Evolving Quantum Algorithms with Genetic Programming

In this thesis we present a genetic programming scheme for evolving quantum programs in the form of arbitrary unitary operators. Expanding on the work done by Hutsell and Greenwood, and later by Krawec in developing unitary operator evolution schemes, we present an alternative representation for unitary operators which has a better search topology than the representations used in these previous implementations. This alternative representation is tested on a general unitary evolution problem, and displays better convergence than previously implemented representations.