From the course: Quantum Computing Fundamentals

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Represent qubits as vectors

Represent qubits as vectors

From the course: Quantum Computing Fundamentals

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Represent qubits as vectors

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- It can be difficult to form an intuitive understanding of quantum computing because the tiny world of quantum mechanics works differently than the way we experience the world as humans. And that's why math is an important tool for understanding many of these quantum concepts. We'll be using linear algebra and other abstract models to describe quantum computations throughout this course. So let's take a few minutes to look at how a qubit, which is our fundamental unit of quantum information, can be represented mathematically. A quantum bit has two computational basis states, which we'll call zero and one. These two basis states are mutually exclusive and can be represented by a pair of two dimensional vectors. The zero state is a vector with one as its first element and zero as its second element, and the one state is the opposite of that, with one as the second element, and zero as the first. These two vectors…

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