Modulation by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Modulation basically means encoding data on a carrier wave.
Image that we are at a point in history where spark-gap transmitters can send Morse code.
But now people want to send voice. How to do it?
It would not be practical without modulation: Why can't you send voice without modulation?
QuTech Academy by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
One of their learning sites: www.qutube.nl/
The educational/outreach branch of QuTech.
As of 2022, this tends to be the more "default" when you talk about a quantum computer.
But there are some serious analog quantum computer contestants in the field as well.
One direct practical reason is that we need to map the matrix to real quantum hardware somehow, and all quantum hardware designs so far and likely in the future are gate-based: you manipulate a small number of qubits at a time (2) and add more and more of such operations.
While there are "quantum compilers" to increase the portability of quantum programs, it is to be expected that programs manually crafted for a specific hardware will be more efficient just like in classic computers.
TODO: is there any clear reason why computers can't beat humans in approximating any unitary matrix with a gate set?
This is analogous to what classic circuit programmers will do, by using smaller logic gates to create complex circuits, rather than directly creating one huge truth table.
The most commonly considered quantum gates take 1, 2, or 3 qubits as input.
The gates themselves are just unitary matrices that operate on the input qubits and produce the same number of output qubits.
For example, the matrix for the CNOT gate, which takes 2 qubits as input is:
1 0 0 0
0 1 0 0
0 0 0 1
0 0 1 0
The final question is then: if I have a 2 qubit gate but an input with more qubits, say 3 qubits, then what does the 2 qubit gate (4x4 matrix) do for the final big 3 qubit matrix (8x8)? In order words, how do we scale quantum gates up to match the total number of qubits?
The intuitive answer is simple: we "just" extend the small matrix with a larger identity matrix so that the sum of the probabilities third bit is unaffected.
More precisely, we likely have to extend the matrix in a way such that the partial measurement of the original small gate qubits leaves all other qubits unaffected.
For example, if the circuit were made up of a CNOT gate operating on the first and second qubits as in:
0 ----+----- 0
      |
1 ---CNOT--- 1

2 ---------- 2
then we would just extend the 2x2 CNOT gate to:
TODO lazy to properly learn right now. Apparently you have to use the Kronecker product by the identity matrix. Also, zX-calculus appears to provide a powerful alternative method in some/all cases.
Video 1.
TensorFlow quantum by Masoud Mohseni (2020)
Source. At the timestamp, Masoud gives a thought experiment example of the perhaps simplest to understand analog quantum computer: chained double-slit experiments with carefully calculated distances between slits. Calulating the final propability distribution of that grows exponentially.
Non-linearity is needed otherwise the input energy would just make the state go to higher and higher energy levels, e.g. from 1 to 2. But we only want to use levels 0 and 1.
The way this is modelled in by starting from a pure LC circuit, which is an harmonic oscillator, see also quantum LC circuit, and then replacing the linear inductor with a SQUID device, e.g. mentioned at: youtu.be/eZJjQGu85Ps?t=1655 Video "Superconducting Qubits I Part 1 by Zlatko Minev (2020)".
Alpha decay by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Most of the helium in the Earth's atmosphere comes from alpha decay, since helium is lighter than air and naturally escapes out out of the atmosphere.
Wiki mentions that alpha decay is well modelled as a quantum tunnelling event, see also Geiger-Nuttall law.
As a result of that law, alpha particles have relatively little energy variation around 5 MeV or a speed of about 5% of the speed of light for any element, because the energy is inversely exponentially proportional to half-life. This is because:
  • if the energy is much larger, decay is very fast and we don't have time to study the isotope
  • if the energy is much smaller, decay is very rare and we don't have enough events to observe at all

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
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    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact