an introduction to variational quantum algorithms.

I recently gave a talk entitled Einführung in variationelle Quantenalgorithmen (Introduction to variational quantum algorithms) within the PlanQK Webinar series. The talk is in German and aimed at an audience without a particular physics background.

The talk starts out with a very basic introduction of classical logic gates, proceeding from bits to qubits and quantum logic gates. After an explanation of “weird” quantum effects and the roadblocks on the way to fault-tolerant quantum computation, I introduce the ideas behind variational quantum algorithms. At the end I do an impromptu demonstration of a very simple variational optimization using PennyLane.