QBism.org

One of the interesting aspects of quantum information science is that it is often possible to get started calculating things, and maybe even discovering new things, without as much advanced mathematical background as other branches of physics. Competence in, and comfort with, linear algebra is a big part of what’s needed. A little coding experience helps, too. Or, alternatively, wanting to learn about quantum information can be a great motivator for mastering linear algebra and developing one’s coding skills.

To that end, we’ve put together an introductory essay on getting started with the kinds of calculations that we do in our research group. After the opening section, it presumes the reader has encountered matrices a few times before. The code needed to do all the calculations we describe and make all the plots in the document is included. While specialized Python libraries for doing quantum-information oriented tasks do exist, we elected not to use them, partly because that seemed like overkill and partly because experience with the more basic libraries for numerical computation and plotting is important to build first.

• PDF tutorial (includes source code)