PRX Quantum, the newest highly selective open access journal published by the American Physical Society (APS), has published its first Tutorial, “Theory of quantum system certification” by Martin Kliesch, University Düsseldorf and Ingo Roth, Freie Universität Berlin. This paper is the first example of the new Tutorial article type published in the Physical Review journals.
PRX Quantum began publishing Tutorials to help the quantum community educate the next generation of quantum scientists. Rather than provide a comprehensive overview of the field, as is typically found in a Review paper, Tutorials are hands-on guides written by experts invited by the editorial leadership of the journal. Tutorials focus on the essential knowledge and relevant references that will allow newcomers to a research field, approach, or methodology efficiently move forward with their work. For example, they should ideally help researchers migrate to a new field, bridge knowledge gaps for interdisciplinary collaborators, and contribute to the education and development of PhD students and postdocs. They focus on explaining well-established milestone concepts, the latest techniques, and developments in the field, providing a flavor of current research.
The Tutorial by Kliesch and Roth presents a potential step-by-step certification path for devices that utilize quantum technology. Due to the high complexity of quantum systems, the standard certification techniques, such as comparing their behavior to classical simulations, are not feasible. The authors provide “a self-contained introduction to the field of quantum system certification, discussing prominent protocols for the certification of quantum states and quantum gate implementations. Such protocols are particularly important in the development of near-term devices.”
With this new article type the Physical Review journals continue to establish new approaches in scientific publishing towards fulfilling the APS mission to serve authors, readers, and the research community as a whole. This Tutorial, like all content in PRX Quantum, is published open access under a CC-BY license.
