4[view] [source] [discussion] 2020-04-29 01:25:48
>>aetern+q11
Excellent! Thanks so much for this!
6. ionflo+OSc[view] [source] 2020-05-01 20:12:33
>>tabtab+(OP)
https://quantumjavascript.app/

You might find this useful. Along with the author's write-up:

https://medium.com/@stew_rtsmith/quantum-javascript-d1effb84...

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