Now published: Building Quantum Computers
Building Quantum Computers: A Practical Introduction by Shayan Majidy, Christopher Wilson, and Raymond Laflamme has been published by Cambridge University Press and will be released in the US on September 30. The authors invited me to write a Foreword for the book, which I was happy to do. The publisher kindly granted permission for me to post the Foreword here on Quantum Frontiers.
The principles of quantum mechanics, which as far as we know govern all natural phenomena, were discovered in 1925. For 99 years we have built on that achievement to reach a comprehensive understanding of much of the physical world, from molecules to materials to elementary particles and much more. No comparably revolutionary advance in fundamental science has occurred since 1925. But a new revolution is in the offing.
Up until now, most of what we have learned about the quantum world has resulted from considering the behavior of individual particles — for example a single electron propagating as a wave through a crystal, unfazed by barriers that seem to stand in its way. Understanding that single-particle physics has enabled us to explore nature in unprecedented ways, and to build information technologies that have profoundly transformed our lives.
