Programming your first quantum circuits
Write circuits in Qiskit and run each one on the IonQ simulator from your browser, from one gate to your first algorithm. Nothing to install.
Every lesson in this course is built on a circuit of a few lines, seven in all. You read it line by line, run it on the IonQ simulator from your browser, and read what comes back. Then you change one thing and run it again.
You need a free Qollab account, a Google or GitHub sign-in that takes a minute, and nothing else. The first lesson has one gate. The fifth runs a search algorithm, and the last measures the noise on four IonQ models and looks at the real machines behind them.
What you'll learn
Seven circuits across six lessons, each a few lines of Qiskit, each run from the Code Playground on an IonQ noise-model simulator, a simulator carrying the error profile of one of IonQ's machines. You start with one qubit and one gate; by the end you have run a two-qubit search algorithm and measured the noise on four IonQ models. Every listing is a public project you can open, run and change.
- How a circuit is built: qubits, gates as method calls, measurement, shots
- How to read a counts histogram, and why 1,000 shots almost never split exactly in half
- What the CNOT does, what a Bell pair is, and how Qiskit orders the bits
- How rotation gates set a probability, and why a phase alone is invisible
- How interference concentrates probability, and how Grover uses it
- What a noise model is, what a real quantum computer changes, and how to publish your circuit
Course contents
- 01Your first circuitOne qubit, one gate, one measurement: build a circuit, run it on the IonQ simulator from your browser, and read the tally that comes back.
- 02Put a qubit in superpositionThe Hadamard gate, and why 1,000 shots almost never split exactly 500/500.
- 03Two qubits and the Bell pairThe CNOT gate as a controlled flip, then the Bell pair, and how to read a two-bit string in Qiskit.
- 04Rotate a qubit by any angleRY and RZ: a gate can be partial, the Bloch sphere is its picture, and a phase alone is invisible.
- 05Interference and your first algorithmMake a hidden phase visible, then run a two-qubit Grover search.
- 06Noise, and the real machineThe same Bell pair on four IonQ noise models, what a real quantum computer changes, and how to give your circuit a public home.
Stay in the loop.
Get the latest tutorials, demos, and project showcases straight to your inbox. No noise, just the good stuff.