Explaining Grover’s algorithm with a colony of ants: a pedagogical model for making quantum technology comprehensible

Abstract

The rapid growth of quantum technologies requires an increasing number of physicists, computer scientists, and engineers who can work on these technologies. For educating these professionals, quantum mechanics should stop being perceived as incomprehensible. In this paper we contribute to this change by presenting a pedagogical model for explaining Grover’s search algorithm, a prominent quantum algorithm. This model visualizes the three main steps of Grover’s algorithm and, in addition to explaining the algorithm itself, introduces three key principles of quantum mechanics: superposition, interference, and state collapse at measurement. The pedagogical model, visualized by a video, is called the ant colony maze model. It represents the search problems as finding the exit of a maze, and visualizes Grover’s search algorithm as a strategy by which a colony of ants finds that exit.