Quick sort is an internal sorting technique that uses the divide and conquer approach. It works by picking a pivot element and partitioning the array so that elements less than the pivot are moved left and greater elements right. The pivot is placed in its correct position, then quick sort is recursively applied to the left and right subarrays. It has a best case of O(n log n) and average case of O(n log n), but worst case of O(n^2).