Introduction

Abstract

We introduce basic ideas and contexts of quantum computation. The idea of the quantum computation is based on quantum mechanics which is a set of ideas that greatly differs from our daily-life intuitions. To encode information in quantum computation, there are two main approaches: discrete-variable (qubit) approach and continuous-variable (mode) approach. In this book, we will be focusing on continuous-variable quantum computation which uses wave functions to encode the information. For an actual physical system, we describe optical system. We give a brief comparison between optical classical computer and optical quantum computer.