I would like to extend my thanks to Håvard and Kjell-Jørgen for taking a chance on me, and to the leadership and administration of Simula UiB for always having my back. Thank you Mari for all of the headaches you’ve resolved, which reaches far beyond just maintaining my caffeine addiction. And a special thank you to Åsfrid for agreeing to join me in this crazy project. These four years would have been very different without you. I would like to thank my supervisor, Martijn, for being as excellent a human being as he is researcher, who always strives to lift those around him to likewise exellence: to the degree that I can be called a researcher today, I owe it all to you. And thank you Carlo for being the perfect ball-tosser, and for the countless bugs, typos, and cognitive faults that you uncovered. Without your many ideas and constant vigilence (and refusal to succumb to my arrogant insistence that I was right when I, in fact, was not), I’m sure I’d still be editing this thesis a year from now. Thank you Mithilesh for igniting my interest in quantum computing, and for showing me how easily (given the right teacher) it can be learned. As anyone who has joined me for a beer in the last four years can attest, this interest has since blossomed into a full-blown passion. And thank you Morten for entertaining this passion over countless hours-long discussions, and Øyvind and Carlos for giving me the opportunity to convey this interest to a wider audience at Arendalsuka 2022. May this only be the start. *Thank you Chimi and Chandra for showing me the beauty inherent to the most prestigious of mathematics, as well as the beauty of your culture, art, and cuisine—and how these seemingly-disjoint pursues are, in fact, beautiful in exactly the same way. And thank you Elizabeth for putting this whole endevour into perspective, in the way only you know how*. Thank you to IMF at NTNU for hosting me in the final legs of this journey, and to Tjerand for making this possible. Finally, thank you to my parents for your constant encouragement and support. I would not have made it to the end without you. ------- *Thank you Chimi and Chandra for showing me the beauty inherent to the most prestigious of mathematics, and the beauty of your culture, art, and cuisine. Through you I learned how these apparently-disjoint pursues are beautiful in exactly the same way, a beauty which you both always strived to embody.*