My Directed Research Project – Quantum Search
In the fall semester of 2015, I chose to take a directed research course as one of my computer science electives. I was interested in quantum computing thanks to an intro course I took in the winter of that year, so I asked Professor Shohini Ghose, who taught that course, to supervise my research project.
After some exploration and thinking, Dr. Ghose proposed doing research jointly supervised by Ilias Kotsireas into the direct application of quantum algorithms for a class of more general problems. Professor Kotsireas introduced me to his research in combinatorial designs, and we finally decided that my research could be about how one could use quantum search algorithms to find D-optimal sequences.
I’m making my research report public here for anyone who is interested. I try to give a good background in quantum computing, and introduce the minimal amount of background needed to understand the D-optimal sequence problem. I describe how we use Grover’s Search, a famous quantum algorithm, to the specific D-optimal problem.