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Hello everyone and welcome to this class
on Quantum mechanics and quantum

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computation. My name is Umesh Wazirani and
I am a professor at the University of

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California at Berkeley. Here at Berkeley,
we are very excited to be part of this

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revolution in education. Bringing cutting
edge courses to anyone in any part of the

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world. So what is quantum computation?
Quantum computation is a very young field

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which is based on the discovery that
quantum systems can be exponentially

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powerful. I will say a lot more about this
in subsequent videos but in this video I

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want to talk about the format of the
course. The course is offered over eight

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weeks followed by a final exam. The
material will be presented through a

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series of short videos which will be
augmented with inline quizzes to help you

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reenforce your understanding of the
material. There'll be seven problem sets.

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Each worth ten percent of the score. And
the problems that we will have

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mainly multiple choice and questions with
numeric answer which you will turn in. To

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make sure that you can, you understand
your, you know, the material well, we will

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allow you to make multiple attempts at
the, at the problem sets. And after the

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first two attempts you will be penalized
ten percent for every subsequent attempt.

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If you want to understand the material at
greater depth, we'll also include optional

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long questions. Um, these you do not have
to turn in. But, you're welcome to discuss

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these with your fellow students in online
forums which I'll talk about later. The

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final 30 percent of your score will be
based on the final exam, which is, um,

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which you can think of as a particularly
long problem set. Okay, so what's the

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required background for this course? So
this course has been carefully designed to

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make it accessible to students from a
multiple of backgrounds, including

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computer science, physics, chemistry,
mathematics, etcetera. And so we've tried

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to minimize the number of requirements for
this course. So in particular I'll not

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assume any prior knowledge of quantum
mechanics. [sound] But to take this

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course, you will need to have a thorough
understanding of basic linear algebra.

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What I mean by that is, simple concepts
such as vectors and matrices, orthogonal

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basis inner products I values and I
vectors. To help you review your knowledge

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of this material, we, we will, we will
include some sort of supplementary

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material and, and perhaps a video about
this, about this subject. I'll also assume

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very basic knowledge of computer science.
Things such as the big [inaudible] um, or

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some elementary algorithms. But
particularly how you analyze the running

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time of algorithms by counting the number
of steps. There are few other important

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issues we should go through.This class has
an honor code. This is the same kind of

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honor code we have for our in class
students here in Berkeley. So you are

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allowed to discuss the material in this
course, in fact, you are encouraged to

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discuss the material in this course with
your fellow students. You can even

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discuss the problem sets, with your
fellow students, you know to ask

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clarifying questions, etcetera. But the
answers that you turn in, have to be your

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own. In addition, we'll request that you
not uh, distribute online, the problem

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sets or any of the answers uh, that we
post. Uh, this is so that um, in

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subsequent offerings of this course, the
students are allowed to work independently

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on these questions. I'll be posting course
notes um, every week. You should think of

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this as a text book for the class. This
brings us to the question of time

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management. So you should expect to spend
anywhere from five to twelve or more hours per

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week on this course, depending, of course,
on the kind of background you bring to

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this, to this course and also the depth to
which you want to understand the material.

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So the material is going to be formulated
so that you can understand it either at a

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high level or if you want to you can use
this material as a [inaudible] walk to

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understanding. The various aspects of this
material at a greater depth. The course

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notes will help you to do this. As per the
optional problem sets. There is one other

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important point which is that there is an
online discussion forum for this class

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which will allow you to interact with your
fellow students. This is a very important

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part of the class. This will make it
more fun for you but it will also allow

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you to understand the material at a
greater depth. We also encourage to form

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study groups either physically or through
this online forum. Okay so what will you

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learn in this class. So as I mentioned one
of the key aspects of Quantum computation

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is the exponential power of quantum
systems. So in this course you learn, what

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is the source of the spa. And how can you
use this source, how can you exploit this

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power to design quantum algorithms. By the
end of this course you will, you will

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understand several iconic quantum
algorithms, including the quantum

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algorithm for factoring integers
efficiently. You will also learn what are

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the limitations of the power of quantum
mechanics, in order to do all this. You

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have to have an understanding of the
basic, um, of basic quantum mechanics. And

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so another way to view this course is as a
simple and conceptual introduction to the

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basic elements of quantum mechanics. Okay,
so I look forward to see having you in

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this course.