Title:  Basis-Oriented Quantum Programming

Date: Monday, November 17th, 2025

Time: 1:30 - 3:00 PM EST

Location: Klaus 2100

Virtual Link: Zoom (https://gatech.zoom.us/j/96078355037?pwd=q61FYgFNIhML6DezeaEot4HXaWPJHy.1)

Austin J. Adams

Ph.D. Student

School of Computer Science

College of Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Committee:

Dr. Thomas M. Conte (Co-advisor) – School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Jeffrey S. Young (Co-advisor) – Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Travis S. Humble – Quantum Science Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Dr. Santosh Pande – School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Rodrigo Borela – School of Computing Instruction, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Vivek Sarkar – School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Kenneth R. Brown – Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University

Abstract:

Quantum computers have leaped from the theoretical realm into a race to large-scale implementations. This is due to the promise of revolutionary speedups, where achieving such speedup requires designing an algorithm that harnesses the structure of a problem using quantum mechanics. Yet many quantum programming languages today require programmers to reason at a low level of physics notation and quantum gate circuitry. This presents a significant barrier to entry for programmers who have not yet built up an intuition about quantum gate semantics, and it can prove to be tedious even for those who have. This thesis presents Qwerty, a new quantum programming language that allows programmers to manipulate qubits more expressively than gates and trace programs without bra–ket notation. Due to its sound type system and efficient compiler, Qwerty is a powerful framework for high-level quantum–classical computation.