# Good books to get a grasp of Quantum Computing? (+ preliminaries)

What are good upper undergraduate/graduate level books on this matter? What are the preliminaries before you can go for an introduction to quantum computing?

If there is a book like Sipser, that would be perfect! (but I doubt its existence)

This paper by Fortnow was pretty good but after a few pages I was lost because of my limited knowledge on complexity theory.

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The book by Nielsen-Chuang is, I believe, one of the standards. I have not gotten very far into it, but the preqrequisites (in both physics and CS) seem to be quite minimal. –  Akhil Mathew Jun 18 '11 at 23:32
I remember reading Hirvensalo's Quantum Computing when I was in high school and not finding it impenetrable, so that may be a good sign. Unfortunately, it's been about 4 years since then, so I may be misremembering. –  Zhen Lin Jun 19 '11 at 15:49
Thanks for all the references! I am currently taking a look at Quantum Computing and will probably switch to Nielsen-Chuang soon. The other ones don't happen to lay in my university library :) –  user12205 Jun 25 '11 at 19:52
@AkhilMathew:What about John preskills notes that are available online? They see great. theory.caltech.edu/~preskill/ph229/#lecture –  ramanujan_dirac Nov 17 '12 at 11:39
Sorry for the typo: *seem –  ramanujan_dirac Nov 17 '12 at 16:17

Does Sipser, perchance, have any references or a bibliography of suggested reading in his Theory of Computation text? There are a few texts listed on complexity; lots of articles.

I did come across an article by Sipser and colleagues on Arxiv:Quantum Computation by Adiabatic Evolution on arxiv.org: perhaps there are some survey articles in the references listed? Such a survey article will likely suggest a good text to start with.

This article on Arxiv came up in a search for "survey article..." @ http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.3401: Quantum Computational Complexity, by John Watrous. It could be a good start, and perhaps suggest other relevant, introductory/preliminary readings.

Sipser has an entry in Wikipedia: Sipser; it lists his research area, publications, and contact information, etc. Since you seem to like Sipser's approach, perhaps contacting him directly at MIT with your question will yield a helpful response?

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful at the moment. Akhil seems to have added a suggestion in a comment. I'll return later if I have time to expand on this.

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Nice Amy. Hello! –  B. S. Jul 8 '13 at 16:50
Hello, @Babak! $\ddot \smile$ –  amWhy Jul 8 '13 at 16:51

Quantum computation and quantum information by Nielsen and Chuang is a very good reference.

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