CMSC 437 Introduction to Quantum Software Laboratory, Spring 2026 : Syllabus

Weekly Format

Each week includes two 50-minute lectures and one 100-minute lab session. The first lecture covers background and references for the week's lab. The second lecture explains the lab (prepared as Jupyter notebooks) and the tasks to complete. The 100-minute lab session is for completing the lab and receiving instructor/TAs assistance.

Labs are due weekly on Gradescope. A limited number of submission attempts is allowed—check the lab instructions for details.

Weekly Schedule (tentative and subject to change)

• Week 1 (Jan 26–Jan 30): Lab topic: Cancelled due to the winter storm

• Week 2 (Feb 2–Feb 6): Lab topic: Logistics development; basic setup

• Week 3 (Feb 9–Feb 13): Lab topic: Super-dense coding; entanglement swap

• Week 4 (Feb 16–Feb 20): Lab topic: Teleportation

• Week 5 (Feb 23–Feb 27): Lab topic: Basic Quantum algorithms with Oracles

• Week 6 (Mar 2–Mar 6): Lab topic: Grover's algorithm

• Week 7 (Mar 9–Mar 13): Lab topic: Bell inequality. Submit your project idea by March 13, 2026

• Week 8 (Mar 16–Mar 20): Spring Break

• Week 9 (Mar 23–Mar 27): Lab topic: Bell inequality; noise — zero-noise extrapolation (ZNE)

• Week 10 (Mar 30–Apr 3): Lab topic: State tomography

• Week 11 (Apr 6–Apr 10): Lab topic: T1/T2 characterization

• Week 12 (Apr 13–Apr 17): Lab topic: Randomized benchmarking

• Week 13 (Apr 20–Apr 24): Lab topic: Quantum error suppression. Submit your own lab for feedback by April 24, 2026

• Week 14 (Apr 27–May 1): Lab topic: Analog simulation

• Week 15 (May 4–May 8): Course Project: Your own lab demos