Introduction to Quantum Information Science

by Vlatko Vedral

This book offers a concise and up-to-date introduction to the popular field of quantum information. It has originated in a series of invited lecture courses at various universities in different countries. This is reflected in its informal style of exposition and presentation of key results in the subject. In addition to treating quantum communication, entanglement and algorithms in great depth, this book also addresses a number of interesting miscellaneous topics, such as Maxwell's demon, Landauer's erasure, the Bekenstein bound, and Caratheodory's treatment of the Second Law of thermodyanmics. All mathematical derivations are based on clear physical pictures which make even the most involved results - such as the Holevo bound - look comprehensible and transparent. The book is ideal as a first introduction to the subject, but may also appeal to the specialist due to its unique presentation.

Genres: Physics, Quantum Mechanics

183 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 2006

About the author

Vlatko Vedral is a Serbian born (and naturalised British Citizen) Physicist and Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore and a Fellow of Wolfson College. He is known for his research on the theory of Entanglement and Quantum Information Theory. As of 2010 he has published over 150 research papers in quantum mechanics and quantum information and was awarded the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2007. He has held a Professorship at Leeds, visiting professorships in Vienna and Singapore (NUS) and at Perimeter Institute in Canada. As of 2010, there were over 7,500 citations to Vlatko Vedral's research papers. He is the author of several books, including Decoding Reality.

Reviews

[Jose Brox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dropped after reading the first 3 chapters. The book has an interesting organization and goes beyond the standard exposition, but it has awful explanations: the author doesn't make proper definitions nor proofs (although I think he believes he does). His development of the subjects looks more like a brief summary of concepts for people who already know them than like a proper introduction, with the already mentioned problem of bad exposition (I know these subjects, but I don't think I could have correctly learnt them from this). Add plenty of whimsical, preposterous and arrogant claims in footnotes (which show the author is not strong on epistemology either, clearly related to the fact that he doesn't care about proper definitions), and typos in many mathematical developments. Better to avoid this book and read another one on the same subject.

[Brendan]

He keeps using the word ' resource ' when he means ' concept '