Introduction to Quantum Computing - Lecture notes

Lecture note for the lecture "Introduction to Quantum Computing" by Dominique Unruh at RWTH Aachen.

Installation guide

This guide is for VS Code. There may be other extensions for other development environments.

1. Install Quarto

Download and install Quarto from the official website:
https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/

2. Install the VS Code extension

Install the Quarto Extension for Visual Studio Code:
https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/
You can also find it in the Extensions tab by searching for "Quarto".

3. Preview the script

To live-preview the project, use the following command in your terminal:
"quarto preview index.qmd"
This opens the preview directly in the browser, the option "--no-browser" prevents this.

4. Render the script

To render the entire project to .pdf and html use:
"quarto render --to all"
The output will be generated in the _book folder.

5. Add pictures to the lecture notes

Not all LaTeX packages are supported for output as HTML, so graphics and similar elements created with LaTeX must be included via external files. For HTML, the preferred format is SVG and for PDF documents, it is PDF. Both files should be in the same folder and have the same name so that the correct file is used automatically.

Conversion Process

Here's the step-by-step process for the conversion process:

1. Generate a PDF in the terminal using pdflatex:

   "pdflatex example.tex"

2. Generate a SVG in the terminal using dvisvgm:

   "latex example.tex"

   "dvisvgm example.dvi"

Project structure

The main components of the project are:

_quarto.yml

This is the main configuration file for your project. It contains:

• Title, authors, output formats and other metadata
• The structure of the script is under the chapters: section

You can toggle chapter visibility by commenting/uncommenting lines using #. This is useful for revealing content gradually throughout the semester.

index.qmd

This file contains the introduction of the script.
It must be located in the same directory as the quarto.yml file.

content/

This folder contains all the chapters of the script, as individual .qmd files.

content/img/

Subfolder that contains all images and pdf used throughout the script.

content/latex/

Subfolder that contains all tex-files for creating some PDFs and SVGs. Unfortunately, not all latex files are available anymore.

_extensions/

This folder includes any custom Quarto extensions that add functionality or styling to your project.

_book/

This is the output folder generated by Quarto after rendering.
It contains the final script in the formats HTML and PDF.