Galois Fields and Galois Rings Made Easy

This book constitutes an elementary introduction to rings and fields, in particular Galois rings and Galois fields, with regard to their application to the theory of quantum information, a field at the crossroads of quantum physics, discrete mathematics and informatics. The existing literature on rings and fields is primarily mathematical. There are a great number of excellent books on the theory of rings and fields written by and for mathematicians, but these can be difficult for physicists and chemists to access. This book offers an introduction to rings and fields with numerous examples. It contains an application to the construction of mutually unbiased bases of pivotal importance in quantum information. It is intended for graduate and undergraduate students and researchers in physics, mathematical physics and quantum chemistry (especially in the domains of advanced quantum mechanics, quantum optics, quantum information theory, classical and quantum computing, and computer engineering). Although the book is not written for mathematicians, given the large number of examples discussed, it may also be of interest to undergraduate students in mathematics.

1. The Structures of Ring and Field 2. Galois Fields 3. Galois Rings 4. Mutually Unbiased Bases 5. Appendix on Number Theory and Group Theory