Investigating Immersive Virtual Reality as an Educational Tool for Quantum Computing

Abstract

Quantum computing (QC) is an intrinsically complex yet exciting discipline with increasing practical relevance. A deep understanding of QC requires the integration of knowledge across numerous technical fields, such as physics, computing and mathematics. This work aims to investigate how immersive Virtual Reality (VR) compares to a desktop environment ('web-applet') as an educational tool to help teach individuals QC fundamentals. We developed two interactive learning tutorials, one utilising the 'Bloch sphere' visualisation to represent a single-qubit system, and the other exploring multi-qubit systems through the lens of 'quantum entanglement'. We evaluate the effectiveness of each medium to teach QC fundamentals in a user study with 24 participants. We find that the Bloch sphere visualisation was well-suited to VR over a desktop environment. Our results also indicate that mathematics literacy is an important factor in facilitating greater learning with this effect being notably more pronounced when using VR. However, VR did not significantly improve learning in a multi-qubit context. Our work provides valuable insights which contribute to the emerging field of Quantum HCI (QHCI) and VR for education. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Virtual reality.

VENUS: A Geometrical Representation for Quantum State Visualization

“…First, it is impossible to use Bloch Sphere to visualize quantum states of more than one qubit [BSR21, Wie14]. Once two qubits are entangled, the visualization approach Bloch Sphere breaks down because the quantum state cannot be condensed into three dimensions in the same form [ZHVG20]. Second, although Bloch Sphere can visualize quantum states, it cannot support an intuitive view of the probability of all basis states.…”