Quantum information: A brief overview and some mathematical aspects

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is twofold. First, to give the main ideas behind quantum computing and quantum information, a field based on quantum-mechanical phenomena. Therefore, a short review is devoted to (i) quantum bits or qubits (and more generally qudits), the analogues of the usual bits 0 and 1 of the classical information theory, and to (ii) two characteristics of quantum mechanics, namely, linearity, which manifests itself through the superposition of qubits and the action of unitary operators on qubits, and entanglement of certain multi-qubit states, a resource that is specific to quantum mechanics. A, second, focus is on some mathematical problems related to the so-called mutually unbiased bases used in quantum computing and quantum information processing. In this direction, the construction of mutually unbiased bases is presented via two distinct approaches: one based on the group SU(2) and the other on Galois fields and Galois rings.