(To be updated) This is my term paper for EE547: Quantum Information Processing. The main topic is about Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph (PBR) theorem. In short, the theorem shows that under two classes of assumption (Framework for Ontological Models and Preparation Independence Postulate), the ontological models for quantum theory is $\psi$-ontic, i.e., distinct quantum states represent physical reality, as opposed to the conventional interpretation that quantum states are states of knowledge that only carry parts of information about the reality. ...

TABLE OF CONTENT I. About me II. Study resources: What you should read, watch, and explore at the entrance of quantum computing III. Stories: My sharing about other events, and some anecdotes and thoughts about what I see, feel and experience in my current walk of life. IV. Quantum things 0. A no-science introduction to Quantum Information Introduction to quantum information theory 1.1. Fundamentals of Qubits 1.2 Quantum Measurement 1. ...

Introduction In this NISQ (Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum) era, scientists hold much expectation for three applications of Quantum Computing: Quantum Fourier Transform-based algorithms, Grover-search-based algorithms, and simulations of quantum phenomena (as in Quantum Chemistry). In this series, we want to discuss Shor’s algorithm, the most prominent instance of the first type. Shor’s original work attracted huge attention since it showed a strong evidence that 2048-bit RSA, a widely used cryptographic protocol in the Internet communication, can be broken (Technology is switching to post-quantum cryptography though). ...

Knowing the underpinnings of randomized benchmarking addressed in the last part, we first begin with the standard protocol. Standard RB is used to assess the error rate over gates of Clifford group with an assumption that these gates have the same error rate. After that, another improvement of the technique will be introduced, namely Interleaved Randomized Benchmarking. The upgraded version was proposed not to investigate the Clifford group as a whole, but restricted to one single kind of Clifford gate of our choice. ...

As you can see in the cover figure, quantum computing is just at the onset of its journey. There are tons of work to do before we can move to the next stage of quantum computing, quantum supremacy. Two pivotal constraints to the realization of any useful quantum processor are decoherence and the high error rate of quantum operators, or quantum gates experimentally. It’s been suggested that the probability of error per unitary gate should be less than $10^{-2}$ (better $10^{-4}$) for the outcome to be reliable. ...

I just have had a trip to Hanoi during two middle weeks of this July. A main purpose that drove me to travel to the same place the second time this year was to give a speech at a summer camp for middle students organized by CKP or Creative Kids Project. I delivered a technology-central workshop, through which I hope to ignite my students’ curiosty towards technology and programming particularly. ...