Preface

Ever since IBM released their first commercially available quantum system for free on the cloud back in 2016, many researchers, developers, faculty, students, and quantum enthusiasts have been running their experiments on real quantum computers. Since then, many in both academia and industry have been investing time and personnel to investigate the potential that quantum computing has in store. The first step in this quantum journey is education, which I assume is why you purchased this book. In this book, you will learn the basic principles of quantum computing and how to leverage those principles to create quantum algorithms and run them on IBM’s powerful quantum computers.

This book provides you with a step-by-step introduction to quantum computing using the IBM Quantum platform. You will learn how to build quantum programs on your own so you can discover early use cases in your industry or domain and get equipped with quantum computing skills.

You will start working with simple programs that illustrate how these quantum computing principles differ from classical computing and slowly work your way up to more complex programs and algorithms that leverage advanced quantum computing algorithms.

The quantum computing principles we will explore are superposition, entanglement, and interference, then you’ll become familiar on how these are used to create quantum circuits, which you can then run on IBM Quantum systems.

Then, you’ll learn about the quantum gates and how they operate on qubits and discover the Quantum Information Science Kit (QISKIT, depending on who you ask, is pronounced KISS-kit) and its circuit libraries and advanced features to help you build quantum algorithms.

You’ll then get to grips with quantum algorithms such as Deutsch-Jozsa, Simon, Grover, and Shor’s algorithms, while visualizing how to create a quantum circuit and run the algorithm on any of the quantum computers hosted on the IBM Quantum platform.

Later, you’ll explore the basics on how your circuit is run on the quantum hardware by learning about the Qiskit Runtime, which has many functionalities to help optimize your quantum circuits.

By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to build quantum programs on your own and will have gained practical quantum computing skills that you can apply to your industry or domain.