1.1.1 What is a Qubit#

Prompts

What distinguishes quantum physics from classical physics in the way it describes physical systems? How does quantum mechanics represent states and predict outcomes?
What is a qubit, and why is it the simplest quantum system? How does it illustrate the core ideas of quantum mechanics?
How do classical bits and qubits differ in terms of what information they can hold and how we learn about that information through measurement?
Why can the same quantum system (like an electron’s spin) be realized in many different physical platforms, yet all obey identical mathematical rules?

Lecture Notes#

Overview#

Quantum mechanics is famously abstract. Unlike gravity or fluid flow, you cannot build intuition from everyday experience—no one has ever “seen” a superposition or “felt” an entangled state. The quantum world operates on scales and principles so far from daily life that we cannot simply model it by analogy. Instead, we must rely on mathematical structures and learn what nature does from observation data.

This is not as alien as it sounds. Modern machine learning has shown us a powerful paradigm: everything is a vector. Images, words, proteins, music—all are embedded as vectors in high-dimensional spaces, and all transformations (classification, generation, translation) are operators acting on those vectors. Quantum mechanics arrived at the same insight a century earlier: every physical state is a vector, and every physical process—measurement, time evolution, symmetry—is an operator.

What is Physics? Description and Prediction#

Two Pillars of Physics

Physics rests on two fundamental objectives:

Description: How do we represent the state of a physical system?
Prediction: Given a state, how do we predict the outcome of an experiment?

For a classical system (a ball rolling down a ramp), we describe the state by specifying position and velocity. We predict the future using Newton’s laws.

For a quantum system, the description and prediction mechanisms are radically different.

Quantum mechanics answers:

Aspect	Classical	Quantum
Description	Definite values: \(x\), \(v\), \(E\)	Abstract vector in Hilbert space: \(\vert \psi\rangle\)
Prediction	Equations of motion (Newton, Lagrange)	Operators acting on vectors; time evolution (Schrödinger)
Role of measurement	Non-invasive: observe without disturbing	Invasive: measurement collapses state and changes outcome
Information	Deterministic: same initial state → same outcome	Probabilistic: same state → distribution of outcomes

The Qubit: Mathematical Definition#

Qubit Definition

A qubit is a quantum system that lives in a two-dimensional Hilbert space over the complex numbers. Any pure state is a unit vector (a “ket”):

where \(\vert 0\rangle\) and \(\vert 1\rangle\) are orthonormal basis states, and \(\alpha, \beta \in \mathbb{C}\).

Key properties:

Basis states \(\vert 0\rangle\) and \(\vert 1\rangle\) are orthonormal: \(\langle 0\vert 1\rangle = 0\), \(\langle 0\vert 0\rangle = 1\).
Superposition: Unlike a classical bit (which is 0 or 1), a qubit can be in a superposition of both. The coefficients \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\) describe the quantum state.
Normalization: The condition \(|\alpha|^2 + |\beta|^2 = 1\) ensures the state is normalized. We interpret \(|\alpha|^2\) as the probability of measuring the qubit in state \(\vert 0\rangle\).
Global phase: States that differ by a global phase (e.g., \(\vert \psi\rangle\) and \(\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\phi}\vert \psi\rangle\)) are physically identical. Thus a qubit is truly a two-parameter system (after factoring out global phase and normalization).

Physical Realizations of Qubits#

A qubit is not merely a mathematical abstraction. Many physical systems naturally obey the two-state model:

Platform	\(\vert 0\rangle\)	\(\vert 1\rangle\)	\(\vert 0\rangle\)–\(\vert 1\rangle\) splitting	Gates via
Electron spin	\(\vert \downarrow\rangle\)	\(\vert \uparrow\rangle\)	\(\mu_B B \sim 0.1\) meV (at \(\sim\)1 T)	RF/microwave pulses
Photon polarization	horizontal \(\vert H\rangle\)	vertical \(\vert V\rangle\)	0 (degenerate)	Waveplates (passive optics)
Trapped ion	hyperfine ground \(\vert g\rangle\)	excited \(\vert e\rangle\)	\(\sim\mu\)eV (GHz hyperfine)	Laser pulses
Superconducting circuit	transmon ground	first excited	\(\sim\mu\)eV (\(\sim\)5 GHz)	Microwave pulses
Nuclear spin	\(m_I = -1/2\)	\(m_I = +1/2\)	\(\mu_N B \sim\) neV (at \(\sim\)1 T)	RF pulses (NMR)

Why the same mathematics everywhere: All two-level quantum systems obey the same Schrödinger equation with a \(2 \times 2\) Hamiltonian. The specific physics differs (magnetic fields, photonic transitions, circuit dynamics), but the abstract qubit rules are universal.

Discussion

Why do physicists care about two-level systems when nature has many more states?

A realistic electron has both orbital angular momentum and spin, giving many possible energy levels. A real atom has infinitely many states (different orbitals). Why restrict attention to qubits?

In many experimental conditions (low temperature, weak fields, far from resonance with other transitions), only the two lowest energy levels are significantly populated. The two-level approximation is valid when \(k_B T \ll \Delta E\) and the driving field frequency is resonant with only one transition.
The qubit is the minimal quantum system that exhibits superposition, entanglement, measurement, and unitary evolution. All quantum computation can (in principle) be built from qubits.
Show that if you restrict a three-level system to only two of its three states, you lose nothing: any unitary transformation on the two-level subspace can be applied without mixing in the third state (under what conditions is this true?).

Classical Bit vs. Quantum Qubit#

Property	Classical Bit	Quantum Qubit
Values	0 or 1	\(\alpha\vert 0\rangle + \beta\vert 1\rangle\) (superposition)
State space	2 possible values	Infinitely many (Bloch sphere: \(\mathbb{CP}^1\))
Measurement	Non-invasive; outcome pre-exists	Invasive; outcome is random, state collapses
Repeatability	Measuring the same bit twice gives the same result	Measuring the same qubit twice gives the same result, but the first measurement destroys the superposition
Copying	Trivial: copy the bit	Impossible: no-cloning theorem forbids copying an unknown quantum state
Information capacity	1 bit of classical information	\(\leq 1\) bit of classical information per measurement, but encodes continuous parameters

Summary#

Physics is about description and prediction: Quantum mechanics describes systems as vectors in Hilbert space and predicts outcomes using operators and the Born rule.
A qubit is the simplest quantum system: It lives in a two-dimensional complex vector space and can exist in a superposition of basis states \(\vert 0\rangle\) and \(\vert 1\rangle\).
Qubits are physically universal: Electron spins, photon polarizations, trapped atoms, superconducting circuits, and many other platforms all function as qubits—the mathematics is identical even though the physics varies.
Measurement is invasive in quantum mechanics: Unlike classical measurement, measuring a qubit collapses its superposition and changes the state for future measurements.
Qubits form the foundation of quantum information: All quantum computation and quantum information processing is built from qubits and quantum gates operating on them.

Homework#

1. A qubit is in state \(\vert\psi\rangle = \tfrac{3}{5}\vert 0\rangle + \tfrac{4}{5}\vert 1\rangle\). (a) Use Born’s rule to find \(P(0)\) and \(P(1)\). (b) Verify that \(P(0) + P(1) = 1\). (c) Now consider \(\vert\phi\rangle = \tfrac{3}{5}\vert 0\rangle - \tfrac{4}{5}\vert 1\rangle\). Are \(\vert\psi\rangle\) and \(\vert\phi\rangle\) distinguishable by a measurement in the \(\{\vert 0\rangle, \vert 1\rangle\}\) basis? What physical property do they share?

2. A normalized qubit state has the form \(\vert\psi\rangle = A\vert 0\rangle + \tfrac{1+\mathrm{i}}{2}\vert 1\rangle\), where \(A > 0\) is a real constant. Find \(A\) from the normalization condition \(\langle\psi\vert\psi\rangle = 1\). What is the probability \(P(1)\) of measuring outcome \(1\)?

3. Show that two states differing by a global phase, \(\vert\psi'\rangle = \mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\gamma}\vert\psi\rangle\) (with \(\gamma \in \mathbb{R}\)), give identical measurement probabilities for every outcome \(\vert m\rangle\): show \(\vert\langle m\vert\psi'\rangle\vert^2 = \vert\langle m\vert\psi\rangle\vert^2\). Conclude that global phase carries no observable information.

4. A generic qubit state \(\vert\psi\rangle = \alpha\vert 0\rangle + \beta\vert 1\rangle\) naively requires 4 real parameters (Re\(\,\alpha\), Im\(\,\alpha\), Re\(\,\beta\), Im\(\,\beta\)). Show that after imposing (a) normalization \(\vert\alpha\vert^2 + \vert\beta\vert^2 = 1\) and (b) global phase freedom, only 2 real parameters remain. How does this explain why the space of qubit states maps to a 2-dimensional sphere?

5. A qubit state \(\vert\psi\rangle = \alpha\vert 0\rangle + \beta\vert 1\rangle\) is specified by two continuous real parameters — seemingly more information than a single classical bit (0 or 1). Does a qubit therefore store more information than a classical bit? Address the following: (a) How much classical information is extracted by a single measurement of the qubit? (b) Can repeated measurements on identical copies extract more? (c) What role does quantum superposition play beyond simply encoding continuous parameters?

6. List three distinct physical platforms that implement qubits. For each: (a) identify the physical degree of freedom that plays the role of \(\vert 0\rangle\) and \(\vert 1\rangle\), (b) state the approximate energy gap \(\Delta E\) between the two levels, and (c) name the type of external field or pulse used to perform quantum gates.

7. A photon qubit uses polarization (\(\vert 0\rangle = \) horizontal, \(\vert 1\rangle = \) vertical). At room temperature (\(T = 300\) K), thermal energy is \(k_BT \approx 26\) meV. A visible photon at \(\lambda = 800\) nm has energy \(E = hc/\lambda\) (use \(hc = 1240\) eV\(\cdot\)nm). (a) Compute \(E\) in eV. (b) Is the photon qubit susceptible to thermal noise at room temperature? Why or why not? (c) A superconducting transmon qubit at \(5\) GHz has energy gap \(\hbar\omega \approx 0.021\) meV. At what temperature \(T^*\) does \(k_BT^* = \hbar\omega\)? Explain why transmon qubits must be cooled to temperatures far below \(T^*\).