Modular commutator in gapped quantum many-body systems - Isaac H. Kim; Bowen Shi; Kohtaro Kato; Victor V. Albert (Physical Review B, 2022)
In arXiv:2110.06932, we argued that the chiral central charge -- a topologically protected quantity characterizing the edge theory of a gapped (2+1)-dimensional system -- can be extracted from the bulk by using an order parameter called the modular commutator. In this paper, we reveal general properties of the modular commutator and strengthen its relationship with the chiral central charge. First, we identify connections between the modular commutator and conditional mutual information, time reversal, and modular flow. Second, we prove, within the framework of the entanglement bootstrap program, that two topologically ordered media connected by a gapped domain wall must have the same modular commutator in their respective bulk. Third, we numerically calculate the value of the modular commutator for a bosonic lattice Laughlin state for finite sizes and extrapolate to the infinite-volume limit. The result of this extrapolation is consistent with the proposed formula up to an error of about 0.7%.

Monitoring-induced Entanglement Entropy and Sampling Complexity - Van Regemortel, Mathias; Shtanko, Oles; García-Pintos, Luis Pedro; Deshpande, Abhinav; Dehghani, Hossein; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Hafezi, Mohammad (2022)
The dynamics of open quantum systems is generally described by a master equation, which describes the loss of information into the environment. By using a simple model of uncoupled emitters, we illustrate how the recovery of this information depends on the monitoring scheme applied to register the decay clicks. The dissipative dynamics, in this case, is described by pure-state stochastic trajectories and we examine different unravelings of the same master equation. More precisely, we demonstrate how registering the sequence of clicks from spontaneously emitted photons through a linear optical interferometer induces entanglement in the trajectory states. Since this model consists of an array of single-photon emitters, we show a direct equivalence with Fock-state boson sampling and link the hardness of sampling the outcomes of the quantum jumps with the scaling of trajectory entanglement.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Multi-Angle QAOA Does Not Always Need All Its Angles - Shi, Kaiyan; Herrman, Rebekah; Shaydulin, Ruslan; Chakrabarti, Shouvanik; Pistoia, Marco; Larson, Jeffrey (2022)
Introducing additional tunable parameters to quantum circuits is a powerful way of improving performance without increasing hardware requirements. A recently introduced multi-angle extension of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (ma-QAOA) significantly improves the solution from QAOA by allowing the parameters for each term in the Hamiltonian to vary independently. However, prior results suggest that there is considerable redundancy in parameters, the removal of which would reduce the cost of parameter optimization. In this work, we show numerically that problem symmetries can be used to reduce the number of parameters used by ma-QAOA without decreasing the solution quality. We study MaxCut on all 7,565 connected, non-isomorphic 8-node graphs with a non-trivial symmetry group and show numerically that in 67.4% of these graphs, symmetry can be used to reduce the number of parameters with no decrease in the objective, with the average ratio of parameters reduced by 28.1%. Moreover, we show that in 35.9% of the graphs this can be achieved by simply using the largest symmetry. For the graphs where reducing the number of parameters leads to a decrease in the objective, the largest symmetry can be used to reduce the parameter count by 37.1% at the cost of only a 6.1% decrease in the objective.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

N-body interactions between trapped ion qubits via spin-dependent squeezing - Or Katz; Marko Cetina; Christopher Monroe (Physical Review Letters, 2022)
We describe a simple protocol for the single-step generation of N-body entangling interactions between trapped atomic ion qubits. We show that qubit state-dependent squeezing operations and displacement forces on the collective atomic motion can generate full N-body interactions. Similar to the Mølmer-Sørensen two-body Ising interaction at the core of most trapped ion quantum computers and simulators, the proposed operation is relatively insensitive to the state of motion. We show how this N-body gate operation allows the single-step implementation of a family of N-bit gate operations such as the powerful N-Toffoli gate, which flips a single qubit if and only if all other N-1 qubits are in a particular state.

Negative Quasiprobabilities Enhance Phase Estimation in Quantum-Optics Experiment - Lupu-Gladstein, Noah; Yilmaz, Y. Batuhan; Arvidsson-Shukur, David R. M.; Brodutch, Aharon; Pang, Arthur O. T.; Steinberg, Aephraim M.; Nicole Yunger Halpern (Phys. Rev. Lett., 2022)
Operator noncommutation, a hallmark of quantum theory, limits measurement precision, according to uncertainty principles. Wielded correctly, though, noncommutation can boost precision. A recent foundational result relates a metrological advantage with negative quasiprobabilities—quantum extensions of probabilities—engendered by noncommuting operators. We crystallize the relationship in an equation that we prove theoretically and observe experimentally. Our proof-of-principle optical experiment features a filtering technique that we term partially postselected amplification (PPA). Using PPA, we measure a wave plate’s birefringent phase. PPA amplifies, by over two orders of magnitude, the information obtained about the phase per detected photon. In principle, PPA can boost the information obtained from the average filtered photon by an arbitrarily large factor. The filter’s amplification of systematic errors, we find, bounds the theoretically unlimited advantage in practice. PPA can facilitate any phase measurement and mitigates challenges that scale with trial number, such as proportional noise and detector saturation. By quantifying PPA’s metrological advantage with quasiprobabilities, we reveal deep connections between quantum foundations and precision measurement.

NISQ algorithm for the matrix elements of a generic observable - Rebecca Erbanni; Kishor Bharti; Leong-Chuan Kwek; Dario Poletti (2022)
The calculation of off-diagonal matrix elements has various applications in fields such as nuclear physics and quantum chemistry. In this paper, we present a noisy intermediate scale quantum algorithm for estimating the diagonal and off-diagonal matrix elements of a generic observable in the energy eigenbasis of a given Hamiltonian. Several numerical simulations indicate that this approach can find many of the matrix elements even when the trial functions are randomly initialized across a wide range of parameter values without, at the same time, the need to prepare the energy eigenstates.

Operator Scaling Dimensions and Multifractality at Measurement-Induced Transitions - Aidan Zabalo; Michael Gullans; Justin H. Wilson; Romain Vasseur; Andreas W. W. Ludwig; Sarang Gopalakrishnan; David A. Huse; J. H. Pixley (Physical Review Letters, 2022)
Repeated local measurements of quantum many body systems can induce a phase transition in their entanglement structure. These measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs) have been studied for various types of dynamics, yet most cases yield quantitatively similar values of the critical exponents, making it unclear if there is only one underlying universality class. Here, we directly probe the properties of the conformal field theories governing these MIPTs using a numerical transfer-matrix method, which allows us to extract the effective central charge, as well as the first few low-lying scaling dimensions of operators at these critical points. Our results provide convincing evidence that the generic and Clifford MIPTs for qubits lie in different universality classes and that both are distinct from the percolation transition for qudits in the limit of large onsite Hilbert space dimension. For the generic case, we find strong evidence of multifractal scaling of correlation functions at the critical point, reflected in a continuous spectrum of scaling dimensions.

Opportunities and Challenges in Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation - Daniel Gottesman (2022)
I will give an overview of what I see as some of the most important future directions in the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation. In particular, I will give a brief summary of the major problems that need to be solved in fault tolerance based on low-density parity check codes and in hardware-specific fault tolerance. I will then conclude with a discussion of a possible new paradigm for designing fault-tolerant protocols based on a space-time picture of quantum circuits.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Optical conductivity and orbital magnetization of Floquet vortex states - Ahmadabadi, Iman; Dehghani, Hossein; Hafezi, Mohammad (2022)
Motivated by recent experimental demonstrations of Floquet topological insulators, there have been several theoretical proposals for using structured light, either spatial or spectral, to create other properties such as flat band and vortex states. In particular, the generation of vortex states in a massive Dirac fermion insulator irradiated by light carrying nonzero orbital angular momentum (OAM) has been proposed [Kim et al. Phys. Rev. B 105, L081301(2022)]. Here, we evaluate the orbital magnetization and optical conductivity as physical observables for such a system. We show that the OAM of light induces nonzero orbital magnetization and current density. The orbital magnetization density increases linearly as a function of OAM degree. In certain regimes, we find that orbital magnetization density is independent of the system size, width, and Rabi frequency of light. It is shown that the orbital magnetization arising from our Floquet theory is large and can be probed by magnetometry measurements. Furthermore, we study the optical conductivity for various types of electron transitions between different states such as vortex, edge, and bulk that are present in the system. Based on conductance frequency peaks, a scheme for the detection of vortex states is proposed.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall); Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other)

Optimal scaling quantum linear systems solver via discrete adiabatic theorem - Costa, Pedro C. S.; Dong An; Sanders, Yuval R.; Su, Yuan; Babbush, Ryan; Berry, Dominic W. (PRX Quantum, 2022)
Recently, several approaches to solving linear systems on a quantum computer have been formulated in terms of the quantum adiabatic theorem for a continuously varying Hamiltonian. Such approaches enabled near-linear scaling in the condition number κ of the linear system, without requiring a complicated variable-time amplitude amplification procedure. However, the most efficient of those procedures is still asymptotically sub-optimal by a factor of log(κ). Here, we prove a rigorous form of the adiabatic theorem that bounds the error in terms of the spectral gap for intrinsically discrete time evolutions. We use this discrete adiabatic theorem to develop a quantum algorithm for solving linear systems that is asymptotically optimal, in the sense that the complexity is strictly linear in κ, matching a known lower bound on the complexity. Our O(κlog(1/ϵ)) complexity is also optimal in terms of the combined scaling in κ and the precision ϵ. Compared to existing suboptimal methods, our algorithm is simpler and easier to implement. Moreover, we determine the constant factors in the algorithm, which would be suitable for determining the complexity in terms of gate counts for specific applications.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Pauli Stabilizer Models of Twisted Quantum Doubles - Tyler D. Ellison; Yu-An Chen; Arpit Dua; Wilbur Shirley; Nathanan Tantivasadakarn; Dominic J. Williamson (PRX Quantum, 2022)
We construct a Pauli stabilizer model for every two-dimensional Abelian topological order that admits a gapped boundary. Our primary example is a Pauli stabilizer model on four-dimensional qudits that belongs to the double semion (DS) phase of matter. The DS stabilizer Hamiltonian is constructed by condensing an emergent boson in a Z4 toric code, where the condensation is implemented by making certain two-body measurements. We rigorously verify the topological order of the DS stabilizer model by identifying an explicit finite-depth quantum circuit (with ancillary qubits) that maps its ground state subspace to that of a DS string-net model. We show that the construction of the DS stabilizer Hamiltonian generalizes to all twisted quantum doubles (TQDs) with Abelian anyons. This yields a Pauli stabilizer code on composite-dimensional qudits for each such TQD, implying that the classification of topological Pauli stabilizer codes extends well beyond stacks of toric codes - in fact, exhausting all Abelian anyon theories that admit a gapped boundary. We also demonstrate that symmetry-protected topological phases of matter characterized by type I and type II cocycles can be modeled by Pauli stabilizer Hamiltonians by gauging certain 1-form symmetries of the TQD stabilizer models.

Pauli topological subsystem codes from Abelian anyon theories - Ellison, Tyler D.; Chen, Yu-An; Dua, Arpit; Shirley, Wilbur; Tantivasadakarn, Nathanan; Williamson, Dominic J. (2022)
We construct Pauli topological subsystem codes characterized by arbitrary two-dimensional Abelian anyon theories--this includes anyon theories with degenerate braiding relations and those without a gapped boundary to the vacuum. Our work both extends the classification of two-dimensional Pauli topological subsystem codes to systems of composite-dimensional qudits and establishes that the classification is at least as rich as that of Abelian anyon theories. We exemplify the construction with topological subsystem codes defined on four-dimensional qudits based on the Z(1)4 anyon theory with degenerate braiding relations and the chiral semion theory--both of which cannot be captured by topological stabilizer codes. The construction proceeds by "gauging out" certain anyon types of a topological stabilizer code. This amounts to defining a gauge group generated by the stabilizer group of the topological stabilizer code and a set of anyonic string operators for the anyon types that are gauged out. The resulting topological subsystem code is characterized by an anyon theory containing a proper subset of the anyons of the topological stabilizer code. We thereby show that every Abelian anyon theory is a subtheory of a stack of toric codes and a certain family of twisted quantum doubles that generalize the double semion anyon theory. We further prove a number of general statements about the logical operators of translation invariant topological subsystem codes and define their associated anyon theories in terms of higher-form symmetries.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

Post-Quantum Security of the Even-Mansour Cipher - Gorjan Alagic; Chen Bai; Jonathan Katz; Christian Majenz (Eurocrypt, 2022)
The Even-Mansour cipher is a simple method for constructing a (keyed) pseudorandom permutation E from a public random permutation~P:{0,1}n→{0,1}n. It is secure against classical attacks, with optimal attacks requiring qE queries to E and qP queries to P such that qE⋅qP≈2n. If the attacker is given quantum access to both E and P, however, the cipher is completely insecure, with attacks using qE,qP=O(n) queries known. In any plausible real-world setting, however, a quantum attacker would have only classical access to the keyed permutation~E implemented by honest parties, even while retaining quantum access to~P. Attacks in this setting with qE⋅q2P≈2n are known, showing that security degrades as compared to the purely classical case, but leaving open the question as to whether the Even-Mansour cipher can still be proven secure in this natural, "post-quantum" setting. We resolve this question, showing that any attack in that setting requires qE⋅q2P+qP⋅q2E≈2n. Our results apply to both the two-key and single-key variants of Even-Mansour. Along the way, we establish several generalizations of results from prior work on quantum-query lower bounds that may be of independent interest.

Post-Quantum Security of the (Tweakable) FX Construction, and Applications - Gorjan Alagic; Chen Bai; Jonathan Katz; Christian Majenz; Patrick Struck (2022)
The FX construction provides a way to increase the effective key length of a block cipher E. We prove security of a tweakable version of the FX construction in the post-quantum setting, i.e., against a quantum attacker given only classical access to the secretly keyed construction while retaining quantum access to E, a setting that seems to be the most relevant one for real-world applications. We then use our results to prove post-quantum security—in the same model—of the (plain) FX construction, Elephant (a finalist of NIST's lightweight cryptography standardization effort), and Chaskey (an ISO-standardized lightweight MAC

Provably accurate simulation of gauge theories and bosonic systems - Yu Tong; Victor V. Albert; Jarrod R. McClean; John Preskill; Yuan Su (Quantum, 2022)
Quantum many-body systems involving bosonic modes or gauge fields have infinite-dimensional local Hilbert spaces which must be truncated to perform simulations of real-time dynamics on classical or quantum computers. To analyze the truncation error, we develop methods for bounding the rate of growth of local quantum numbers such as the occupation number of a mode at a lattice site, or the electric field at a lattice link. Our approach applies to various models of bosons interacting with spins or fermions, and also to both abelian and non-abelian gauge theories. We show that if states in these models are truncated by imposing an upper limit Λ on each local quantum number, and if the initial state has low local quantum numbers, then an error at most ϵ can be achieved by choosing Λ to scale polylogarithmically with ϵ−1, an exponential improvement over previous bounds based on energy conservation. For the Hubbard-Holstein model, we numerically compute a bound on Λ that achieves accuracy ϵ, obtaining significantly improved estimates in various parameter regimes. We also establish a criterion for truncating the Hamiltonian with a provable guarantee on the accuracy of time evolution. Building on that result, we formulate quantum algorithms for dynamical simulation of lattice gauge theories and of models with bosonic modes; the gate complexity depends almost linearly on spacetime volume in the former case, and almost quadratically on time in the latter case. We establish a lower bound showing that there are systems involving bosons for which this quadratic scaling with time cannot be improved. By applying our result on the truncation error in time evolution, we also prove that spectrally isolated energy eigenstates can be approximated with accuracy ϵ by truncating local quantum numbers at Λ=polylog(ϵ−1).

Provably efficient machine learning for quantum many-body problems - Hsin-Yuan Huang; Richard Kueng; Giacomo Torlai; Victor V. Albert; John Preskill (Science, 2022)
Classical machine learning (ML) provides a potentially powerful approach to solving challenging quantum many-body problems in physics and chemistry. However, the advantages of ML over more traditional methods have not been firmly established. In this work, we prove that classical ML algorithms can efficiently predict ground state properties of gapped Hamiltonians in finite spatial dimensions, after learning from data obtained by measuring other Hamiltonians in the same quantum phase of matter. In contrast, under widely accepted complexity theory assumptions, classical algorithms that do not learn from data cannot achieve the same guarantee. We also prove that classical ML algorithms can efficiently classify a wide range of quantum phases of matter. Our arguments are based on the concept of a classical shadow, a succinct classical description of a many-body quantum state that can be constructed in feasible quantum experiments and be used to predict many properties of the state. Extensive numerical experiments corroborate our theoretical results in a variety of scenarios, including Rydberg atom systems, 2D random Heisenberg models, symmetry-protected topological phases, and topologically ordered phases.

Quantum Algorithms for Sampling Log-Concave Distributions and Estimating Normalizing Constants - Andrew M. Childs; Li, Tongyang; Liu, Jin-Peng; Wang, Chunhao; Zhang, Ruizhe (Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022), 2022)
Keywords: FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Mathematics; FOS: Physical sciences; Machine Learning (cs.LG); Optimization and Control (math.OC); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Quantum computational advantage via high-dimensional Gaussian boson sampling - Abhinav Deshpande; Arthur Mehta; Trevor Vincent; Nicolas Quesada; Marcel Hinsche; Marios Ioannou; Lars Madsen; Jonathan Lavoie; Haoyu Qi; Jens Eisert; Dominik Hangleiter; Bill Fefferman; et al. (Science Advances, 2022)
A programmable quantum computer based on fiber optics outperforms classical computers with a high level of confidence. Photonics is a promising platform for demonstrating a quantum computational advantage (QCA) by outperforming the most powerful classical supercomputers on a well-defined computational task. Despite this promise, existing proposals and demonstrations face challenges. Experimentally, current implementations of Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) lack programmability or have prohibitive loss rates. Theoretically, there is a comparative lack of rigorous evidence for the classical hardness of GBS. In this work, we make progress in improving both the theoretical evidence and experimental prospects. We provide evidence for the hardness of GBS, comparable to the strongest theoretical proposals for QCA. We also propose a QCA architecture we call high-dimensional GBS, which is programmable and can be implemented with low loss using few optical components. We show that particular algorithms for simulating GBS are outperformed by high-dimensional GBS experiments at modest system sizes. This work thus opens the path to demonstrating QCA with programmable photonic processors.

Quantum Depth in the Random Oracle Model - Arora, Atul Singh; Coladangelo, Andrea; Coudron, Matthew; Gheorghiu, Alexandru; Singh, Uttam; Waldner, Hendrik (2022)
We give a comprehensive characterization of the computational power of shallow quantum circuits combined with classical computation. Specifically, for classes of search problems, we show that the following statements hold, relative to a random oracle: (a) BPPQNCBPP≠BQP. This refutes Jozsa's conjecture [QIP 05] in the random oracle model. As a result, this gives the first instantiatable separation between the classes by replacing the oracle with a cryptographic hash function, yielding a resolution to one of Aaronson's ten semi-grand challenges in quantum computing. (b) BPPQNC⊈QNCBPP and QNCBPP⊈BPPQNC. This shows that there is a subtle interplay between classical computation and shallow quantum computation. In fact, for the second separation, we establish that, for some problems, the ability to perform adaptive measurements in a single shallow quantum circuit, is more useful than the ability to perform polynomially many shallow quantum circuits without adaptive measurements. (c) There exists a 2-message proof of quantum depth protocol. Such a protocol allows a classical verifier to efficiently certify that a prover must be performing a computation of some minimum quantum depth. Our proof of quantum depth can be instantiated using the recent proof of quantumness construction by Yamakawa and Zhandry [STOC 22].
Keywords: Computational Complexity (cs.CC); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Quantum divide and conquer - Andrew M. Childs; Kothari, Robin; Kovacs-Deak, Matt; Sundaram, Aarthi; Wang, Daochen (2022)
The divide-and-conquer framework, used extensively in classical algorithm design, recursively breaks a problem of size n into smaller subproblems (say, a copies of size n/b each), along with some auxiliary work of cost Caux(n), to give a recurrence relation C(n)≤aC(n/b)+Caux(n) for the classical complexity C(n). We describe a quantum divide-and-conquer framework that, in certain cases, yields an analogous recurrence relation CQ(n)≤a−−√CQ(n/b)+O(CauxQ(n)) that characterizes the quantum query complexity. We apply this framework to obtain near-optimal quantum query complexities for various string problems, such as (i) recognizing regular languages; (ii) decision versions of String Rotation and String Suffix; and natural parameterized versions of (iii) Longest Increasing Subsequence and (iv) Longest Common Subsequence.
Keywords: Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS); FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Quantum Lego: Building Quantum Error Correction Codes from Tensor Networks - ChunJun Cao; Brad Lackey (PRX Quantum, 2022)
We introduce a flexible and graphically intuitive framework that constructs complex quantum error correction codes from simple codes or states, generalizing code concatenation. More specifically, we represent the complex code constructions as tensor networks built from the tensors of simple codes or states in a modular fashion. Using a set of local moves known as operator pushing, one can derive properties of the more complex codes, such as transversal non-Clifford gates, by tracing the flow of operators in the network. The framework endows a network geometry to any code it builds and is valid for constructing stabilizer codes as well as non-stabilizer codes over qubits and qudits. For a contractible tensor network, the sequence of contractions also constructs a decoding/encoding circuit. To highlight the framework's range of capabilities and to provide a tutorial, we lay out some examples where we glue together simple stabilizer codes to construct non-trivial codes. These examples include the toric code and its variants, a holographic code with transversal non-Clifford operators, a 3d stabilizer code, and other stabilizer codes with interesting properties. Surprisingly, we find that the surface code is equivalent to the 2d Bacon-Shor code after "dualizing" its tensor network encoding map.

Quantum Many-Body Scars from Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen States in Bilayer Systems - Wildeboer, Julia; Langlett, Christopher M.; Yang, Zhi-Cheng; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Iadecola, Thomas; Xu, Shenglong (2022)
Quantum many-body scar states are special eigenstates of nonintegrable models with distinctive entanglement features that give rise to infinitely long-lived coherent dynamics under quantum quenches from certain initial states. We elaborate on a construction of quantum many-body scar states in which they emerge from Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) states in systems with two layers, wherein the two layers are maximally entangled. We apply this construction to spin systems as well as systems of itinerant fermions and bosons and demonstrate how symmetries can be harnessed to enhance its versatility. We show that several well-known examples of quantum many-body scars, including the tower of states in the spin-1 XY model and the η-pairing states in the Fermi-Hubbard model, can be understood within this formalism. We also demonstrate how an {\it infinite} tower of many-body scar states can emerge in bilayer Bose-Hubbard models with charge conservation.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

Quantum Natural Proof: A New Perspective of Hybrid Quantum-Classical Program Verification - Li, Liyi; Zhu, Mingwei; Lee, Yi; Chang, Le; Wu, Xiaodi (2022)
Many quantum programs are assured by formal verification, but such verification is usually laborious and time-consuming. This paper proposes quantum natural proof (QNP), an automated proof system for verifying hybrid quantum-classical algorithms. Natural proofs are a subclass of proofs that are amenable to completely automated reasoning, provide sound but incomplete procedures, and capture common reasoning tactics in program verification. The core of QNP is a type-guided quantum proof system, named Qafny, which views quantum operations as some classical array operations that can be modeled as proof rules in a classical separation logic framework, suitable for automated reasoning. We proved the soundness and completeness of the Qafny proof system as well as the soundness of the proof system compilation from Qafny to Dafny. By using the QNP implementation in Dafny, automated verification can be efficiently perform for many hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, including GHZ, Shor's, Grover's, and quantum walk algorithms, which saves a great amount of human efforts. In addition, quantum programs written in Qafny can be compiled to quantum circuits so that every verified quantum program can be run on a quantum machine.
Keywords: FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Programming Languages (cs.PL); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Quantum Routing with Teleportation - Devulapalli, Dhruv; Schoute, Eddie; Bapat, Aniruddha; Andrew M. Childs; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2022)
We study the problem of implementing arbitrary permutations of qubits under interaction constraints in quantum systems that allow for arbitrarily fast local operations and classical communication (LOCC). In particular, we show examples of speedups over swap-based and more general unitary routing methods by distributing entanglement and using LOCC to perform quantum teleportation. We further describe an example of an interaction graph for which teleportation gives a logarithmic speedup in the worst-case routing time over swap-based routing. We also study limits on the speedup afforded by quantum teleportation - showing an O(NlogN−−−−−−−√) upper bound on the separation in routing time for any interaction graph - and give tighter bounds for some common classes of graphs.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Quantum Simulation for High Energy Physics - Bauer, Christian W.; Zohreh Davoudi; Balantekin, A. Baha; Bhattacharya, Tanmoy; Carena, Marcela; de Jong, Wibe A.; Draper, Patrick; El-Khadra, Aida; Gemelke, Nate; Hanada, Masanori; Kharzeev, Dmitri; Lamm, Henry; et al. (2022)
It is for the first time that Quantum Simulation for High Energy Physics (HEP) is studied in the U.S. decadal particle-physics community planning, and in fact until recently, this was not considered a mainstream topic in the community. This fact speaks of a remarkable rate of growth of this subfield over the past few years, stimulated by the impressive advancements in Quantum Information Sciences (QIS) and associated technologies over the past decade, and the significant investment in this area by the government and private sectors in the U.S. and other countries. High-energy physicists have quickly identified problems of importance to our understanding of nature at the most fundamental level, from tiniest distances to cosmological extents, that are intractable with classical computers but may benefit from quantum advantage. They have initiated, and continue to carry out, a vigorous program in theory, algorithm, and hardware co-design for simulations of relevance to the HEP mission. This community whitepaper is an attempt to bring this exciting and yet challenging area of research to the spotlight, and to elaborate on what the promises, requirements, challenges, and potential solutions are over the next decade and beyond.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; High Energy Physics - Lattice (hep-lat); High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th); Nuclear Theory (nucl-th); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Quantum simulation of real-space dynamics - Andrew M. Childs; Jiaqi Leng; Tongyang Li; Jin-Peng Liu; Chenyi Zhang (Quantum, 2022)
Quantum simulation is a prominent application of quantum computers. While there is extensive previous work on simulating finite-dimensional systems, less is known about quantum algorithms for real-space dynamics. We conduct a systematic study of such algorithms. In particular, we show that the dynamics of a d-dimensional Schrödinger equation with η particles can be simulated with gate complexity O~(ηdFpoly(log(g′/ϵ))), where ϵ is the discretization error, g′ controls the higher-order derivatives of the wave function, and F measures the time-integrated strength of the potential. Compared to the best previous results, this exponentially improves the dependence on ϵ and g′ from poly(g′/ϵ) to poly(log(g′/ϵ)) and polynomially improves the dependence on T and d, while maintaining best known performance with respect to η. For the case of Coulomb interactions, we give an algorithm using η3(d+η)Tpoly(log(ηdTg′/(Δϵ)))/Δ one- and two-qubit gates, and another using η3(4d)d/2Tpoly(log(ηdTg′/(Δϵ)))/Δ one- and two-qubit gates and QRAM operations, where T is the evolution time and the parameter Δ regulates the unbounded Coulomb interaction. We give applications to several computational problems, including faster real-space simulation of quantum chemistry, rigorous analysis of discretization error for simulation of a uniform electron gas, and a quadratic improvement to a quantum algorithm for escaping saddle points in nonconvex optimization.

Quantum state tomography via non-convex Riemannian gradient descent - Hsu, Ming-Chien; Kuo, En-Jui; Yu, Wei-Hsuan; Cai, Jian-Feng; Hsieh, Min-Hsiu (2022)
The recovery of an unknown density matrix of large size requires huge computational resources. The recent Factored Gradient Descent (FGD) algorithm and its variants achieved state-of-the-art performance since they could mitigate the dimensionality barrier by utilizing some of the underlying structures of the density matrix. Despite their theoretical guarantee of a linear convergence rate, the convergence in practical scenarios is still slow because the contracting factor of the FGD algorithms depends on the condition number κ of the ground truth state. Consequently, the total number of iterations can be as large as O(κ−−√ln(1ε)) to achieve the estimation error ε. In this work, we derive a quantum state tomography scheme that improves the dependence on κ to the logarithmic scale; namely, our algorithm could achieve the approximation error ε in O(ln(1κε)) steps. The improvement comes from the application of the non-convex Riemannian gradient descent (RGD). The contracting factor in our approach is thus a universal constant that is independent of the given state. Our theoretical results of extremely fast convergence and nearly optimal error bounds are corroborated by numerical results.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Qunity: A Unified Language for Quantum and Classical Computing (Extended Version) - Voichick, Finn; Li, Liyi; Rand, Robert; Hicks, Michael (2022)
We introduce Qunity, a new quantum programming language designed to treat quantum computing as a natural generalization of classical computing. Qunity presents a unified syntax where familiar programming constructs can have both quantum and classical effects. For example, one can use sum types to implement the direct sum of linear operators, exception-handling syntax to implement projective measurements, and aliasing to induce entanglement. Further, Qunity takes advantage of the overlooked BQP subroutine theorem, allowing one to construct reversible subroutines from irreversible quantum algorithms through the uncomputation of "garbage" outputs. Unlike existing languages that enable quantum aspects with separate add-ons (like a classical language with quantum gates bolted on), Qunity provides a unified syntax and a novel denotational semantics that guarantees that programs are quantum mechanically valid. We present Qunity's syntax, type system, and denotational semantics, showing how it can cleanly express several quantum algorithms. We also detail how Qunity can be compiled into a low-level qubit circuit language like OpenQASM, proving the realizability of our design.
Keywords: FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Logic in Computer Science (cs.LO); Programming Languages (cs.PL); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Resource theory of quantum uncomplexity - Nicole Yunger Halpern; Naga B. T. Kothakonda; Jonas Haferkamp; Anthony Munson; Jens Eisert; Philippe Faist (Physical Review A, 2022)
Quantum complexity is emerging as a key property of many-body systems, including black holes, topological materials, and early quantum computers. A state's complexity quantifies the number of computational gates required to prepare the state from a simple tensor product. The greater a state's distance from maximal complexity, or "uncomplexity," the more useful the state is as input to a quantum computation. Separately, resource theories -- simple models for agents subject to constraints -- are burgeoning in quantum information theory. We unite the two domains, confirming Brown and Susskind's conjecture that a resource theory of uncomplexity can be defined. The allowed operations, fuzzy operations, are slightly random implementations of two-qubit gates chosen by an agent. We formalize two operational tasks, uncomplexity extraction and expenditure. Their optimal efficiencies depend on an entropy that we engineer to reflect complexity. We also present two monotones, uncomplexity measures that decline monotonically under fuzzy operations, in certain regimes. This work unleashes on many-body complexity the resource-theory toolkit from quantum information theory.

Sample-optimal classical shadows for pure states - Grier, Daniel; Pashayan, Hakop; Luke Schaeffer (2022)
We consider the classical shadows task for pure states in the setting of both joint and independent measurements. The task is to measure few copies of an unknown pure state ρ in order to learn a classical description which suffices to later estimate expectation values of observables. Specifically, the goal is to approximate Tr(Oρ) for any Hermitian observable O to within additive error ϵ provided Tr(O2)≤B and ∥O∥=1. Our main result applies to the joint measurement setting, where we show Θ~(B−−√ϵ−1+ϵ−2) samples of ρ are necessary and sufficient to succeed with high probability. The upper bound is a quadratic improvement on the previous best sample complexity known for this problem. For the lower bound, we see that the bottleneck is not how fast we can learn the state but rather how much any classical description of ρ can be compressed for observable estimation. In the independent measurement setting, we show that O(Bd−−−√ϵ−1+ϵ−2) samples suffice. Notably, this implies that the random Clifford measurements algorithm of Huang, Kueng, and Preskill, which is sample-optimal for mixed states, is not optimal for pure states. Interestingly, our result also uses the same random Clifford measurements but employs a different estimator.
Keywords: FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Information Theory (cs.IT); Machine Learning (cs.LG); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Scalably learning quantum many-body Hamiltonians from dynamical data - Wilde, Frederik; Kshetrimayum, Augustine; Roth, Ingo; Dominik Hangleiter; Sweke, Ryan; Eisert, Jens (2022)
The physics of a closed quantum mechanical system is governed by its Hamiltonian. However, in most practical situations, this Hamiltonian is not precisely known, and ultimately all there is are data obtained from measurements on the system. In this work, we introduce a highly scalable, data-driven approach to learning families of interacting many-body Hamiltonians from dynamical data, by bringing together techniques from gradient-based optimization from machine learning with efficient quantum state representations in terms of tensor networks. Our approach is highly practical, experimentally friendly, and intrinsically scalable to allow for system sizes of above 100 spins. In particular, we demonstrate on synthetic data that the algorithm works even if one is restricted to one simple initial state, a small number of single-qubit observables, and time evolution up to relatively short times. For the concrete example of the one-dimensional Heisenberg model our algorithm exhibits an error constant in the system size and scaling as the inverse square root of the size of the data set.
Keywords: FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Machine Learning (cs.LG); Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas); Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

A scheme to create and verify scalable entanglement in optical lattice - You Zhou; Bo Xiao; Meng-Da Li; Qi Zhao; Zhen-Sheng Yuan; Xiongfeng Ma; Jian-Wei Pan (npj Quantum Information, 2022)
To achieve scalable quantum information processing, great efforts have been devoted to the creation of large-scale entangled states in various physical systems. Ultracold atom in optical lattice is considered as one of the promising platforms due to its feasible initialization and parallel manipulation. In this work, we propose an efficient scheme to generate and characterize global entanglement in the optical lattice. With only two-layer quantum circuits, the generation utilizes two-qubit entangling gates based on the superexchange interaction in double wells. The parallelism of these operations enables the generation to be fast and scalable. To verify the entanglement of this non-stabilizer state, we mainly design three complementary detection protocols which are less resource-consuming compared to the full tomography. In particular, one just needs two homogenous local measurement settings to identify the entanglement property. Our entanglement generation and verification protocols provide the foundation for the further quantum information processing in optical lattice.

Self-Testing of a Single Quantum System: Theory and Experiment - Hu, Xiao-Min; Xie, Yi; Arora, Atul Singh; Ai, Ming-Zhong; Bharti, Kishor; Zhang, Jie; Wu, Wei; Chen, Ping-Xing; Cui, Jin-Ming; Liu, Bi-Heng; Huang, Yun-Feng; Li, Chuan-Feng; et al. (2022)
Certifying individual quantum devices with minimal assumptions is crucial for the development of quantum technologies. Here, we investigate how to leverage single-system contextuality to realize self-testing. We develop a robust self-testing protocol based on the simplest contextuality witness for the simplest contextual quantum system, the Klyachko-Can-Binicioğlu-Shumovsky (KCBS) inequality for the qutrit. We establish a lower bound on the fidelity of the state and the measurements (to an ideal configuration) as a function of the value of the witness under a pragmatic assumption on the measurements we call the KCBS orthogonality condition. We apply the method in an experiment with randomly chosen measurements on a single trapped 40Ca+ and near-perfect detection efficiency. The observed statistics allow us to self-test the system and provide the first experimental demonstration of quantum self-testing of a single system. Further, we quantify and report that deviations from our assumptions are minimal, an aspect previously overlooked by contextuality experiments.
Keywords: Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph); FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Shadow Distillation: Quantum Error Mitigation with Classical Shadows for Near-Term Quantum Processors - Seif, Alireza; Cian, Ze-Pei; Zhou, Sisi; Chen, Senrui; Jiang, Liang (2022)
Mitigating errors in quantum information processing devices is especially important in the absence of fault tolerance. An effective method in suppressing state-preparation errors is using multiple copies to distill the ideal component from a noisy quantum state. Here, we use classical shadows and randomized measurements to circumvent the need for coherent access to multiple copies at an exponential cost. We study the scaling of resources using numerical simulations and find that the overhead is still favorable compared to full state tomography. We optimize measurement resources under realistic experimental constraints and apply our method to an experiment preparing Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state with trapped ions. In addition to improving stabilizer measurements, the analysis of the improved results reveals the nature of errors affecting the experiment. Hence, our results provide a directly applicable method for mitigating errors in near-term quantum computers.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Sharp complexity phase transitions generated by entanglement - Ghosh, Soumik; Deshpande, Abhinav; Dominik Hangleiter; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Fefferman, Bill (2022)
Entanglement is one of the physical properties of quantum systems responsible for the computational hardness of simulating quantum systems. But while the runtime of specific algorithms, notably tensor network algorithms, explicitly depends on the amount of entanglement in the system, it is unknown whether this connection runs deeper and entanglement can also cause inherent, algorithm-independent complexity. In this work, we quantitatively connect the entanglement present in certain quantum systems to the computational complexity of simulating those systems. Moreover, we completely characterize the entanglement and complexity as a function of a system parameter. Specifically, we consider the task of simulating single-qubit measurements of k--regular graph states on n qubits. We show that, as the regularity parameter is increased from 1 to n−1, there is a sharp transition from an easy regime with low entanglement to a hard regime with high entanglement at k=3, and a transition back to easy and low entanglement at k=n−3. As a key technical result, we prove a duality for the simulation complexity of regular graph states between low and high regularity.
Keywords: Computational Complexity (cs.CC); FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Simulation Complexity of Many-Body Localized Systems - Adam Ehrenberg; Abhinav Deshpande; Christopher L. Baldwin; Dmitry A. Abanin; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2022)
We use complexity theory to rigorously investigate the difficulty of classically simulating evolution under many-body localized (MBL) Hamiltonians. Using the defining feature that MBL systems have a complete set of quasilocal integrals of motion (LIOMs), we demonstrate a transition in the classical complexity of simulating such systems as a function of evolution time. On one side, we construct a quasipolynomial-time tensor-network-inspired algorithm for strong simulation of 1D MBL systems (i.e., calculating the expectation value of arbitrary products of local observables) evolved for any time polynomial in the system size. On the other side, we prove that even weak simulation, i.e. sampling, becomes formally hard after an exponentially long evolution time, assuming widely believed conjectures in complexity theory. Finally, using the consequences of our classical simulation results, we also show that the quantum circuit complexity for MBL systems is sublinear in evolution time. This result is a counterpart to a recent proof that the complexity of random quantum circuits grows linearly in time.

Simultaneous Stoquasticity - Jacob Bringewatt; Brady, Lucas T. (Phys. Rev. A, 2022)
Stoquastic Hamiltonians play a role in the computational complexity of the local Hamiltonian problem as well as the study of classical simulability. In particular, stoquastic Hamiltonians can be straightforwardly simulated using Monte Carlo techniques. We address the question of whether two or more Hamiltonians may be made simultaneously stoquastic via a unitary transformation. This question has important implications for the complexity of simulating quantum annealing where quantum advantage is related to the stoquasticity of the Hamiltonians involved in the anneal. We find that for almost all problems no such unitary exists and show that the problem of determining the existence of such a unitary is equivalent to identifying if there is a solution to a system of polynomial (in)equalities in the matrix elements of the initial and transformed Hamiltonians. Solving such a system of equations is NP-hard. We highlight a geometric understanding of this problem in terms of a collection of generalized Bloch vectors.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

A single T-gate makes distribution learning hard - Marcel Hinsche; Marios Ioannou; Alexander Nietner; Jonas Haferkamp; Yihui Quek; Dominik Hangleiter; Jean-Pierre Seifert; Jens Eisert; Ryan Sweke (2022)
The task of learning a probability distribution from samples is ubiquitous across the natural sciences. The output distributions of local quantum circuits form a particularly interesting class of distributions, of key importance both to quantum advantage proposals and a variety of quantum machine learning algorithms. In this work, we provide an extensive characterization of the learnability of the output distributions of local quantum circuits. Our first result yields insight into the relationship between the efficient learnability and the efficient simulatability of these distributions. Specifically, we prove that the density modelling problem associated with Clifford circuits can be efficiently solved, while for depth d=nΩ(1) circuits the injection of a single T-gate into the circuit renders this problem hard. This result shows that efficient simulatability does not imply efficient learnability. Our second set of results provides insight into the potential and limitations of quantum generative modelling algorithms. We first show that the generative modelling problem associated with depth d=nΩ(1) local quantum circuits is hard for any learning algorithm, classical or quantum. As a consequence, one cannot use a quantum algorithm to gain a practical advantage for this task. We then show that, for a wide variety of the most practically relevant learning algorithms -- including hybrid-quantum classical algorithms -- even the generative modelling problem associated with depth d=ω(log(n)) Clifford circuits is hard. This result places limitations on the applicability of near-term hybrid quantum-classical generative modelling algorithms.

Snowmass 2021 White Paper: Tabletop experiments for infrared quantum gravity - Carney, Daniel; Chen, Yanbei; Geraci, Andrew; Müller, Holger; Panda, Cristian D.; Stamp, Philip C. E.; Taylor, Jacob M. (2022)
Progress in the quantum readout and control of mechanical devices from single atoms to large masses may enable a first generation of experiments probing the gravitational interaction in the quantum regime, conceivably within the next decade. In this Snowmass whitepaper, we briefly outline the possibilities and challenges facing the realization of these experiments. In particular, we emphasize the need for detailed theories of modifications to the usual effective QFT of gravitons in the infrared regime E/L3≪mPl/ℓ3Pl in which these experiments operate, and relations to possible UV completions.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Snowmass 2021 White Paper: The Windchime Project - The Windchime Collaboration; Attanasio, Alaina; Bhave, Sunil A.; Blanco, Carlos; Carney, Daniel; Demarteau, Marcel; Elshimy, Bahaa; Febbraro, Michael; Feldman, Matthew A.; Ghosh, Sohitri; Hickin, Abby; Hong, Seongjin; et al. (2022)
The absence of clear signals from particle dark matter in direct detection experiments motivates new approaches in disparate regions of viable parameter space. In this Snowmass white paper, we outline the Windchime project, a program to build a large array of quantum-enhanced mechanical sensors. The ultimate aim is to build a detector capable of searching for Planck mass-scale dark matter purely through its gravitational coupling to ordinary matter. In the shorter term, we aim to search for a number of other physics targets, especially some ultralight dark matter candidates. Here, we discuss the basic design, open R&D challenges and opportunities, current experimental efforts, and both short- and long-term physics targets of the Windchime project.
Keywords: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); FOS: Physical sciences; High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex); High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

Spectral Form Factor of a Quantum Spin Glass - Winer, Michael; Barney, Richard; Christopher L. Baldwin; Galitski, Victor; Swingle, Brian (2022)
It is widely expected that systems which fully thermalize are chaotic in the sense of exhibiting random-matrix statistics of their energy level spacings, whereas integrable systems exhibit Poissonian statistics. In this paper, we investigate a third class: spin glasses. These systems are partially chaotic but do not achieve full thermalization due to large free energy barriers. We examine the level spacing statistics of a canonical infinite-range quantum spin glass, the quantum p-spherical model, using an analytic path integral approach. We find statistics consistent with a direct sum of independent random matrices, and show that the number of such matrices is equal to the number of distinct metastable configurations -- the exponential of the spin glass "complexity" as obtained from the quantum Thouless-Anderson-Palmer equations. We also consider the statistical properties of the complexity itself and identify a set of contributions to the path integral which suggest a Poissonian distribution for the number of metastable configurations. Our results show that level spacing statistics can probe the ergodicity-breaking in quantum spin glasses and provide a way to generalize the notion of spin glass complexity beyond models with a semi-classical limit.
Keywords: Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn); FOS: Physical sciences; High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

Status Report on the Third Round of the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process - Gorjan Alagic; Daniel Apon; David Cooper; Quynh Dang; Thinh Dang; John Kelsey; Jacob Lichtinger; Carl Miller; Dustin Moody; Rene Peralta; Ray Perlner; Angela Robinson (NIST, 2022)
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is in the process of selecting publickey cryptographic algorithms through a public, competition-like process. The new publickey cryptography standards will specify additional digital signature, public-key encryption, and key-establishment algorithms to augment Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 186-4, Digital Signature Standard (DSS), as well as NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-56A Revision 3, Recommendation for Pair-Wise Key-Establishment Schemes Using Discrete Logarithm Cryptography, and SP 800-56B Revision 2, Recommendation for Pair-Wise Key Establishment Using Integer Factorization Cryptography. It is intended that these algorithms will be capable of protecting sensitive information well into the foreseeable future, including after the advent of quantum computers. This report describes the evaluation and selection process of the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization process third-round candidates based on public feedback and internal review. The report summarizes each of the 15 third-round candidate algorithms and identifies those selected for standardization, as well as those that will continue to be evaluated in a fourth round of analysis. The public-key encryption and key-establishment algorithm that will be standardized is CRYSTALS–KYBER. The digital signatures that will be standardized are CRYSTALS–Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+. While there are multiple signature algorithms selected, NIST recommends CRYSTALS–Dilithium as the primary algorithm to be implemented. In addition, four of the alternate key-establishment candidate algorithms will advance to a fourth round of evaluation: BIKE, Classic McEliece, HQC, and SIKE. These candidates are still being considered for future standardization. NIST will also issue a new Call for Proposals for public-key digital signature algorithms to augment and diversify its signature portfolio.

Tailoring three-dimensional topological codes for biased noise - Huang, Eric; Pesah, Arthur; Chubb, Christopher T.; Vasmer, Michael; Dua, Arpit (2022)
Tailored topological stabilizer codes in two dimensions have been shown to exhibit high storage threshold error rates and improved subthreshold performance under biased Pauli noise. Three-dimensional (3D) topological codes can allow for several advantages including a transversal implementation of non-Clifford logical gates, single-shot decoding strategies, parallelized decoding in the case of fracton codes as well as construction of fractal lattice codes. Motivated by this, we tailor 3D topological codes for enhanced storage performance under biased Pauli noise. We present Clifford deformations of various 3D topological codes, such that they exhibit a threshold error rate of 50% under infinitely biased Pauli noise. Our examples include the 3D surface code on the cubic lattice, the 3D surface code on a checkerboard lattice that lends itself to a subsystem code with a single-shot decoder, the 3D color code, as well as fracton models such as the X-cube model, the Sierpinski model and the Haah code. We use the belief propagation with ordered statistics decoder (BP-OSD) to study threshold error rates at finite bias. We also present a rotated layout for the 3D surface code, which uses roughly half the number of physical qubits for the same code distance under appropriate boundary conditions. Imposing coprime periodic dimensions on this rotated layout leads to logical operators of weight O(n) at infinite bias and a corresponding exp[−O(n)] subthreshold scaling of the logical failure rate, where n is the number of physical qubits in the code. Even though this scaling is unstable due to the existence of logical representations with O(1) low-rate Pauli errors, the number of such representations scales only polynomially for the Clifford-deformed code, leading to an enhanced effective distance.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Theoretical bounds on data requirements for the ray-based classification - Brian J. Weber; Sandesh S. Kalantre; Thomas McJunkin; J. M. Taylor; Justyna P. Zwolak (SN Comput. Sci., 2022)
The problem of classifying high-dimensional shapes in real-world data grows in complexity as the dimension of the space increases. For the case of identifying convex shapes of different geometries, a new classification framework has recently been proposed in which the intersections of a set of one-dimensional representations, called rays, with the boundaries of the shape are used to identify the specific geometry. This ray-based classification (RBC) has been empirically verified using a synthetic dataset of two- and three-dimensional shapes [1] and, more recently, has also been validated experimentally [2]. Here, we establish a bound on the number of rays necessary for shape classification, defined by key angular metrics, for arbitrary convex shapes. For two dimensions, we derive a lower bound on the number of rays in terms of the shape's length, diameter, and exterior angles. For convex polytopes in R^N, we generalize this result to a similar bound given as a function of the dihedral angle and the geometrical parameters of polygonal faces. This result enables a different approach for estimating high-dimensional shapes using substantially fewer data elements than volumetric or surface-based approaches.

A theory of quantum differential equation solvers: limitations and fast-forwarding - Dong An; Liu, Jin-Peng; Wang, Daochen; Zhao, Qi (2022)
We study the limitations and fast-forwarding of quantum algorithms for solving linear ordinary differential equation (ODE) systems with particular focus on non-quantum dynamics, where the coefficient matrix in the ODE is not anti-Hermitian or the ODE is inhomogeneous. On the one hand, for generic homogeneous linear ODEs, by proving worst-case lower bounds, we show that quantum algorithms suffer from computational overheads due to two types of ``non-quantumness'': real part gap and non-normality of the coefficient matrix. We then show that ODEs in the absence of both types of ``non-quantumness'' are equivalent to quantum dynamics, and reach the conclusion that quantum algorithms for quantum dynamics work best. We generalize our results to the inhomogeneous case and find that existing generic quantum ODE solvers cannot be substantially improved. To obtain these lower bounds, we propose a general framework for proving lower bounds on quantum algorithms that are amplifiers, meaning that they amplify the difference between a pair of input quantum states. On the other hand, we show how to fast-forward quantum algorithms for solving special classes of ODEs which leads to improved efficiency. More specifically, we obtain quadratic to exponential improvements in terms of the evolution time T and the spectral norm of the coefficient matrix for the following classes of ODEs: inhomogeneous ODEs with a negative definite coefficient matrix, inhomogeneous ODEs with a coefficient matrix having an eigenbasis that can be efficiently prepared on a quantum computer and eigenvalues that can be efficiently computed classically, and the spatially discretized inhomogeneous heat equation and advection-diffusion equation. We give fast-forwarding algorithms that are conceptually different from existing ones in the sense that they neither require time discretization nor solving high-dimensional linear systems.
Keywords: FOS: Mathematics; FOS: Physical sciences; Numerical Analysis (math.NA); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Three-dimensional quantum cellular automata from chiral semion surface topological order and beyond - Shirley, Wilbur; Chen, Yu-An; Dua, Arpit; Ellison, Tyler D.; Tantivasadakarn, Nathanan; Williamson, Dominic J. (2022)
We construct a novel three-dimensional quantum cellular automaton (QCA) based on a system with short-range entangled bulk and chiral semion boundary topological order. We argue that either the QCA is nontrivial, i.e. not a finite-depth circuit of local quantum gates, or there exists a two-dimensional commuting projector Hamiltonian realizing the chiral semion topological order (characterized by U(1)2 Chern-Simons theory). Our QCA is obtained by first constructing the Walker-Wang Hamiltonian of a certain premodular tensor category of order four, then condensing the deconfined bulk boson at the level of lattice operators. We show that the resulting Hamiltonian hosts chiral semion surface topological order in the presence of a boundary and can be realized as a non-Pauli stabilizer code on qubits, from which the QCA is defined. The construction is then generalized to a class of QCAs defined by non-Pauli stabilizer codes on 2n-dimensional qudits that feature surface anyons described by U(1)2n Chern-Simons theory. Our results support the conjecture that the group of nontrivial three-dimensional QCAs is isomorphic to the Witt group of non-degenerate braided fusion categories.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Mathematical Physics (math-ph); Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

Time-dependent Hamiltonian Simulation of Highly Oscillatory Dynamics and Superconvergence for Schrödinger Equation - Dong An; Di Fang; Lin Lin (Quantum, 2022)
We propose a simple quantum algorithm for simulating highly oscillatory quantum dynamics, which does not require complicated quantum control logic for handling time-ordering operators. To our knowledge, this is the first quantum algorithm that is both insensitive to the rapid changes of the time-dependent Hamiltonian and exhibits commutator scaling. Our method can be used for efficient Hamiltonian simulation in the interaction picture. In particular, we demonstrate that for the simulation of the Schrödinger equation, our method exhibits superconvergence and achieves a surprising second order convergence rate, of which the proof rests on a careful application of pseudo-differential calculus. Numerical results verify the effectiveness and the superconvergence property of our method.

Topological Edge Mode Tapering - Christopher J. Flower; Sabyasachi Barik; Sunil Mittal; Mohammad Hafezi (2022)
Mode tapering, or the gradual manipulation of the size of some mode, is a requirement for any system that aims to efficiently interface two or more subsystems of different mode sizes. While high efficiency tapers have been demonstrated, they often come at the cost of a large device footprint or challenging fabrication. Topological photonics, offering robustness to certain types of disorder as well as chirality, has proved to be a well-suited design principle for numerous applications in recent years. Here we present a new kind of mode taper realized through topological bandgap engineering. We numerically demonstrate a sixfold change in mode width over an extremely compact 8μm distance with near unity efficiency in the optical domain. With suppressed backscattering and no excitation of higher-order modes, such a taper could enable new progress in the development of scalable, multi-component systems in classical and quantum optics.

Toward Robust Autotuning of Noisy Quantum dot Devices - Joshua Ziegler; Thomas McJunkin; E.S. Joseph; Sandesh S. Kalantre; Benjamin Harpt; D.E. Savage; M.G. Lagally; M.A. Eriksson; Jacob M. Taylor; Justyna P. Zwolak (Physical Review Applied, 2022)
The current autotuning approaches for quantum dot (QD) devices, while showing some success, lack an assessment of data reliability. This leads to unexpected failures when noisy or otherwise low-quality data is processed by an autonomous system. In this work, we propose a framework for robust autotuning of QD devices that combines a machine learning (ML) state classifier with a data quality control module. The data quality control module acts as a "gatekeeper" system, ensuring that only reliable data are processed by the state classifier. Lower data quality results in either device recalibration or termination. To train both ML systems, we enhance the QD simulation by incorporating synthetic noise typical of QD experiments. We confirm that the inclusion of synthetic noise in the training of the state classifier significantly improves the performance, resulting in an accuracy of 95.0(9) % when tested on experimental data. We then validate the functionality of the data quality control module by showing that the state classifier performance deteriorates with decreasing data quality, as expected. Our results establish a robust and flexible ML framework for autonomous tuning of noisy QD devices.

Tweezer-programmable 2D quantum walks in a Hubbard-regime lattice - Young, Aaron W.; Eckner, William J.; Schine, Nathan; Andrew M. Childs; Kaufman, Adam M. (Science, 2022)
Quantum walks provide a framework for understanding and designing quantum algorithms that is both intuitive and universal. To leverage the computational power of these walks, it is important to be able to programmably modify the graph a walker traverses while maintaining coherence. Here, we do this by combining the fast, programmable control provided by optical tweezer arrays with the scalable, homogeneous environment of an optical lattice. Using this new combination of tools we study continuous-time quantum walks of single atoms on a 2D square lattice, and perform proof-of-principle demonstrations of spatial search using these walks. When scaled to more particles, the capabilities demonstrated here can be extended to study a variety of problems in quantum information science and quantum simulation, including the deterministic assembly of ground and excited states in Hubbard models with tunable interactions, and performing versions of spatial search in a larger graph with increased connectivity, where search by quantum walk can be more effective.
Keywords: Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph); FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Ultrastrong light-matter interaction in a photonic crystal - Vrajitoarea, Andrei; Belyansky, Ron; Lundgren, Rex; Whitsitt, Seth; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Houck, Andrew A. (2022)
Harnessing the interaction between light and matter at the quantum level has been a central theme in the fields of atomic physics and quantum optics, with applications from quantum computation to quantum metrology. Combining complex interactions with photonic synthetic materials provides an opportunity to investigate novel quantum phases and phenomena, establishing interesting connections to condensed matter physics. Here we explore many-body phenomena with a single artificial atom coupled to the many discrete modes of a photonic crystal. This experiment reaches the ultrastrong light-matter coupling regime using the circuit QED paradigm, by galvanically coupling a highly nonlinear fluxonium qubit to a tight-binding lattice of microwave resonators. In this regime, the transport of a single photon is strongly modified by the presence of multi-photon bound states, owing to interactions that break particle number conservation. Exploiting the effective photon-photon interactions mediated by the qubit, the driven system can be configured as a continuous reservoir of strongly-correlated photons, a resource of interest for quantum networks. This work opens exciting prospects for exploring nonlinear quantum optics at the single-photon level and stabilizing entangled many-body phases of light.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Universal scattering with general dispersion relations - Wang, Yidan; Michael Gullans; Na, Xuesen; Whitsitt, Seth; Alexey V. Gorshkov (Phys. Rev. Research, 2022)
Many synthetic quantum systems allow particles to have dispersion relations that are neither linear nor quadratic functions. Here, we explore single-particle scattering in general spatial dimension D≥1 when the density of states diverges at a specific energy. To illustrate the underlying principles in an experimentally relevant setting, we focus on waveguide quantum electrodynamics (QED) problems (i.e. D=1) with dispersion relation ϵ(k)=±|d|km, where m≥2 is an integer. For a large class of these problems for any positive integer m, we rigorously prove that when there are no bright zero-energy eigenstates, the S-matrix evaluated at an energy E→0 converges to a universal limit that is only dependent on m. We also give a generalization of a key index theorem in quantum scattering theory known as Levinson's theorem -- which relates the scattering phases to the number of bound states -- to waveguide QED scattering for these more general dispersion relations. We then extend these results to general integer dimensions D≥1, dispersion relations ϵ(k)=|k|a for a D-dimensional momentum vector k with any real positive a, and separable potential scattering.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Mathematical Physics (math-ph); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Universality in one-dimensional scattering with general dispersion relations - Yidan Wang; Michael Gullans; Xuesen Na; Alexey V. Gorshkov (Phys. Rev. Res., 2022)
Many synthetic quantum systems allow particles to have dispersion relations that are neither linear nor quadratic functions. Here, we explore single-particle scattering in one dimension when the dispersion relation is ϵ(k)=±|d|km, where m≥2 is an integer. We study impurity scattering problems in which a single-particle in a one-dimensional waveguide scatters off of an inhomogeneous, discrete set of sites locally coupled to the waveguide. For a large class of these problems, we rigorously prove that when there are no bright zero-energy eigenstates, the S-matrix evaluated at an energy E→0 converges to a universal limit that is only dependent on m. We also give a generalization of a key index theorem in quantum scattering theory known as Levinson's theorem -- which relates the scattering phases to the number of bound states -- to impurity scattering for these more general dispersion relations.

Unlimited non-causal correlations and their relation to non-locality - Ämin Baumeler; Amin Shiraz Gilani; Jibran Rashid (Quantum, 2022)
Non-causal correlations certify the lack of a definite causal order among localized space-time regions. In stark contrast to scenarios where a single region influences its own causal past, some processes that distribute non-causal correlations satisfy a series of natural desiderata: logical consistency, linear and reversible dynamics, and computational tameness. Here, we present such processes among arbitrary many regions where each region influences every other but itself, and show that the above desiderata are altogether insufficient to limit the amount of "acausality" of non-causal correlations. This leaves open the identification of a principle that forbids non-causal correlations. Our results exhibit qualitative and quantitative parallels with the non-local correlations due to Ardehali and Svetlichny.

Where we are with quantum - Yusuf Alnawakhtha; Carl Miller (Nature Physics, 2022)
A theoretical analysis shows how a person’s location in space could be verified by the transmission of single photons. A vital application of quantum networks may be within reach.

Algebraic Reasoning of Quantum Programs via Non-Idempotent Kleene Algebra - Yuxiang Peng; Mingsheng Ying; Xiaodi Wu (2021)
We investigate the algebraic reasoning of quantum programs inspired by the success of classical program analysis based on Kleene algebra. One prominent example of such is the famous Kleene Algebra with Tests (KAT), which has furnished both theoretical insights and practical tools. The succinctness of algebraic reasoning would be especially desirable for scalable analysis of quantum programs, given the involvement of exponential-size matrices in most of the existing methods. A few key features of KAT including the idempotent law and the nice properties of classical tests, however, fail to hold in the context of quantum programs due to their unique quantum features, especially in branching. We propose the Non-idempotent Kleena Algebra (NKA) as a natural alternative and identify complete and sound semantic models for NKA as well as their appropriate quantum interpretations. In light of applications of KAT, we are able to demonstrate algebraic proofs in NKA of quantum compiler optimization and the normal form of quantum while-programs. Moreover, we extend NKA with Tests (i.e., NKAT), where tests model quantum predicates following the rules of effect algebra, and illustrate how to encode propositional quantum Hoare logic as NKAT theorems.

Approximate Bacon-Shor Code and Holography - ChunJun Cao; Brad Lackey (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2021)
We construct an explicit and solvable toy model for the AdS/CFT correspondence in the form of an approximate quantum error correction code with a non-trivial center in the code subalgebra. Specifically, we use the Bacon-Shor codes and perfect tensors to construct a gauge code (or a stabilizer code with gauge-fixing), which we call the holographic hybrid code. This code admits a local log-depth encoding/decoding circuit, and can be represented as a holographic tensor network which satisfies an analog of the Ryu-Takayanagi formula and reproduces features of the sub-region duality. We then construct approximate versions of the holographic hybrid codes by "skewing" the code subspace, where the size of skewing is analogous to the size of the gravitational constant in holography. These approximate hybrid codes are not necessarily stabilizer codes, but they can be expressed as the superposition of holographic tensor networks that are stabilizer codes. For such constructions, different logical states, representing different bulk matter content, can "back-react" on the emergent geometry, resembling a key feature of gravity. The locality of the bulk degrees of freedom becomes subspace-dependent and approximate. Such subspace-dependence is manifest in the form of bulk operator reconstruction from the boundary. Exact complementary error correction breaks down for certain bipartition of the boundary degrees of freedom; however, a limited, state-dependent form is preserved for particular subspaces. We also construct an example where the connected two-point correlation functions can have a power-law decay. Coupled with known constraints from holography, a weakly back-reacting bulk also forces these skewed tensor network models to the "large N limit" where they are built by concatenating a large N number of copies.

Behavior of Analog Quantum Algorithms - Lucas T. Brady; Lucas Kocia; Przemyslaw Bienias; Aniruddha Bapat; Yaroslav Kharkov; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2021)
Analog quantum algorithms are formulated in terms of Hamiltonians rather than unitary gates and include quantum adiabatic computing, quantum annealing, and the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). These algorithms are promising candidates for near-term quantum applications, but they often require fine tuning via the annealing schedule or variational parameters. In this work, we explore connections between these analog algorithms, as well as limits in which they become approximations of the optimal procedure.Notably, we explore how the optimal procedure approaches a smooth adiabatic procedure but with a superposed oscillatory pattern that can be explained in terms of the interactions between the ground state and first excited state that effect the coherent error cancellation of diabatic transitions. Furthermore, we provide numeric and analytic evidence that QAOA emulates this optimal procedure with the length of each QAOA layer equal to the period of the oscillatory pattern. Additionally, the ratios of the QAOA bangs are determined by the smooth, non-oscillatory part of the optimal procedure. We provide arguments for these phenomena in terms of the product formula expansion of the optimal procedure. With these arguments, we conclude that different analog algorithms can emulate the optimal protocol under different limits and approximations. Finally, we present a new algorithm for better approximating the optimal protocol using the analytic and numeric insights from the rest of the paper. In practice, numerically, we find that this algorithm outperforms standard QAOA and naive quantum annealing procedures.

Can you sign a quantum state? - Gorjan Alagic; Tommaso Gagliardoni; Christian Majenz (v4: version for publication in Quantum, v5: CC license, 2021)
Cryptography with quantum states exhibits a number of surprising and counterintuitive features. In a 2002 work, Barnum et al. argued informally that these strange features should imply that digital signatures for quantum states are impossible (Barnum et al., FOCS 2002). In this work, we perform the first rigorous study of the problem of signing quantum states. We first show that the intuition of Barnum et al. was correct, by proving an impossibility result which rules out even very weak forms of signing quantum states. Essentially, we show that any non-trivial combination of correctness and security requirements results in negligible security. This rules out all quantum signature schemes except those which simply measure the state and then sign the outcome using a classical scheme. In other words, only classical signature schemes exist. We then show a positive result: it is possible to sign quantum states, provided that they are also encrypted with the public key of the intended recipient. Following classical nomenclature, we call this notion quantum signcryption. Classically, signcryption is only interesting if it provides superior efficiency to simultaneous encryption and signing. Our results imply that, quantumly, it is far more interesting: by the laws of quantum mechanics, it is the only signing method available. We develop security definitions for quantum signcryption, ranging from a simple one-time two-user setting, to a chosen-ciphertext-secure many-time multi-user setting. We also give secure constructions based on post-quantum public-key primitives. Along the way, we show that a natural hybrid method of combining classical and quantum schemes can be used to "upgrade" a secure classical scheme to the fully-quantum setting, in a wide range of cryptographic settings including signcryption, authenticated encryption, and chosen-ciphertext security.

Chiral transport of hot carriers in graphene in the quantum Hall regime - Bin Cao; Tobias Grass; Olivier Gazzano; Kishan Ashokbhai Patel; Jiuning Hu; Markus Müller; Tobias Huber; Luca Anzi; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; David Newell; Michael Gullans; et al. (2021)
Photocurrent (PC) measurements can reveal the relaxation dynamics of photo-excited hot carriers beyond the linear response of conventional transport experiments, a regime important for carrier multiplication. In graphene subject to a magnetic field, PC measurements are able to probe the existence of Landau levels with different edge chiralities which is exclusive to relativistic electron systems. Here, we report the accurate measurement of PC in graphene in the quantum Hall regime. Prominent PC oscillations as a function of gate voltage on samples' edges are observed. These oscillation amplitudes form an envelope which depends on the strength of the magnetic field, as does the PCs' power dependence and their saturation behavior. We explain these experimental observations through a model using optical Bloch equations, incorporating relaxations through acoustic-, optical- phonons and Coulomb interactions. The simulated PC agrees with our experimental results, leading to a unified understanding of the chiral PC in graphene at various magnetic field strengths, and providing hints for the occurrence of a sizable carrier multiplication.

Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics in Hyperbolic Space: From Photon Bound States to Frustrated Spin Models - Przemyslaw Bienias; Igor Boettcher; Ron Belyansky; Alicia J. Kollár; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2021)
Circuit quantum electrodynamics is one of the most promising platforms for efficient quantum simulation and computation. In recent groundbreaking experiments, the immense flexibility of superconducting microwave resonators was utilized to realize hyperbolic lattices that emulate quantum physics in negatively curved space. Here we investigate experimentally feasible settings in which a few superconducting qubits are coupled to a bath of photons evolving on the hyperbolic lattice. We compare our numerical results for finite lattices with analytical results for continuous hyperbolic space on the Poincaré disk. We find good agreement between the two descriptions in the long-wavelength regime. We show that photon-qubit bound states have a curvature-limited size. We propose to use a qubit as a local probe of the hyperbolic bath, for example by measuring the relaxation dynamics of the qubit. We find that, although the boundary effects strongly impact the photonic density of states, the spectral density is well described by the continuum theory. We show that interactions between qubits are mediated by photons propagating along geodesics. We demonstrate that the photonic bath can give rise to geometrically-frustrated hyperbolic quantum spin models with finite-range or exponentially-decaying interaction.

Circulation by microwave-induced vortex transport for signal isolation - Brittany Richman; J. M. Taylor (PRX Quantum, 2021)
Magnetic fields break time-reversal symmetry, which is leveraged in many settings to enable the nonreciprocal behavior of light. This is the core physics of circulators and other elements used in a variety of microwave and optical settings. Commercial circulators in the microwave domain typically use ferromagnetic materials and wave interference, requiring large devices and large fields. However, quantum information devices for sensing and computation require small sizes, lower fields, and better on-chip integration. Equivalences to ferromagnetic order---such as the XY model---can be realized at much lower magnetic fields by using arrays of superconducting islands connected by Josephson junctions. Here we show that the quantum-coherent motion of a single vortex in such an array suffices to induce nonreciprocal behavior, enabling a small-scale, moderate-bandwidth, and low insertion loss circulator at very low magnetic fields and at microwave frequencies relevant for experiments with qubits.

Clustering of steady-state correlations in open systems with long-range interactions - Andrew Y. Guo; Simon Lieu; Minh C. Tran; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2021)
Lieb-Robinson bounds are powerful analytical tools for constraining the dynamic and static properties of non-relativistic quantum systems. Recently, a complete picture for closed systems that evolve unitarily in time has been achieved. In experimental systems, however, interactions with the environment cannot generally be ignored, and the extension of Lieb-Robinson bounds to dissipative systems which evolve non-unitarily in time remains an open challenge. In this work, we prove two Lieb-Robinson bounds that constrain the dynamics of open quantum systems with long-range interactions that decay as a power-law in the distance between particles. Using a combination of these Lieb-Robinson bounds and mixing bounds which arise from "reversibility" -- naturally satisfied for thermal environments -- we prove the clustering of correlations in the steady states of open quantum systems with long-range interactions. Our work provides an initial step towards constraining the steady-state entanglement structure for a broad class of experimental platforms, and we highlight several open directions regarding the application of Lieb-Robinson bounds to dissipative systems.

Comment on "Using an atom interferometer to infer gravitational entanglement generation'' - Daniel Carney; Holger Müller; Jacob M. Taylor (2021)
Our paper arXiv:2101.11629 contains a technical error which changes some of the conclusions. We thank Streltsov, Pedernales, and Plenio for bringing the essence of this error to our attention. Here we explain the error, examine its consequences, and suggest methods to overcome the resulting weakness in the proposed experiment.

Complexity of Fermionic Dissipative Interactions and Applications to Quantum Computing - Shtanko, Oles; Deshpande, Abhinav; Julienne, Paul S.; Alexey V. Gorshkov (PRX Quantum, 2021)
Interactions between particles are usually a resource for quantum computing, making quantum many-body systems intractable by any known classical algorithm. In contrast, noise is typically considered as being inimical to quantum many-body correlations, ultimately leading the system to a classically tractable state. This work shows that noise represented by two-body processes, such as pair loss, plays the same role as many-body interactions and makes otherwise classically simulable systems universal for quantum computing. We analyze such processes in detail and establish a complexity transition between simulable and nonsimulable systems as a function of a tuning parameter. We determine important classes of simulable and nonsimulable two-body dissipation. Finally, we show how using resonant dissipation in cold atoms can enhance the performance of two-qubit gates.

Compressed Sensing Measurement of Long-Range Correlated Noise - Alireza Seif; Mohammad Hafezi; Yi-Kai Liu (2021)
Long-range correlated errors can severely impact the performance of NISQ (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) devices, and fault-tolerant quantum computation. Characterizing these errors is important for improving the performance of these devices, via calibration and error correction, and to ensure correct interpretation of the results. We propose a compressed sensing method for detecting two-qubit correlated dephasing errors, assuming only that the correlations are sparse (i.e., at most s pairs of qubits have correlated errors, where s << n(n-1)/2, and n is the total number of qubits). In particular, our method can detect long-range correlations between any two qubits in the system (i.e., the correlations are not restricted to be geometrically local). Our method is highly scalable: it requires as few as m = O(s log n) measurement settings, and efficient classical postprocessing based on convex optimization. In addition, when m = O(s log^4(n)), our method is highly robust to noise, and has sample complexity O(max(n,s)^2 log^4(n)), which can be compared to conventional methods that have sample complexity O(n^3). Thus, our method is advantageous when the correlations are sufficiently sparse, that is, when s < O(n^(3/2) / log^2(n)). Our method also performs well in numerical simulations on small system sizes, and has some resistance to state-preparation-and-measurement (SPAM) errors. The key ingredient in our method is a new type of compressed sensing measurement, which works by preparing entangled Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states (GHZ states) on random subsets of qubits, and measuring their decay rates with high precision.

Conformal field theories are magical - Christopher David White; ChunJun Cao; Brian Swingle (Physical Review B, 2021)
"Magic" is the degree to which a state cannot be approximated by Clifford gates. We study mana, a measure of magic, in the ground state of the Z3 Potts model, and argue that it is a broadly useful diagnostic for many-body physics. In particular we find that the q=3 ground state has large mana at the model's critical point, and that this mana resides in the system's correlations. We explain the form of the mana by a simple tensor-counting calculation based on a MERA representation of the state. Because mana is present at all length scales, we conclude that the conformal field theory describing the 3-state Potts model critical point is magical. These results control the difficulty of preparing the Potts ground state on an error-corrected quantum computer, and constrain tensor network models of AdS-CFT.

Constructing quantum many-body scar Hamiltonians from Floquet automata - Pierre-Gabriel Rozon; Michael Gullans; Kartiek Agarwal (2021)
We provide a systematic approach for constructing approximate quantum many-body scars(QMBS) starting from two-layer Floquet automaton circuits that exhibit trivial many-body revivals. We do so by applying successively more restrictions that force local gates of the automaton circuit to commute concomitantly more accurately when acting on select scar states. With these rules in place, an effective local, Floquet Hamiltonian is seen to capture dynamics of the automata over a long prethermal window, and neglected terms can be used to estimate the relaxation of revivals. We provide numerical evidence for such a picture and use our construction to derive several QMBS models, including the celebrated PXP model.

Cross-Platform Comparison of Arbitrary Quantum Computations - Daiwei Zhu; Ze-Pei Cian; Crystal Noel; Andrew Risinger; Debopriyo Biswas; Laird Egan; Yingyue Zhu; Alaina M. Green; Cinthia Huerta Alderete; Nhung H. Nguyen; Qingfeng Wang; Andrii Maksymov; et al. (2021)
As we approach the era of quantum advantage, when quantum computers (QCs) can outperform any classical computer on particular tasks, there remains the difficult challenge of how to validate their performance. While algorithmic success can be easily verified in some instances such as number factoring or oracular algorithms, these approaches only provide pass/fail information for a single QC. On the other hand, a comparison between different QCs on the same arbitrary circuit provides a lower-bound for generic validation: a quantum computation is only as valid as the agreement between the results produced on different QCs. Such an approach is also at the heart of evaluating metrological standards such as disparate atomic clocks. In this paper, we report a cross-platform QC comparison using randomized and correlated measurements that results in a wealth of information on the QC systems. We execute several quantum circuits on widely different physical QC platforms and analyze the cross-platform fidelities.

Crystallography of Hyperbolic Lattices - Igor Boettcher; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Alicia J. Kollár; Joseph Maciejko; Steven Rayan; Ronny Thomale (2021)
Hyperbolic lattices are a revolutionary platform for tabletop simulations of holography and quantum physics in curved space and facilitate efficient quantum error correcting codes. Their underlying geometry is non-Euclidean, and the absence of Bloch's theorem precludes a simple understanding of their band structure. Motivated by recent insights into hyperbolic band theory, we initiate a crystallography of hyperbolic lattices. We show that many hyperbolic lattices feature a hidden crystal structure characterized by unit cells, hyperbolic Bravais lattices, and associated symmetry groups. Using the mathematical framework of higher-genus Riemann surfaces and Fuchsian groups, we derive, for the first time, a list of example hyperbolic {p,q} lattices and their hyperbolic Bravais lattices, including five infinite families and several graphs relevant for experiments in circuit quantum electrodynamics and topolectrical circuits. Our results find application for both finite and infinite hyperbolic lattices. We describe a method to efficiently generate finite hyperbolic lattices of arbitrary size and explain why the present crystallography is the first step towards a complete band theory of hyperbolic lattices and apply it to construct Bloch wave Hamiltonians. This work lays the foundation for generalizing some of the most powerful concepts of solid state physics, such as crystal momentum and Brillouin zone, to the emerging field of hyperbolic lattices and tabletop simulations of gravitational theories, and reveals the connections to concepts from topology and algebraic geometry.

Decoding conformal field theories: from supervised to unsupervised learning - En-Jui Kuo; Alireza Seif; Rex Lundgren; Seth Whitsitt; Mohammad Hafezi (2021)
We use machine learning to classify rational two-dimensional conformal field theories. We first use the energy spectra of these minimal models to train a supervised learning algorithm. We find that the machine is able to correctly predict the nature and the value of critical points of several strongly correlated spin models using only their energy spectra. This is in contrast to previous works that use machine learning to classify different phases of matter, but do not reveal the nature of the critical point between phases. Given that the ground-state entanglement Hamiltonian of certain topological phases of matter is also described by conformal field theories, we use supervised learning on Réyni entropies and find that the machine is able to identify which conformal field theory describes the entanglement Hamiltonian with only the lowest few Réyni entropies to a high degree of accuracy. Finally, using autoencoders, an unsupervised learning algorithm, we find a hidden variable that has a direct correlation with the central charge and discuss prospects for using machine learning to investigate other conformal field theories, including higher-dimensional ones. Our results highlight that machine learning can be used to find and characterize critical points and also hint at the intriguing possibility to use machine learning to learn about more complex conformal field theories.

Device-independent Randomness Expansion with Entangled Photons - Lynden K. Shalm; Yanbao Zhang; Joshua C. Bienfang; Collin Schlager; Martin J. Stevens; Michael D. Mazurek; Carlos Abellán; Waldimar Amaya; Morgan W. Mitchell; Mohammad A. Alhejji; Honghao Fu; Joel Ornstein; et al. (Nat. Phys., 2021)
With the growing availability of experimental loophole-free Bell tests, it has become possible to implement a new class of device-independent random number generators whose output can be certified to be uniformly random without requiring a detailed model of the quantum devices used. However, all of these experiments require many input bits in order to certify a small number of output bits, and it is an outstanding challenge to develop a system that generates more randomness than is used. Here, we devise a device-independent spot-checking protocol which uses only uniform bits as input. Implemented with a photonic loophole-free Bell test, we can produce 24% more certified output bits (1,181,264,237) than consumed input bits (953,301,640), which is 5 orders of magnitude more efficient than our previous work [arXiv:1812.07786]. The experiment ran for 91.0 hours, creating randomness at an average rate of 3606 bits/s with a soundness error bounded by 5.7×10−7 in the presence of classical side information. Our system will allow for greater trust in public sources of randomness, such as randomness beacons, and the protocols may one day enable high-quality sources of private randomness as the device footprint shrinks.

Discovering hydrodynamic equations of many-body quantum systems - Yaroslav Kharkov; Oles Shtanko; Alireza Seif; Przemyslaw Bienias; Mathias Van Regemortel; Mohammad Hafezi; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2021)
Simulating and predicting dynamics of quantum many-body systems is extremely challenging, even for state-of-the-art computational methods, due to the spread of entanglement across the system. However, in the long-wavelength limit, quantum systems often admit a simplified description, which involves a small set of physical observables and requires only a few parameters such as sound velocity or viscosity. Unveiling the relationship between these hydrodynamic equations and the underlying microscopic theory usually requires a great effort by condensed matter theorists. In the present paper, we develop a new machine-learning framework for automated discovery of effective equations from a limited set of available data, thus bypassing complicated analytical derivations. The data can be generated from numerical simulations or come from experimental quantum simulator platforms. Using integrable models, where direct comparisons can be made, we reproduce previously known hydrodynamic equations, strikingly discover novel equations and provide their derivation whenever possible. We discover new hydrodynamic equations describing dynamics of interacting systems, for which the derivation remains an outstanding challenge. Our approach provides a new interpretable method to study properties of quantum materials and quantum simulators in non-perturbative regimes.

EasyPQC: Verifying Post-Quantum Cryptography - Manuel Barbosa; Gilles Barthe; Xiong Fan; Benjamin Grégoire; Shih-Han Hung; Jonathan Katz; Pierre-Yves Strub; Xiaodi Wu; Li Zhou (ACM CCS 2021, 2021)
EasyCrypt is a formal verification tool used extensively for formalizing concrete security proofs of cryptographic constructions. However, the EasyCrypt formal logics consider only classical attackers, which means that post-quantum security proofs cannot be formalized and machine-checked with this tool. In this paper we prove that a natural extension of the EasyCrypt core logics permits capturing a wide class of post-quantum cryptography proofs, settling a question raised by (Unruh, POPL 2019). Leveraging our positive result, we implement EasyPQC, an extension of EasyCrypt for post-quantum security proofs, and use EasyPQC to verify post-quantum security of three classic constructions: PRF-based MAC, Full Domain Hash and GPV08 identity-based encryption.

Efficient quantum algorithm for dissipative nonlinear differential equations - Jin-Peng Liu; Herman Øie Kolden; Hari K. Krovi; Nuno F. Loureiro; Konstantina Trivisa; Andrew M. Childs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021)
While there has been extensive previous work on efficient quantum algorithms for linear differential equations, analogous progress for nonlinear differential equations has been severely limited due to the linearity of quantum mechanics. Despite this obstacle, we develop a quantum algorithm for initial value problems described by dissipative quadratic n-dimensional ordinary differential equations. Assuming R<1, where R is a parameter characterizing the ratio of the nonlinearity to the linear dissipation, this algorithm has complexity T2poly(logT,logn)/ϵ, where T is the evolution time and ϵ is the allowed error in the output quantum state. This is an exponential improvement over the best previous quantum algorithms, whose complexity is exponential in T. We achieve this improvement using the method of Carleman linearization, for which we give an improved convergence theorem. This method maps a system of nonlinear differential equations to an infinite-dimensional system of linear differential equations, which we discretize, truncate, and solve using the forward Euler method and the quantum linear system algorithm. We also provide a lower bound on the worst-case complexity of quantum algorithms for general quadratic differential equations, showing that the problem is intractable for R≥2–√. Finally, we discuss potential applications of this approach to problems arising in biology as well as in fluid and plasma dynamics.

Efficient quantum measurement of Pauli operators - Ophelia Crawford; Barnaby van Straaten; Daochen Wang; Thomas Parks; Earl Campbell; Stephen Brierley (Quantum, 2021)
Estimating the expectation value of an observable is a fundamental task in quantum computation. Unfortunately, it is often impossible to obtain such estimates directly, as the computer is restricted to measuring in a fixed computational basis. One common solution splits the observable into a weighted sum of Pauli operators and measures each separately, at the cost of many measurements. An improved version first groups mutually commuting Pauli operators together and then measures all operators within each group simultaneously. The effectiveness of this depends on two factors. First, to enable simultaneous measurement, circuits are required to rotate each group to the computational basis. In our work, we present two efficient circuit constructions that suitably rotate any group of k commuting n-qubit Pauli operators using at most kn−k(k+1)/2 and O(kn/logk) two-qubit gates respectively. Second, metrics that justifiably measure the effectiveness of a grouping are required. In our work, we propose two natural metrics that operate under the assumption that measurements are distributed optimally among groups. Motivated by our new metrics, we introduce SORTED INSERTION, a grouping strategy that is explicitly aware of the weighting of each Pauli operator in the observable. Our methods are numerically illustrated in the context of the Variational Quantum Eigensolver, where the observables in question are molecular Hamiltonians. As measured by our metrics, SORTED INSERTION outperforms four conventional greedy colouring algorithms that seek the minimum number of groups.

Efficient quantum programming using EASE gates on a trapped-ion quantum computer - Nikodem Grzesiak; Andrii Maksymov; Pradeep Niroula; Yunseong Nam (2021)
Parallel operations in conventional computing have proven to be an essential tool for efficient and practical computation, and the story is not different for quantum computing. Indeed, there exists a large body of works that study advantages of parallel implementations of quantum gates for efficient quantum circuit implementations. Here, we focus on the recently invented efficient, arbitrary, simultaneously entangling (EASE) gates, available on a trapped-ion quantum computer. Leveraging its flexibility in selecting arbitrary pairs of qubits to be coupled with any degrees of entanglement, all in parallel, we show a n-qubit Clifford circuit can be implemented using 6log(n) EASE gates, a n-qubit multiply-controlled NOT gate can be implemented using 3n/2 EASE gates, and a n-qubit permutation can be implemented using six EASE gates. We discuss their implications to near-term quantum chemistry simulations and the state of the art pattern matching algorithm. Given Clifford + multiply-controlled NOT gates form a universal gate set for quantum computing, our results imply efficient quantum computation by EASE gates, in general.

Energy storage and coherence in closed and open quantum batteries - Francesco Caravelli; Bin Yan; Luis Pedro García-Pintos; Alioscia Hamma (Quantum, 2021)
We study the role of coherence in closed and open quantum batteries. We obtain upper bounds to the work performed or energy exchanged by both closed and open quantum batteries in terms of coherence. Specifically, we show that the energy storage can be bounded by the Hilbert-Schmidt coherence of the density matrix in the spectral basis of the unitary operator that encodes the evolution of the battery. We also show that an analogous bound can be obtained in terms of the battery's Hamiltonian coherence in the basis of the unitary operator by evaluating their commutator. We apply these bounds to a 4-state quantum system and the anisotropic XY Ising model in the closed system case, and the Spin-Boson model in the open case.

Entangled quantum cellular automata, physical complexity, and Goldilocks rules - Hillberry, Logan E; Jones, Matthew T; Vargas, David L; Rall, Patrick; Nicole Yunger Halpern; Bao, Ning; Notarnicola, Simone; Montangero, Simone; Carr, Lincoln D (Quantum Science and Technology, 2021)
Cellular automata are interacting classical bits that display diverse emergent behaviors, from fractals to random-number generators to Turing-complete computation. We discover that quantum cellular automata (QCA) can exhibit complexity in the sense of the complexity science that describes biology, sociology, and economics. QCA exhibit complexity when evolving under "Goldilocks rules" that we define by balancing activity and stasis. Our Goldilocks rules generate robust dynamical features (entangled breathers), network structure and dynamics consistent with complexity, and persistent entropy fluctuations. Present-day experimental platforms -- Rydberg arrays, trapped ions, and superconducting qubits -- can implement our Goldilocks protocols, making testable the link between complexity science and quantum computation exposed by our QCA.

Entanglement and purification transitions in non-Hermitian quantum mechanics - Sarang Gopalakrishnan; Michael Gullans (Phys. Rev. Lett., in press, 2021)
A quantum system subject to continuous measurement and post-selection evolves according to a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We show that, as one increases the rate of post-selection, this non-Hermitian Hamiltonian undergoes a spectral phase transition. On one side of this phase transition (for weak post-selection) an initially mixed density matrix remains mixed at all times, and an initially unentangled state develops volume-law entanglement; on the other side, an arbitrary initial state approaches a unique pure state with low entanglement. We identify this transition with an exceptional point in the spectrum of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, at which PT symmetry is spontaneously broken. We characterize the transition as well as the nontrivial steady state that emerges at late times in the mixed phase using exact diagonalization and an approximate, analytically tractable mean-field theory; these methods yield consistent conclusions.

Entanglement Phase Transitions in Measurement-Only Dynamics - Ippoliti, Matteo; Michael Gullans; Gopalakrishnan, Sarang; Huse, David A.; Khemani, Vedika (Physical Review X, 2021)
Unitary circuits subject to repeated projective measurements can undergo an entanglement phase transition (EPT) as a function of the measurement rate. This transition is generally understood in terms of a competition between the scrambling effects of unitary dynamics and the disentangling effects of measurements. We find that, surprisingly, EPTs are possible even in the absence of scrambling unitary dynamics, where they are best understood as arising from measurements alone. This motivates us to introduce measurement-only models, in which the "scrambling" and "un-scrambling" effects driving the EPT are fundamentally intertwined and cannot be attributed to physically distinct processes. This represents a novel form of an EPT, conceptually distinct from that in hybrid unitary-projective circuits. We explore the entanglement phase diagrams, critical points, and quantum code properties of some of these measurement-only models. We find that the principle driving the EPTs in these models is frustration, or mutual incompatibility, of the measurements. Suprisingly, an entangling (volume-law) phase is the generic outcome when measuring sufficiently long but still local (≳3-body) operators. We identify a class of exceptions to this behavior ("bipartite ensembles") which cannot sustain an entangling phase, but display dual area-law phases, possibly with different kinds of quantum order, separated by self-dual critical points. Finally, we introduce a measure of information spreading in dynamics with measurements and use it to demonstrate the emergence of a statistical light-cone, despite the non-locality inherent to quantum measurements.

Estimating distinguishability measures on quantum computers - Rochisha Agarwal; Soorya Rethinasamy; Kunal Sharma; Mark M. Wilde (2021)
The performance of a quantum information processing protocol is ultimately judged by distinguishability measures that quantify how distinguishable the actual result of the protocol is from the ideal case. The most prominent distinguishability measures are those based on the fidelity and trace distance, due to their physical interpretations. In this paper, we propose and review several algorithms for estimating distinguishability measures based on trace distance and fidelity, and we evaluate their performance using simulators of quantum computers. The algorithms can be used for distinguishing quantum states, channels, and strategies (the last also known in the literature as "quantum combs"). The fidelity-based algorithms offer novel physical interpretations of these distinguishability measures in terms of the maximum probability with which a single prover (or competing provers) can convince a verifier to accept the outcome of an associated computation. We simulate these algorithms by using a variational approach with parameterized quantum circuits and find that they converge well for the examples that we consider.

Exactly Solvable Lattice Hamiltonians and Gravitational Anomalies - Yu-An Chen; Po-Shen Hsin (2021)
We construct infinitely many new exactly solvable local commuting projector lattice Hamiltonian models for general bosonic beyond group cohomology invertible topological phases of order two and four in any spacetime dimensions, whose boundaries are characterized by gravitational anomalies. Examples include the beyond group cohomology invertible phase without symmetry in (4+1)D that has an anomalous boundary Z2 topological order with fermionic particle and fermionic loop excitations that have mutual π statistics. We argue that this construction gives a new non-trivial quantum cellular automaton (QCA) in (4+1)D of order two. We also present an explicit construction of gapped symmetric boundary state for the bosonic beyond group cohomology invertible phase with unitary Z2 symmetry in (4+1)D. We discuss new quantum phase transitions protected by different invertible phases across the transitions.

Expanding the VOQC Toolkit - Kesha Hietala; Liyi Li; Akshaj Gaur; Aaron Green; Robert Rand; Xiaodi Wu; Michael Hicks (The Second International Workshop on Programming Languages for Quantum Computing (PLanQC 2021), 2021)
voqc [Hietala et al. 2021b] (pronounced “vox”) is a compiler for quantum circuits, in the style of tools like Qiskit [Aleksandrowicz et al. 2019], tket [Cambridge Quantum Computing Ltd 2019], Quilc [Rigetti Computing 2019], and Cirq [Developers 2021]. What makes voqc different from these tools is that it has been formally verified in the Coq proof assistant [Coq Development Team 2019]. voqc source programs are expressed in sqir, a simple quantum intermediate representation, which has a precise mathematical semantics. We use Gallina, Coq’s programming language, to implement voqc transformations over sqir programs, and use Coq to prove the source program’s semantics are preserved. We then extract these Gallina definitions to OCaml, and compile the OCaml code to a library that can operate on standard-formatted circuits. voqc, and sqir, were built to be general-purpose. For example, while we originally designed sqir for use in verified optimizations, we subsequently found sqir could also be suitable for writing, and proving correct, source programs [Hietala et al. 2021a]. We have continued to develop the voqc codebase to expand its reach and utility. In this abstract, we present new extensions to voqc as an illustration of its flexibility. These include support for calling voqc transformations from Python, added support for new gate sets and optimizations, and the extension of our notion of correctness to include mapping-preservation, which allows us to apply optimizations after mapping, reducing the cost introduced by making a program conform to hardware constraints.

An explicit vector algorithm for high-girth MaxCut - Jessica K. Thompson; Ojas Parekh; Kunal Marwaha (2021)
We give an approximation algorithm for MaxCut and provide guarantees on the average fraction of edges cut on d-regular graphs of girth ≥2k. For every d≥3 and k≥4, our approximation guarantees are better than those of all other classical and quantum algorithms known to the authors. Our algorithm constructs an explicit vector solution to the standard semidefinite relaxation of MaxCut and applies hyperplane rounding. It may be viewed as a simplification of the previously best known technique, which approximates Gaussian wave processes on the infinite d-regular tree.

Exploiting anticommutation in Hamiltonian simulation - Qi Zhao; Xiao Yuan (2021)
Quantum computing can efficiently simulate Hamiltonian dynamics of many-body quantum physics, a task that is generally intractable with classical computers. The hardness lies at the ubiquitous anti-commutative relations of quantum operators, in corresponding with the notorious negative sign problem in classical simulation. Intuitively, Hamiltonians with more commutative terms are also easier to simulate on a quantum computer, and anti-commutative relations generally cause more errors, such as in the product formula method. Here, we theoretically explore the role of anti-commutative relation in Hamiltonian simulation. We find that, contrary to our intuition, anti-commutative relations could also reduce the hardness of Hamiltonian simulation. Specifically, Hamiltonians with mutually anti-commutative terms are easy to simulate, as what happens with ones consisting of mutually commutative terms. Such a property is further utilized to reduce the algorithmic error or the gate complexity in the truncated Taylor series quantum algorithm for general problems. Moreover, we propose two modified linear combinations of unitaries methods tailored for Hamiltonians with different degrees of anti-commutation. We numerically verify that the proposed methods exploiting anti-commutative relations could significantly improve the simulation accuracy of electronic Hamiltonians. Our work sheds light on the roles of commutative and anti-commutative relations in simulating quantum systems.

Exponentially Many Local Minima in Quantum Neural Networks - Xuchen You; Xiaodi Wu (Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR, 2021)
Quantum Neural Networks (QNNs), or the so-called variational quantum circuits, are important quantum applications both because of their similar promises as classical neural networks and because of the feasibility of their implementation on near-term intermediate-size noisy quantum machines (NISQ). However, the training task of QNNs is challenging and much less understood. We conduct a quantitative investigation on the landscape of loss functions of QNNs and identify a class of simple yet extremely hard QNN instances for training. Specifically, we show for typical under-parameterized QNNs, there exists a dataset that induces a loss function with the number of spurious local minima depending exponentially on the number of parameters. Moreover, we show the optimality of our construction by providing an almost matching upper bound on such dependence. While local minima in classical neural networks are due to non-linear activations, in quantum neural networks local minima appear as a result of the quantum interference phenomenon. Finally, we empirically confirm that our constructions can indeed be hard instances in practice with typical gradient-based optimizers, which demonstrates the practical value of our findings.

Faster Digital Quantum Simulation by Symmetry Protection - Minh C. Tran; Yuan Su; Daniel Carney; J. M. Taylor (PRX Quantum, 2021)
Simulating the dynamics of quantum systems is an important application of quantum computers and has seen a variety of implementations on current hardware. We show that by introducing quantum gates implementing unitary transformations generated by the symmetries of the system, one can induce destructive interference between the errors from different steps of the simulation, effectively giving faster quantum simulation by symmetry protection. We derive rigorous bounds on the error of a symmetry-protected simulation algorithm and identify conditions for optimal symmetry protection. In particular, when the symmetry transformations are chosen as powers of a unitary, the error of the algorithm is approximately projected to the so-called quantum Zeno subspaces. We prove a bound on this approximation error, exponentially improving a recent result of Burgarth, Facchi, Gramegna, and Pascazio. We apply our technique to the simulations of the XXZ Heisenberg interactions with local disorder and the Schwinger model in quantum field theory. For both systems, our algorithm can reduce the simulation error by several orders of magnitude over the unprotected simulation. Finally, we provide numerical evidence suggesting that our technique can also protect simulation against other types of coherent, temporally correlated errors, such as the 1/f noise commonly found in solid-state experiments.

Feedback-stabilized dynamical steady states in the Bose-Hubbard model - Jeremy T. Young; Alexey V. Gorshkov; I. B. Spielman (Phys. Rev. Research, 2021)
The implementation of a combination of continuous weak measurement and classical feedback provides a powerful tool for controlling the evolution of quantum systems. In this work, we investigate the potential of this approach from three perspectives. First, we consider a double-well system in the classical large-atom-number limit, deriving the exact equations of motion in the presence of feedback. Second, we consider the same system in the limit of small atom number, revealing the effect that quantum fluctuations have on the feedback scheme. Finally, we explore the behavior of modest sized Hubbard chains using exact numerics, demonstrating the near-deterministic preparation of number states, a tradeoff between local and non-local feedback for state preparation, and evidence of a feedback-driven symmetry-breaking phase transition.

From Quantum Codes to Gravity: A Journey of Gravitizing Quantum Mechanics - ChunJun Cao (2021)
In this note, I review a recent approach to quantum gravity that "gravitizes" quantum mechanics by emerging geometry and gravity from complex quantum states. Drawing further insights from tensor network toy models in AdS/CFT, I propose that approximate quantum error correction codes, when re-adapted into the aforementioned framework, also has promise in emerging gravity in near-flat geometries.

Frustration-induced anomalous transport and strong photon decay in waveguide QED - Ron Belyansky; Seth Whitsitt; Rex Lundgren; Yidan Wang; Andrei Vrajitoarea; Andrew A. Houck; Alexey V. Gorshkov (Phys. Rev. Research, 2021)
We study the propagation of photons in a one-dimensional environment consisting of two non-interacting species of photons frustratingly coupled to a single spin-1/2. The ultrastrong frustrated coupling leads to an extreme mixing of the light and matter degrees of freedom, resulting in the disintegration of the spin and a breakdown of the "dressed-spin", or polaron, description. Using a combination of numerical and analytical methods, we show that the elastic response becomes increasingly weak at the effective spin frequency, showing instead an increasingly strong and broadband response at higher energies. We also show that the photons can decay into multiple photons of smaller energies. The total probability of these inelastic processes can be as large as the total elastic scattering rate, or half of the total scattering rate, which is as large as it can be. The frustrated spin induces strong anisotropic photon-photon interactions that are dominated by inter-species interactions. Our results are relevant to state-of-the-art circuit and cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments.

Fully device-independent quantum key distribution using synchronous correlations - Rodrigues, Nishant; Lackey, Brad (2021)
We derive a device-independent quantum key distribution protocol based on synchronous correlations and their Bell inequalities. This protocol offers several advantages over other device-independent schemes including symmetry between the two users and no need for preshared randomness. We close a "synchronicity" loophole by showing that an almost synchronous correlation inherits the self-testing property of the associated synchronous correlation. We also pose a new security assumption that closes the "locality" (or "causality") loophole: an unbounded adversary with even a small uncertainty about the users' choice of measurement bases cannot produce any almost synchronous correlation that approximately maximally violates a synchronous Bell inequality.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

García-Pintos, Hamma, and del Campo Reply - Luis Pedro García-Pintos; Alioscia Hamma; Adolfo del Campo (Phys. Rev. Lett., 2021)
We acknowledge that a derivation reported in Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 040601 (2020) is incorrect as pointed out by Cusumano and Rudnicki. We respond by giving a correct proof of the claim “fluctuations in the free energy operator upper bound the charging power of a quantum battery” that we made in the Letter.

Generalization in quantum machine learning from few training data - Matthias C. Caro; Hsin-Yuan Huang; M. Cerezo; Kunal Sharma; Andrew Sornborger; Lukasz Cincio; Patrick J. Coles (2021)
Modern quantum machine learning (QML) methods involve variationally optimizing a parameterized quantum circuit on a training data set, and subsequently making predictions on a testing data set (i.e., generalizing). In this work, we provide a comprehensive study of generalization performance in QML after training on a limited number N of training data points. We show that the generalization error of a quantum machine learning model with T trainable gates scales at worst as T/N−−−−√. When only K≪T gates have undergone substantial change in the optimization process, we prove that the generalization error improves to K/N−−−−√. Our results imply that the compiling of unitaries into a polynomial number of native gates, a crucial application for the quantum computing industry that typically uses exponential-size training data, can be sped up significantly. We also show that classification of quantum states across a phase transition with a quantum convolutional neural network requires only a very small training data set. Other potential applications include learning quantum error correcting codes or quantum dynamical simulation. Our work injects new hope into the field of QML, as good generalization is guaranteed from few training data.

Higher cup products on hypercubic lattices: application to lattice models of topological phases - Yu-An Chen; Sri Tata (2021)
In this paper, we derive the explicit formula for higher cup products on hypercubic lattices, based on the recently developed geometrical interpretation in the simplicial case. We illustrate how this formalism can elucidate lattice constructions on hypercubic lattices for various models and deriving them from spacetime actions. In particular, we demonstrate explicitly that the (3+1)D SPT S=12∫w22+w41 (where w1 and w2 are the first and second Stiefel-Whitney classes) is dual to the 3-fermion Walker-Wang model constructed on the cubic lattice by Burnell-Chen-Fidkowski-Vishwanath. Other examples include the double-semion model, and also the `fermionic' toric code in arbitrary dimensions on hypercubic lattices. In addition, we extend previous constructions of exact boson-fermion dualities and the Gu-Wen Grassmann Integral to arbitrary dimensions. Another result which may be of independent interest is a derivation of a cochain-level action for the generalized double-semion model, reproducing a recently derived action on the cohomology level.

High-precision quantum algorithms for partial differential equations - Andrew M. Childs; Jin-Peng Liu; Aaron Ostrander (Quantum 5, 574, 2021)
Quantum computers can produce a quantum encoding of the solution of a system of differential equations exponentially faster than a classical algorithm can produce an explicit description. However, while high-precision quantum algorithms for linear ordinary differential equations are well established, the best previous quantum algorithms for linear partial differential equations (PDEs) have complexity poly(1/ε), where ε is the error tolerance. By developing quantum algorithms based on adaptive-order finite difference methods and spectral methods, we improve the complexity of quantum algorithms for linear PDEs to be poly(d,log(1/ε)), where d is the spatial dimension. Our algorithms apply high-precision quantum linear system algorithms to systems whose condition numbers and approximation errors we bound. We develop a finite difference algorithm for the Poisson equation and a spectral algorithm for more general second-order elliptic equations.

How to engineer a quantum wavefunction - Peter W. Evans; Dominik Hangleiter; Karim P. Y. Thébault (2021)
In a conventional experiment, inductive inferences between source and target systems are typically justified with reference to a uniformity principle between systems of the same material type. In an analogue quantum simulation, by contrast, scientists aim to learn about target quantum systems of one material type via an experiment on a source quantum system of a different material type. In this paper, we argue that such an inference can be justified by reference to the two quantum systems being of the same empirical type. We illustrate this novel experimental practice of wavefunction engineering with reference to the example of Bose-Hubbard systems.

Hyper-Invariant MERA: Approximate Holographic Error Correction Codes with Power-Law Correlations - ChunJun Cao; Jason Pollack; Yixu Wang (2021)
We consider a class of holographic tensor networks that are efficiently contractible variational ansatze, manifestly (approximate) quantum error correction codes, and can support power-law correlation functions. In the case when the network consists of a single type of tensor that also acts as an erasure correction code, we show that it cannot be both locally contractible and sustain power-law correlation functions. Motivated by this no-go theorem, and the desirability of local contractibility for an efficient variational ansatz, we provide guidelines for constructing networks consisting of multiple types of tensors that can support power-law correlation. We also provide an explicit construction of one such network, which approximates the holographic HaPPY pentagon code in the limit where variational parameters are taken to be small.

On the Impossibility of Post-Quantum Black-Box Zero-Knowledge in Constant Rounds - Nai-Hui Chia; Kai-Min Chung; Qipeng Liu; Takashi Yamakawa (2021)
We investigate the existence of constant-round post-quantum black-box zero-knowledge protocols for NP. As a main result, we show that there is no constant-round post-quantum black-box zero-knowledge argument for NP unless NP⊆BQP. As constant-round black-box zero-knowledge arguments for NP exist in the classical setting, our main result points out a fundamental difference between post-quantum and classical zero-knowledge protocols. Combining previous results, we conclude that unless NP⊆BQP, constant-round post-quantum zero-knowledge protocols for NP exist if and only if we use non-black-box techniques or relax certain security requirements such as relaxing standard zero-knowledge to ϵ-zero-knowledge. Additionally, we also prove that three-round and public-coin constant-round post-quantum black-box ϵ-zero-knowledge arguments for NP do not exist unless NP⊆BQP.

Interactive Protocols for Classically-Verifiable Quantum Advantage - Daiwei Zhu; Gregory D. Kahanamoku-Meyer; Laura Lewis; Crystal Noel; Or Katz; Bahaa Harraz; Qingfeng Wang; Andrew Risinger; Lei Feng; Debopriyo Biswas; Laird Egan; Alexandru Gheorghiu; et al. (2021)
Achieving quantum computational advantage requires solving a classically intractable problem on a quantum device. Natural proposals rely upon the intrinsic hardness of classically simulating quantum mechanics; however, verifying the output is itself classically intractable. On the other hand, certain quantum algorithms (e.g. prime factorization via Shor's algorithm) are efficiently verifiable, but require more resources than what is available on near-term devices. One way to bridge the gap between verifiability and implementation is to use "interactions" between a prover and a verifier. By leveraging cryptographic functions, such protocols enable the classical verifier to enforce consistency in a quantum prover's responses across multiple rounds of interaction. In this work, we demonstrate the first implementation of an interactive quantum advantage protocol, using an ion trap quantum computer. We execute two complementary protocols -- one based upon the learning with errors problem and another where the cryptographic construction implements a computational Bell test. To perform multiple rounds of interaction, we implement mid-circuit measurements on a subset of trapped ion qubits, with subsequent coherent evolution. For both protocols, the performance exceeds the asymptotic bound for classical behavior; maintaining this fidelity at scale would conclusively demonstrate verifiable quantum advantage.

Learnability of the output distributions of local quantum circuits - Marcel Hinsche; Marios Ioannou; Alexander Nietner; Jonas Haferkamp; Yihui Quek; Dominik Hangleiter; Jean-Pierre Seifert; Jens Eisert; Ryan Sweke (2021)
There is currently a large interest in understanding the potential advantages quantum devices can offer for probabilistic modelling. In this work we investigate, within two different oracle models, the probably approximately correct (PAC) learnability of quantum circuit Born machines, i.e., the output distributions of local quantum circuits. We first show a negative result, namely, that the output distributions of super-logarithmic depth Clifford circuits are not sample-efficiently learnable in the statistical query model, i.e., when given query access to empirical expectation values of bounded functions over the sample space. This immediately implies the hardness, for both quantum and classical algorithms, of learning from statistical queries the output distributions of local quantum circuits using any gate set which includes the Clifford group. As many practical generative modelling algorithms use statistical queries -- including those for training quantum circuit Born machines -- our result is broadly applicable and strongly limits the possibility of a meaningful quantum advantage for learning the output distributions of local quantum circuits. As a positive result, we show that in a more powerful oracle model, namely when directly given access to samples, the output distributions of local Clifford circuits are computationally efficiently PAC learnable by a classical learner. Our results are equally applicable to the problems of learning an algorithm for generating samples from the target distribution (generative modelling) and learning an algorithm for evaluating its probabilities (density modelling). They provide the first rigorous insights into the learnability of output distributions of local quantum circuits from the probabilistic modelling perspective.

Lefschetz Thimble Quantum Monte Carlo for Spin Systems - T. C. Mooney; Jacob Bringewatt; Lucas T. Brady (2021)
Monte Carlo simulations are often useful tools for modeling quantum systems, but in some cases they suffer from a sign problem, which manifests as an oscillating phase attached to the probabilities being sampled. This sign problem generally leads to an exponential slow down in the time taken by a Monte Carlo algorithm to reach any given level of accuracy, and it has been shown that completely solving the sign problem for an arbitrary quantum system is NP-hard. However, a variety of techniques exist for mitigating the sign problem in specific cases; in particular, the technique of deforming the Monte Carlo simulation's plane of integration onto Lefschetz thimbles (that is, complex hypersurfaces of stationary phase) has seen success for many problems of interest in the context of quantum field theories. We extend this methodology to discrete spin systems by utilizing spin coherent state path integrals to re-express the spin system's partition function in terms of continuous variables. This translation to continuous variables introduces additional challenges into the Lefschetz thimble method, which we address. We show that these techniques do indeed work to lessen the sign problem on some simple spin systems.

The Lieb-Robinson light cone for power-law interactions - Minh C. Tran; Andrew Y. Guo; Christopher L. Baldwin; Adam Ehrenberg; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Andrew Lucas (2021)
The Lieb-Robinson theorem states that information propagates with a finite velocity in quantum systems on a lattice with nearest-neighbor interactions. What are the speed limits on information propagation in quantum systems with power-law interactions, which decay as 1/rα at distance r? Here, we present a definitive answer to this question for all exponents α>2d and all spatial dimensions d. Schematically, information takes time at least rmin{1,α−2d} to propagate a distance~r. As recent state transfer protocols saturate this bound, our work closes a decades-long hunt for optimal Lieb-Robinson bounds on quantum information dynamics with power-law interactions.

Limits to Perception by Quantum Monitoring with Finite Efficiency - García-Pintos, Luis Pedro; del Campo, Adolfo (Entropy, 2021)
We formulate limits to perception under continuous quantum measurements by comparing the quantum states assigned by agents that have partial access to measurement outcomes. To this end, we provide bounds on the trace distance and the relative entropy between the assigned state and the actual state of the system. These bounds are expressed solely in terms of the purity and von Neumann entropy of the state assigned by the agent, and are shown to characterize how an agent’s perception of the system is altered by access to additional information. We apply our results to Gaussian states and to the dynamics of a system embedded in an environment illustrated on a quantum Ising chain.

Linear and continuous variable spin-wave processing using a cavity-coupled atomic ensemble - Kevin C. Cox; Przemyslaw Bienias; David H. Meyer; Donald P. Fahey; Paul D. Kunz; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2021)
Spin-wave excitations in ensembles of atoms are gaining attention as a quantum information resource. However, current techniques with atomic spin waves do not achieve universal quantum information processing. We conduct a theoretical analysis of methods to create a high-capacity universal quantum processor and network node using an ensemble of laser-cooled atoms, trapped in a one-dimensional periodic potential and coupled to a ring cavity. We describe how to establish linear quantum processing using a lambda-scheme in a rubidium-atom system, calculate the expected experimental operational fidelities. Second, we derive an efficient method to achieve linear controllability with a single ensemble of atoms, rather than two-ensembles as proposed in [K. C. Cox et al. Spin-Wave Quantum Computing with Atoms in a Single-Mode Cavity, preprint 2021]. Finally, we propose to use the spin-wave processor for continuous-variable quantum information processing and present a scheme to generate large dual-rail cluster states useful for deterministic computing.

Localization crossover and subdiffusive transport in a classical facilitated network model of a disordered, interacting quantum spin chain - Kai Klocke; Christopher David White; Michael Buchhold (2021)
We consider the random-field Heisenberg model, a paradigmatic model for many-body localization (MBL), and add a Markovian dephasing bath coupled to the Anderson orbitals of the model's non-interacting limit. We map this system to a classical facilitated hopping model that is computationally tractable for large system sizes, and investigate its dynamics. The classical model exhibits a robust crossover between an ergodic (thermal) phase and a frozen (localized) phase. The frozen phase is destabilized by thermal subregions (bubbles), which thermalize surrounding sites by providing a fluctuating interaction energy and so enable off-resonance particle transport. Investigating steady state transport, we observe that the interplay between thermal and frozen bubbles leads to a clear transition between diffusive and subdiffusive regimes. This phenomenology both describes the MBL system coupled to a bath, and provides a classical analogue for the many-body localization transition in the corresponding quantum model, in that the classical model displays long local memory times. It also highlights the importance of the details of the bath coupling in studies of MBL systems coupled to thermal environments.

Machine learning outperforms thermodynamics in measuring how well a many-body system learns a drive - Zhong, Weishun; Gold, Jacob M.; Marzen, Sarah; England, Jeremy L.; Nicole Yunger Halpern (Scientific Reports, 2021)
Diverse many-body systems, from soap bubbles to suspensions to polymers, learn and remember patterns in the drives that push them far from equilibrium. This learning may be leveraged for computation, memory, and engineering. Until now, many-body learning has been detected with thermodynamic properties, such as work absorption and strain. We progress beyond these macroscopic properties first defined for equilibrium contexts: We quantify statistical mechanical learning using representation learning, a machine-learning model in which information squeezes through a bottleneck. By calculating properties of the bottleneck, we measure four facets of many-body systems' learning: classification ability, memory capacity, discrimination ability, and novelty detection. Numerical simulations of a classical spin glass illustrate our technique. This toolkit exposes self-organization that eludes detection by thermodynamic measures: Our toolkit more reliably and more precisely detects and quantifies learning by matter while providing a unifying framework for many-body learning.

Machine-learning enhanced dark soliton detection in Bose-Einstein condensates - Shangjie Guo; Amilson R. Fritsch; Craig Greenberg; I. B. Spielman; Justyna P. Zwolak (Mach. Learn.: Sci. Technol., 2021)
Most data in cold-atom experiments comes from images, the analysis of which is limited by our preconceptions of the patterns that could be present in the data. We focus on the well-defined case of detecting dark solitons -- appearing as local density depletions in a BEC -- using a methodology that is extensible to the general task of pattern recognition in images of cold atoms. Studying soliton dynamics over a wide range of parameters requires the analysis of large datasets, making the existing human-inspection-based methodology a significant bottleneck. Here we describe an automated classification and positioning system for identifying localized excitations in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) utilizing deep convolutional neural networks to eliminate the need for human image examination. Furthermore, we openly publish our labeled dataset of dark solitons, the first of its kind, for further machine learning research.

Magic State Distillation from Entangled States - Ning Bao; ChunJun Cao; Vincent Paul Su (2021)
Magic can be distributed non-locally in many-body entangled states, such as the low energy states of condensed matter systems. Using the Bravyi-Kitaev magic state distillation protocol, we find that non-local magic is distillable and can improve the distillation outcome. We analyze a few explicit examples and show that spin squeezing can be used to convert non-distillable states into distillable ones. Our analysis also suggests that the conventional product input states assumed by magic distillation protocols are extremely atypical among general states with distillable magic. It further justifies the need for studying a diverse range of entangled inputs that yield magic states with high probability.

Maximum Refractive Index of an Atomic Medium - Andreoli, Francesco; Michael Gullans; High, Alexander A.; Browaeys, Antoine; Chang, Darrick E. (Physical Review X, 2021)
It is interesting to observe that all optical materials with a positive refractive index have a value of index that is of order unity. Surprisingly, though, a deep understanding of the mechanisms that lead to this universal behavior seems to be lacking. Moreover, this observation is difficult to reconcile with the fact that a single, isolated atom is known to have a giant optical response, as characterized by a resonant scattering cross section that far exceeds its physical size. Here, we theoretically and numerically investigate the evolution of the optical properties of an ensemble of ideal atoms as a function of density, starting from the dilute gas limit, including the effects of multiple scattering and near-field interactions. Interestingly, despite the giant response of an isolated atom, we find that the maximum index does not indefinitely grow with increasing density, but rather reaches a limiting value n≈1.7. We propose an explanation based upon strong-disorder renormalization group theory, in which the near-field interaction combined with random atomic positions results in an inhomogeneous broadening of atomic resonance frequencies. This mechanism ensures that regardless of the physical atomic density, light at any given frequency only interacts with at most a few near-resonant atoms per cubic wavelength, thus limiting the maximum index attainable. Our work is a promising first step to understand the limits of refractive index from a bottom-up, atomic physics perspective, and also introduces renormalization group as a powerful tool to understand the generally complex problem of multiple scattering of light overall.

The membership problem for constant-sized quantum correlations is undecidable - Honghao Fu; Carl Miller; William Slofstra (2021)
When two spatially separated parties make measurements on an unknown entangled quantum state, what correlations can they achieve? How difficult is it to determine whether a given correlation is a quantum correlation? These questions are central to problems in quantum communication and computation. Previous work has shown that the general membership problem for quantum correlations is computationally undecidable. In the current work we show something stronger: there is a family of constant-sized correlations -- that is, correlations for which the number of measurements and number of measurement outcomes are fixed -- such that solving the quantum membership problem for this family is computationally impossible. Thus, the undecidability that arises in understanding Bell experiments is not dependent on varying the number of measurements in the experiment. This places strong constraints on the types of descriptions that can be given for quantum correlation sets. Our proof is based on a combination of techniques from quantum self-testing and from undecidability results of the third author for linear system nonlocal games.

Meta Hamiltonian Learning - Przemyslaw Bienias; Alireza Seif; Mohammad Hafezi (2021)
Efficient characterization of quantum devices is a significant challenge critical for the development of large scale quantum computers. We consider an experimentally motivated situation, in which we have a decent estimate of the Hamiltonian, and its parameters need to be characterized and fine-tuned frequently to combat drifting experimental variables. We use a machine learning technique known as meta-learning to learn a more efficient optimizer for this task. We consider training with the nearest-neighbor Ising model and study the trained model's generalizability to other Hamiltonian models and larger system sizes. We observe that the meta-optimizer outperforms other optimization methods in average loss over test samples. This advantage follows from the meta-optimizer being less likely to get stuck in local minima, which highly skews the distribution of the final loss of the other optimizers. In general, meta-learning decreases the number of calls to the experiment and reduces the needed classical computational resources.

Noise-induced barren plateaus in variational quantum algorithms - Samson Wang; Enrico Fontana; M. Cerezo; Kunal Sharma; Akira Sone; Lukasz Cincio; Patrick J. Coles (Nature Communications, 2021)
Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) may be a path to quantum advantage on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers. A natural question is whether noise on NISQ devices places fundamental limitations on VQA performance. We rigorously prove a serious limitation for noisy VQAs, in that the noise causes the training landscape to have a barren plateau (i.e., vanishing gradient). Specifically, for the local Pauli noise considered, we prove that the gradient vanishes exponentially in the number of qubits n if the depth of the ansatz grows linearly with n. These noise-induced barren plateaus (NIBPs) are conceptually different from noise-free barren plateaus, which are linked to random parameter initialization. Our result is formulated for a generic ansatz that includes as special cases the Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz and the Unitary Coupled Cluster Ansatz, among others. For the former, our numerical heuristics demonstrate the NIBP phenomenon for a realistic hardware noise model.

On nonlinear transformations in quantum computation - Zoë Holmes; Nolan Coble; Andrew T. Sornborger; Yiğit Subaşı (2021)
While quantum computers are naturally well-suited to implementing linear operations, it is less clear how to implement nonlinear operations on quantum computers. However, nonlinear subroutines may prove key to a range of applications of quantum computing from solving nonlinear equations to data processing and quantum machine learning. Here we develop algorithms for implementing nonlinear transformations of input quantum states. Our algorithms are framed around the concept of a weighted state, a mathematical entity describing the output of an operational procedure involving both quantum circuits and classical post-processing.

Nonlocal Games, Compression Theorems, and the Arithmetical Hierarchy - Hamoon Mousavi; Seyed Sajjad Nezhadi; Henry Yuen (2021)
We investigate the connection between the complexity of nonlocal games and the arithmetical hierarchy, a classification of languages according to the complexity of arithmetical formulas defining them. It was recently shown by Ji, Natarajan, Vidick, Wright and Yuen that deciding whether the (finite-dimensional) quantum value of a nonlocal game is 1 or at most 12 is complete for the class Σ1 (i.e., RE). A result of Slofstra implies that deciding whether the commuting operator value of a nonlocal game is equal to 1 is complete for the class Π1 (i.e., coRE). We prove that deciding whether the quantum value of a two-player nonlocal game is exactly equal to 1 is complete for Π2; this class is in the second level of the arithmetical hierarchy and corresponds to formulas of the form "∀x∃yϕ(x,y)". This shows that exactly computing the quantum value is strictly harder than approximating it, and also strictly harder than computing the commuting operator value (either exactly or approximately). We explain how results about the complexity of nonlocal games all follow in a unified manner from a technique known as compression. At the core of our Π2-completeness result is a new "gapless" compression theorem that holds for both quantum and commuting operator strategies. Our compression theorem yields as a byproduct an alternative proof of Slofstra's result that the set of quantum correlations is not closed. We also show how a "gap-preserving" compression theorem for commuting operator strategies would imply that approximating the commuting operator value is complete for Π1.

Observation of a prethermal discrete time crystal - Antonis Kyprianidis; Francisco Machado; William Morong; Patrick Becker; Kate S. Collins; Dominic V. Else; Lei Feng; Paul W. Hess; Chetan Nayak; Guido Pagano; Norman Y. Yao; Christopher Monroe (2021)
The conventional framework for defining and understanding phases of matter requires thermodynamic equilibrium. Extensions to non-equilibrium systems have led to surprising insights into the nature of many-body thermalization and the discovery of novel phases of matter, often catalyzed by driving the system periodically. The inherent heating from such Floquet drives can be tempered by including strong disorder in the system, but this can also mask the generality of non-equilibrium phases. In this work, we utilize a trapped-ion quantum simulator to observe signatures of a non-equilibrium driven phase without disorder: the prethermal discrete time crystal (PDTC). Here, many-body heating is suppressed not by disorder-induced many-body localization, but instead via high-frequency driving, leading to an expansive time window where non-equilibrium phases can emerge. We observe a number of key features that distinguish the PDTC from its many-body-localized disordered counterpart, such as the drive-frequency control of its lifetime and the dependence of time-crystalline order on the energy density of the initial state. Floquet prethermalization is thus presented as a general strategy for creating, stabilizing and studying intrinsically out-of-equilibrium phases of matter.

Observation of measurement-induced quantum phases in a trapped-ion quantum computer - Crystal Noel; Pradeep Niroula; Daiwei Zhu; Andrew Risinger; Laird Egan; Debopriyo Biswas; Marko Cetina; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Michael Gullans; David A. Huse; Christopher Monroe (2021)
Many-body open quantum systems balance internal dynamics against decoherence from interactions with an environment. Here, we explore this balance via random quantum circuits implemented on a trapped ion quantum computer, where the system evolution is represented by unitary gates with interspersed projective measurements. As the measurement rate is varied, a purification phase transition is predicted to emerge at a critical point akin to a fault-tolerent threshold. We probe the "pure" phase, where the system is rapidly projected to a deterministic state conditioned on the measurement outcomes, and the "mixed" or "coding" phase, where the initial state becomes partially encoded into a quantum error correcting codespace. We find convincing evidence of the two phases and show numerically that, with modest system scaling, critical properties of the transition clearly emerge.

Observation of Stark many-body localization without disorder - W. Morong; F. Liu; P. Becker; K. S. Collins; L. Feng; A. Kyprianidis; G. Pagano; T. You; Alexey V. Gorshkov; C. Monroe (2021)
Thermalization is a ubiquitous process of statistical physics, in which details of few-body observables are washed out in favor of a featureless steady state. Even in isolated quantum many-body systems, limited to reversible dynamics, thermalization typically prevails. However, in these systems, there is another possibility: many-body localization (MBL) can result in preservation of a non-thermal state. While disorder has long been considered an essential ingredient for this phenomenon, recent theoretical work has suggested that a quantum many-body system with a uniformly increasing field -- but no disorder -- can also exhibit MBL, resulting in `Stark MBL.' Here we realize Stark MBL in a trapped-ion quantum simulator and demonstrate its key properties: halting of thermalization and slow propagation of correlations. Tailoring the interactions between ionic spins in an effective field gradient, we directly observe their microscopic equilibration for a variety of initial states, and we apply single-site control to measure correlations between separate regions of the spin chain. Further, by engineering a varying gradient, we create a disorder-free system with coexisting long-lived thermalized and nonthermal regions. The results demonstrate the unexpected generality of MBL, with implications about the fundamental requirements for thermalization and with potential uses in engineering long-lived non-equilibrium quantum matter.

Optimal scaling quantum linear systems solver via discrete adiabatic theorem - Pedro C. S. Costa; Dong An; Yuval R. Sanders; Yuan Su; Ryan Babbush; Dominic W. Berry (2021)
Recently, several approaches to solving linear systems on a quantum computer have been formulated in terms of the quantum adiabatic theorem for a continuously varying Hamiltonian. Such approaches enabled near-linear scaling in the condition number κ of the linear system, without requiring a complicated variable-time amplitude amplification procedure. However, the most efficient of those procedures is still asymptotically sub-optimal by a factor of log(κ). Here, we prove a rigorous form of the adiabatic theorem that bounds the error in terms of the spectral gap for intrinsically discrete time evolutions. We use this discrete adiabatic theorem to develop a quantum algorithm for solving linear systems that is asymptotically optimal, in the sense that the complexity is strictly linear in κ, matching a known lower bound on the complexity. Our O(κlog(1/ε)) complexity is also optimal in terms of the combined scaling in κ and the precision ε. Compared to existing suboptimal methods, our algorithm is simpler and easier to implement. Moreover, we determine the constant factors in the algorithm, which would be suitable for determining the complexity in terms of gate counts for specific applications.

Phase-engineered bosonic quantum codes - Linshu Li; Dylan J Young; Victor V. Albert; Kyungjoo Noh; Chang-Ling Zou; Liang Jiang (Physical Review A, 2021)
Continuous-variable systems protected by bosonic quantum codes have emerged as a promising platform for quantum information. To date, the design of code words has centered on optimizing the state occupation in the relevant basis to generate the distance needed for error correction. Here, we show tuning the phase degree of freedom in the design of code words can affect, and potentially enhance, the protection against Markovian errors that involve excitation exchange with the environment. As illustrations, we first consider phase engineering bosonic codes with uniform spacing in the Fock basis that correct excitation loss with a Kerr unitary and show that these modified codes feature destructive interference between error code words and, with an adapted “two-level” recovery, the error protection is significantly enhanced. We then study protection against energy decay with the presence of mode nonlinearities …

Precise Hamiltonian identification of a superconducting quantum processor - Dominik Hangleiter; Ingo Roth; Jens Eisert; Pedram Roushan (2021)
The required precision to perform quantum simulations beyond the capabilities of classical computers imposes major experimental and theoretical challenges. Here, we develop a characterization technique to benchmark the implementation precision of a specific quantum simulation task. We infer all parameters of the bosonic Hamiltonian that governs the dynamics of excitations in a two-dimensional grid of nearest-neighbour coupled superconducting qubits. We devise a robust algorithm for identification of Hamiltonian parameters from measured times series of the expectation values of single-mode canonical coordinates. Using super-resolution and denoising methods, we first extract eigenfrequencies of the governing Hamiltonian from the complex time domain measurement; next, we recover the eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian via constrained manifold optimization over the orthogonal group. For five and six coupled qubits, we identify Hamiltonian parameters with sub-MHz precision and construct a spatial implementation error map for a grid of 27 qubits. Our approach enables us to distinguish and quantify the effects of state preparation and measurement errors and show that they are the dominant sources of errors in the implementation. Our results quantify the implementation accuracy of analog dynamics and introduce a diagnostic toolkit for understanding, calibrating, and improving analog quantum processors.

Preparing Renormalization Group Fixed Points on NISQ Hardware - Troy J. Sewell; Stephen P. Jordan (2021)
Noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware is typically limited to low-depth quantum circuits to limit the number of opportunities for introduction of error by unreliable quantum gates. A less-explored alternative approach is to repeatedly apply a quantum channel with a desired quantum state as a stable fixed point. Increased circuit depth can in this case be beneficial rather than harmful due to dissipative self-correction. The quantum channels constructed from MERA circuits can be interpreted in terms of the renormalization group(RG), and their fixed points are RG fixed points, i.e. scale-invariant systems such as conformal field theories. Here, building upon the theoretical proposal of Kim and Swingle, we numerically and experimentally study the robust preparation of the ground state of the critical Ising model using circuits adapted from the work of Evenbly and White. The experimental implementation exhibits self-correction through renormalization seen in the convergence and stability of local observables, and makes essential use of the ability to measure and reset individual qubits afforded by the "quantum CCD" architecture of the Honeywell ion-trap. We also numerically test error mitigation by zero-noise extrapolation schemes specially adapted for renormalization circuits, which are able to outperform typical extrapolation schemes using lower gate overhead.

Proposal for gravitational direct detection of dark matter - Carney, Daniel; Ghosh, Sohitri; Krnjaic, Gordan; Taylor, Jacob M. (Physical Review D, 2021)
The only coupling dark matter is guaranteed to have with the standard model is through gravity. Here we propose a concept for direct dark matter detection using only this gravitational coupling. We suggest that an array of quantum-limited mechanical impulse sensors may be capable of detecting the correlated gravitational force created by a passing dark matter particle. We consider the effects of irreducible noise from couplings of the sensors to the environment and noise due to the quantum measurement process. We show that the signal from Planck-scale dark matter is in principle detectable using a large number of gram-scale sensors in a meter-scale array with sufficiently low quantum noise, and discuss some experimental challenges en route to achieving this target.

Protocols for estimating multiple functions with quantum sensor networks: Geometry and performance - Jacob Bringewatt; Boettcher, Igor; Niroula, Pradeep; Bienias, Przemyslaw; Alexey V. Gorshkov (Physical Review Research, 2021)
We consider the problem of estimating multiple analytic functions of a set of local parameters via qubit sensors in a quantum sensor network. To address this problem, we highlight a generalization of the sensor symmetric performance bounds of Rubio et. al. [J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 53 344001 (2020)] and develop a new optimized sequential protocol for measuring such functions. We compare the performance of both approaches to one another and to local protocols that do not utilize quantum entanglement, emphasizing the geometric significance of the coefficient vectors of the measured functions in determining the best choice of measurement protocol. We show that, in many cases, especially for a large number of sensors, the optimized sequential protocol results in more accurate measurements than the other strategies. In addition, in contrast to the the sensor symmetric approach, the sequential protocol is known to always be explicitly implementable. The sequential protocol is very general and has a wide range of metrological applications.

Proving Quantum Programs Correct - Kesha Hietala; Robert Rand; Shih-Han Hung; Liyi Li; Michael Hicks (Schloss Dagstuhl, 2021)
As quantum computing steadily progresses from theory to practice, programmers are faced with a common problem: How can they be sure that their code does what they intend it to do? This paper presents encouraging results in the application of mechanized proof to the domain of quantum programming in the context of the SQIR development. It verifies the correctness of a range of a quantum algorithms including Simon's algorithm, Grover's algorithm, and quantum phase estimation, a key component of Shor's algorithm. In doing so, it aims to highlight both the successes and challenges of formal verification in the quantum context and motivate the theorem proving community to target quantum computing as an application domain.

Proving Quantum Programs Correct - Hietala, Kesha; Rand, Robert; Hung, Shih-Han; Li, Liyi; Hicks, Michael (12th International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving (ITP 2021), 2021)
As quantum computing progresses steadily from theory into practice, programmers will face a common problem: How can they be sure that their code does what they intend it to do? This paper presents encouraging results in the application of mechanized proof to the domain of quantum programming in the context of the sqir development. It verifies the correctness of a range of a quantum algorithms including Grover’s algorithm and quantum phase estimation, a key component of Shor’s algorithm. In doing so, it aims to highlight both the successes and challenges of formal verification in the quantum context and motivate the theorem proving community to target quantum computing as an application domain.

Quantum Algorithms for Escaping from Saddle Points - Chenyi Zhang; Jiaqi Leng; Tongyang Li (Quantum, 2021)
We initiate the study of quantum algorithms for escaping from saddle points with provable guarantee. Given a function f:Rn→R, our quantum algorithm outputs an ϵ-approximate second-order stationary point using O~(log2n/ϵ1.75) queries to the quantum evaluation oracle (i.e., the zeroth-order oracle). Compared to the classical state-of-the-art algorithm by Jin et al. with O~(log6n/ϵ1.75) queries to the gradient oracle (i.e., the first-order oracle), our quantum algorithm is polynomially better in terms of n and matches its complexity in terms of 1/ϵ. Our quantum algorithm is built upon two techniques: First, we replace the classical perturbations in gradient descent methods by simulating quantum wave equations, which constitutes the polynomial speedup in n for escaping from saddle points. Second, we show how to use a quantum gradient computation algorithm due to Jordan to replace the classical gradient queries by quantum evaluation queries with the same complexity. Finally, we also perform numerical experiments that support our quantum speedup.

Quantum Algorithms for Reinforcement Learning with a Generative Model - Daochen Wang; Sundaram, Aarthi; Kothari, Robin; Kapoor, Ashish; Roetteler, Martin (Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR, 2021)
Reinforcement learning studies how an agent should interact with an environment to maximize its cumulative reward. A standard way to study this question abstractly is to ask how many samples an agent needs from the environment to learn an optimal policy for a γ-discounted Markov decision process (MDP). For such an MDP, we design quantum algorithms that approximate an optimal policy (π∗), the optimal value function (v∗), and the optimal Q-function (q∗), assuming the algorithms can access samples from the environment in quantum superposition. This assumption is justified whenever there exists a simulator for the environment; for example, if the environment is a video game or some other program. Our quantum algorithms, inspired by value iteration, achieve quadratic speedups over the best-possible classical sample complexities in the approximation accuracy (ϵ) and two main parameters of the MDP: the effective time horizon (11−γ) and the size of the action space (A). Moreover, we show that our quantum algorithm for computing q∗ is optimal by proving a matching quantum lower bound.
Keywords: FOS: Computer and information sciences; FOS: Physical sciences; Machine Learning (cs.LG); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

Quantum circuits for the realization of equivalent forms of one-dimensional discrete-time quantum walks on near-term quantum hardware - Singh, Shivani; Alderete, C. Huerta; Balu, Radhakrishnan; Monroe, Christopher; Linke, Norbert M.; Chandrashekar, C. M. (Physical Review A, 2021)
Quantum walks are a promising framework for developing quantum algorithms and quantum simulations. They represent an important test case for the application of quantum computers. Here we present different forms of discrete-time quantum walks (DTQWs) and show their equivalence for physical realizations. Using an appropriate digital mapping of the position space on which a walker evolves to the multiqubit states of a quantum processor, we present different configurations of quantum circuits for the implementation of DTQWs in one-dimensional position space. We provide example circuits for a five-qubit processor and address scalability to higher dimensions as well as larger quantum processors.

Quantum Computational Supremacy via High-Dimensional Gaussian Boson Sampling - Abhinav Deshpande; Arthur Mehta; Trevor Vincent; Nicolas Quesada; Marcel Hinsche; Marios Ioannou; Lars Madsen; Jonathan Lavoie; Haoyu Qi; Jens Eisert; Dominik Hangleiter; Bill Fefferman; et al. (2021)
Photonics is a promising platform for demonstrating quantum computational supremacy (QCS) by convincingly outperforming the most powerful classical supercomputers on a well-defined computational task. Despite this promise, existing photonics proposals and demonstrations face significant hurdles. Experimentally, current implementations of Gaussian boson sampling lack programmability or have prohibitive loss rates. Theoretically, there is a comparative lack of rigorous evidence for the classical hardness of GBS. In this work, we make significant progress in improving both the theoretical evidence and experimental prospects. On the theory side, we provide strong evidence for the hardness of Gaussian boson sampling, placing it on par with the strongest theoretical proposals for QCS. On the experimental side, we propose a new QCS architecture, high-dimensional Gaussian boson sampling, which is programmable and can be implemented with low loss rates using few optical components. We show that particular classical algorithms for simulating GBS are vastly outperformed by high-dimensional Gaussian boson sampling experiments at modest system sizes. This work thus opens the path to demonstrating QCS with programmable photonic processors.

Quantum exploration algorithms for multi-armed bandits - Daochen Wang; Xuchen You; Tongyang Li; Andrew M. Childs (Proceedings of the 35th Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021), 2021)
Identifying the best arm of a multi-armed bandit is a central problem in bandit optimization. We study a quantum computational version of this problem with coherent oracle access to states encoding the reward probabilities of each arm as quantum amplitudes. Specifically, we show that we can find the best arm with fixed confidence using O~(∑ni=2Δ−2i−−−−−−−−√) quantum queries, where Δi represents the difference between the mean reward of the best arm and the ith-best arm. This algorithm, based on variable-time amplitude amplification and estimation, gives a quadratic speedup compared to the best possible classical result. We also prove a matching quantum lower bound (up to poly-logarithmic factors).

Quantum Lattice Sieving - Nishant Rodrigues; Brad Lackey (2021)
Lattices are very important objects in the effort to construct cryptographic primitives that are secure against quantum attacks. A central problem in the study of lattices is that of finding the shortest non-zero vector in the lattice. Asymptotically, sieving is the best known technique for solving the shortest vector problem, however, sieving requires memory exponential in the dimension of the lattice. As a consequence, enumeration algorithms are often used in place of sieving due to their linear memory complexity, despite their super-exponential runtime. In this work, we present a heuristic quantum sieving algorithm that has memory complexity polynomial in the size of the length of the sampled vectors at the initial step of the sieve. In other words, unlike most sieving algorithms, the memory complexity of our algorithm does not depend on the number of sampled vectors at the initial step of the sieve.

Quantum Machine Learning for Finance - Marco Pistoia; Syed Farhan Ahmad; Akshay Ajagekar; Alexander Buts; Shouvanik Chakrabarti; Dylan Herman; Shaohan Hu; Andrew Jena; Pierre Minssen; Pradeep Niroula; Arthur Rattew; Yue Sun; et al. (2021)
Quantum computers are expected to surpass the computational capabilities of classical computers during this decade, and achieve disruptive impact on numerous industry sectors, particularly finance. In fact, finance is estimated to be the first industry sector to benefit from Quantum Computing not only in the medium and long terms, but even in the short term. This review paper presents the state of the art of quantum algorithms for financial applications, with particular focus to those use cases that can be solved via Machine Learning.

Quantum Meets the Minimum Circuit Size Problem - Nai-Hui Chia; Chi-Ning Chou; Jiayu Zhang; Ruizhe Zhang (2021)
In this work, we initiate the study of the Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) in the quantum setting. MCSP is a problem to compute the circuit complexity of Boolean functions. It is a fascinating problem in complexity theory---its hardness is mysterious, and a better understanding of its hardness can have surprising implications to many fields in computer science. We first define and investigate the basic complexity-theoretic properties of minimum quantum circuit size problems for three natural objects: Boolean functions, unitaries, and quantum states. We show that these problems are not trivially in NP but in QCMA (or have QCMA protocols). Next, we explore the relations between the three quantum MCSPs and their variants. We discover that some reductions that are not known for classical MCSP exist for quantum MCSPs for unitaries and states, e.g., search-to-decision reduction and self-reduction. Finally, we systematically generalize results known for classical MCSP to the quantum setting (including quantum cryptography, quantum learning theory, quantum circuit lower bounds, and quantum fine-grained complexity) and also find new connections to tomography and quantum gravity. Due to the fundamental differences between classical and quantum circuits, most of our results require extra care and reveal properties and phenomena unique to the quantum setting. Our findings could be of interest for future studies, and we post several open problems for further exploration along this direction.

Quantum query complexity with matrix-vector products - Andrew M. Childs; Shih-Han Hung; Tongyang Li (Proceedings of the 48th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2021), Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, 2021)
We study quantum algorithms that learn properties of a matrix using queries that return its action on an input vector. We show that for various problems, including computing the trace, determinant, or rank of a matrix or solving a linear system that it specifies, quantum computers do not provide an asymptotic speedup over classical computation. On the other hand, we show that for some problems, such as computing the parities of rows or columns or deciding if there are two identical rows or columns, quantum computers provide exponential speedup. We demonstrate this by showing equivalence between models that provide matrix-vector products, vector-matrix products, and vector-matrix-vector products, whereas the power of these models can vary significantly for classical computation.

Quantum Query Complexity with Matrix-Vector Products - Andrew M. Childs; Hung, Shih-Han; Li, Tongyang (48th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2021), 2021)
We study quantum algorithms that learn properties of a matrix using queries that return its action on an input vector. We show that for various problems, including computing the trace, determinant, or rank of a matrix or solving a linear system that it specifies, quantum computers do not provide an asymptotic speedup over classical computation. On the other hand, we show that for some problems, such as computing the parities of rows or columns or deciding if there are two identical rows or columns, quantum computers provide exponential speedup. We demonstrate this by showing equivalence between models that provide matrix-vector products, vector-matrix products, and vector-matrix-vector products, whereas the power of these models can vary significantly for classical computation.

Quantum routing with fast reversals - Aniruddha Bapat; Andrew M. Childs; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Samuel King; Eddie Schoute; Hrishee Shastri (Quantum, 2021)
We present methods for implementing arbitrary permutations of qubits under interaction constraints. Our protocols make use of previous methods for rapidly reversing the order of qubits along a path. Given nearest-neighbor interactions on a path of length n, we show that there exists a constant ϵ≈0.034 such that the quantum routing time is at most (1−ϵ)n, whereas any swap-based protocol needs at least time n−1. This represents the first known quantum advantage over swap-based routing methods and also gives improved quantum routing times for realistic architectures such as grids. Furthermore, we show that our algorithm approaches a quantum routing time of 2n/3 in expectation for uniformly random permutations, whereas swap-based protocols require time n asymptotically. Additionally, we consider sparse permutations that route k≤n qubits and give algorithms with quantum routing time at most n/3+O(k2) on paths and at most 2r/3+O(k2) on general graphs with radius r.

Quantum Simulation with Hybrid Tensor Networks - Yuan, Xiao; Sun, Jinzhao; Liu, Junyu; Zhao, Qi; Zhou, You (Physical Review Letters, 2021)
Tensor network theory and quantum simulation are respectively the key classical and quantum computing methods in understanding quantum many-body physics. Here, we introduce the framework of hybrid tensor networks with building blocks consisting of measurable quantum states and classically contractable tensors, inheriting both their distinct features in efficient representation of many-body wave functions. With the example of hybrid tree tensor networks, we demonstrate efficient quantum simulation using a quantum computer whose size is significantly smaller than the one of the target system. We numerically benchmark our method for finding the ground state of 1D and 2D spin systems of up to 8×8 and 9×8 qubits with operations only acting on 8+1 and 9+1 qubits,~respectively. Our approach sheds light on simulation of large practical problems with intermediate-scale quantum computers, with potential applications in chemistry, quantum many-body physics, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity thought experiments.

Quantum-accelerated multilevel Monte Carlo methods for stochastic differential equations in mathematical finance - Dong An; Noah Linden; Jin-Peng Liu; Ashley Montanaro; Changpeng Shao; Jiasu Wang (Quantum 5, 481 (2021), 2021)
Inspired by recent progress in quantum algorithms for ordinary and partial differential equations, we study quantum algorithms for stochastic differential equations (SDEs). Firstly we provide a quantum algorithm that gives a quadratic speed-up for multilevel Monte Carlo methods in a general setting. As applications, we apply it to compute expection values determined by classical solutions of SDEs, with improved dependence on precision. We demonstrate the use of this algorithm in a variety of applications arising in mathematical finance, such as the Black-Scholes and Local Volatility models, and Greeks. We also provide a quantum algorithm based on sublinear binomial sampling for the binomial option pricing model with the same improvement.

Quench Dynamics of a Fermi Gas with Strong Long-Range Interactions - Elmer Guardado-Sanchez; Benjamin M. Spar; Peter Schauss; Ron Belyansky; Jeremy T. Young; Przemyslaw Bienias; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Thomas Iadecola; Waseem S. Bakr (Phys. Rev. X, 2021)
We induce strong non-local interactions in a 2D Fermi gas in an optical lattice using Rydberg dressing. The system is approximately described by a t−V model on a square lattice where the fermions experience isotropic nearest-neighbor interactions and are free to hop only along one direction. We measure the interactions using many-body Ramsey interferometry and study the lifetime of the gas in the presence of tunneling, finding that tunneling does not reduce the lifetime. To probe the interplay of non-local interactions with tunneling, we investigate the short-time relaxation dynamics of charge density waves in the gas. We find that strong nearest-neighbor interactions slow down the relaxation. Our work opens the door for quantum simulations of systems with strong non-local interactions such as extended Fermi-Hubbard models.

Rainbow Scars: From Area to Volume Law - Christopher M. Langlett; Zhi-Cheng Yang; Julia Wildeboer; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Thomas Iadecola; Shenglong Xu (2021)
Quantum many-body scars (QMBS) constitute a new quantum dynamical regime in which rare "scarred" eigenstates mediate weak ergodicity breaking. One open question is to understand the most general setting in which these states arise. In this work, we develop a generic construction that embeds a new class of QMBS, rainbow scars, into the spectrum of an arbitrary Hamiltonian. Unlike other examples of QMBS, rainbow scars display extensive bipartite entanglement entropy while retaining a simple entanglement structure. Specifically, the entanglement scaling is volume-law for a random bipartition, while scaling for a fine-tuned bipartition is sub-extensive. When internal symmetries are present, the construction leads to multiple, and even towers of rainbow scars revealed through distinctive non-thermal dynamics. To this end, we provide an experimental road map for realizing rainbow scar states in a Rydberg-atom quantum simulator, leading to coherent oscillations distinct from the strictly sub-volume-law QMBS previously realized in the same system.

Ray-based framework for state identification in quantum dot devices - Justyna P. Zwolak; Thomas McJunkin; Sandesh S. Kalantre; Samuel F. Neyens; E. R. MacQuarrie; Mark A. Eriksson; J. M. Taylor (PRX Quantum, 2021)
Quantum dots (QDs) defined with electrostatic gates are a leading platform for a scalable quantum computing implementation. However, with increasing numbers of qubits, the complexity of the control parameter space also grows. Traditional measurement techniques, relying on complete or near-complete exploration via two-parameter scans (images) of the device response, quickly become impractical with increasing numbers of gates. Here, we propose to circumvent this challenge by introducing a measurement technique relying on one-dimensional projections of the device response in the multi-dimensional parameter space. Dubbed as the ray-based classification (RBC) framework, we use this machine learning (ML) approach to implement a classifier for QD states, enabling automated recognition of qubit-relevant parameter regimes. We show that RBC surpasses the 82 % accuracy benchmark from the experimental implementation of image-based classification techniques from prior work while cutting down the number of measurement points needed by up to 70 %. The reduction in measurement cost is a significant gain for time-intensive QD measurements and is a step forward towards the scalability of these devices. We also discuss how the RBC-based optimizer, which tunes the device to a multi-qubit regime, performs when tuning in the two- and three-dimensional parameter spaces defined by plunger and barrier gates that control the dots. This work provides experimental validation of both efficient state identification and optimization with ML techniques for non-traditional measurements in quantum systems with high-dimensional parameter spaces and time-intensive measurements.

Relaxation of non-integrable systems and correlation functions - Riddell, Jonathon; García-Pintos, Luis Pedro; Alhambra, Álvaro M. (2021)
We investigate early-time equilibration rates of observables in closed many-body quantum systems and compare them to those of two correlation functions, first introduced by Kubo and Srednicki. We explore whether these different rates coincide at a universal value that sets the timescales of processes at a finite energy density. We find evidence for this coincidence when the initial conditions are sufficiently generic, or typical. We quantify this with the effective dimension of the state and with a state-observable effective dimension, which estimate the number of energy levels that participate in the dynamics. Our findings are confirmed by proving that these different timescales coincide for dynamics generated by Haar-random Hamiltonians. This also allows to quantitatively understand the scope of previous theoretical results on equilibration timescales and on random matrix formalisms. We approach this problem with exact, full spectrum diagonalization. The numerics are carried out in a non-integrable Heisenberg-like Hamiltonian, and the dynamics are investigated for several pairs of observables and states.
Keywords: FOS: Physical sciences; Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

Resource theory of quantum uncomplexity - Nicole Yunger Halpern; Naga B. T. Kothakonda; Jonas Haferkamp; Anthony Munson; Jens Eisert; Philippe Faist (2021)
Quantum complexity is emerging as a key property of many-body systems, including black holes, topological materials, and early quantum computers. A state's complexity quantifies the number of computational gates required to prepare the state from a simple tensor product. The greater a state's distance from maximal complexity, or ``uncomplexity,'' the more useful the state is as input to a quantum computation. Separately, resource theories -- simple models for agents subject to constraints -- are burgeoning in quantum information theory. We unite the two domains, confirming Brown and Susskind's conjecture that a resource theory of uncomplexity can be defined. The allowed operations, fuzzy operations, are slightly random implementations of two-qubit gates chosen by an agent. We formalize two operational tasks, uncomplexity extraction and expenditure. Their optimal efficiencies depend on an entropy that we engineer to reflect complexity. We also present two monotones, uncomplexity measures that decline monotonically under fuzzy operations, in certain regimes. This work unleashes on many-body complexity the resource-theory toolkit from quantum information theory.

Resource-Optimized Fermionic Local-Hamiltonian Simulation on Quantum Computer for Quantum Chemistry - Qingfeng Wang; Ming Li; Christopher Monroe; Yunseong Nam (Quantum, 2021)
The ability to simulate a fermionic system on a quantum computer is expected to revolutionize chemical engineering, materials design, nuclear physics, to name a few. Thus, optimizing the simulation circuits is of significance in harnessing the power of quantum computers. Here, we address this problem in two aspects. In the fault-tolerant regime, we optimize the $\rzgate$ and $\tgate$ gate counts along with the ancilla qubit counts required, assuming the use of a product-formula algorithm for implementation. We obtain a savings ratio of two in the gate counts and a savings ratio of eleven in the number of ancilla qubits required over the state of the art. In the pre-fault tolerant regime, we optimize the two-qubit gate counts, assuming the use of the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) approach. Specific to the latter, we present a framework that enables bootstrapping the VQE progression towards the convergence of the ground-state energy of the fermionic system. This framework, based on perturbation theory, is capable of improving the energy estimate at each cycle of the VQE progression, by about a factor of three closer to the known ground-state energy compared to the standard VQE approach in the test-bed, classically-accessible system of the water molecule. The improved energy estimate in turn results in a commensurate level of savings of quantum resources, such as the number of qubits and quantum gates, required to be within a pre-specified tolerance from the known ground-state energy. We also explore a suite of generalized transformations of fermion to qubit operators and show that resource-requirement savings of up to more than 20% is possible.

Robust Self-Testing of Multiparticle Entanglement - Dian Wu; Qi Zhao; Xue-Mei Gu; Han-Sen Zhong; You Zhou; Li-Chao Peng; Jian Qin; Yi-Han Luo; Kai Chen; Li Li; Nai-Le Liu; Chao-Yang Lu; et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., 2021)
Quantum self-testing is a device-independent way to certify quantum states and measurements using only the input-output statistics, with minimal assumptions about the quantum devices. Due to the high demand on tolerable noise, however, experimental self-testing was limited to two-photon systems. Here, we demonstrate the first robust self-testing for multi-particle quantum entanglement. We prepare two examples of four-photon graph states, the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states with a fidelity of 0.957(2) and the linear cluster states with a fidelity of 0.945(2). Based on the observed input-output statistics, we certify the genuine four-photon entanglement and further estimate their qualities with respect to realistic noise in a device-independent manner.

RPPLNS: Pay-per-last-N-shares with a Randomised Twist - Philip Lazos; Francisco J. Marmolejo-Cossío; Xinyu Zhou; Jonathan Katz (2021)
"Pay-per-last-N-shares" (PPLNS) is one of the most common payout strategies used by mining pools in Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrencies. As with any payment scheme, it is imperative to study issues of incentive compatibility of miners within the pool. For PPLNS this question has only been partially answered; we know that reasonably-sized miners within a PPLNS pool prefer following the pool protocol over employing specific deviations. In this paper, we present a novel modification to PPLNS where we randomise the protocol in a natural way. We call our protocol "Randomised pay-per-last-N-shares" (RPPLNS), and note that the randomised structure of the protocol greatly simplifies the study of its incentive compatibility. We show that RPPLNS maintains the strengths of PPLNS (i.e., fairness, variance reduction, and resistance to pool hopping), while also being robust against a richer class of strategic mining than what has been shown for PPLNS.

Singularities in nearly-uniform 1D condensates due to quantum diffusion - Christopher L. Baldwin; P. Bienias; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Michael Gullans; M. Maghrebi (2021)
Dissipative systems can often exhibit wavelength-dependent loss rates. One prominent example is Rydberg polaritons formed by electromagnetically-induced transparency, which have long been a leading candidate for studying the physics of interacting photons and also hold promise as a platform for quantum information. In this system, dissipation is in the form of quantum diffusion, i.e., proportional to k2 (k being the wavevector) and vanishing at long wavelengths as k→0. Here, we show that one-dimensional condensates subject to this type of loss are unstable to long-wavelength density fluctuations in an unusual manner: after a prolonged period in which the condensate appears to relax to a uniform state, local depleted regions quickly form and spread ballistically throughout the system. We connect this behavior to the leading-order equation for the nearly-uniform condensate -- a dispersive analogue to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation -- which develops singularities in finite time. Furthermore, we show that the wavefronts of the depleted regions are described by purely dissipative solitons within a pair of hydrodynamic equations, with no counterpart in lossless condensates. We close by discussing conditions under which such singularities and the resulting solitons can be physically realized.

Spin chains, defects, and quantum wires for the quantum-double edge - Victor V. Albert; David Aasen; Wenqing Xu; Wenjie Ji; Jason Alicea; John Preskill (2021)
Non-Abelian defects that bind Majorana or parafermion zero modes are prominent in several topological quantum computation schemes. Underpinning their established understanding is the quantum Ising spin chain, which can be recast as a fermionic model or viewed as a standalone effective theory for the surface-code edge -- both of which harbor non-Abelian defects. We generalize these notions by deriving an effective Ising-like spin chain describing the edge of quantum-double topological order. Relating Majorana and parafermion modes to anyonic strings, we introduce quantum-double generalizations of non-Abelian defects. We develop a way to embed finite-group valued qunits into those valued in continuous groups. Using this embedding, we provide a continuum description of the spin chain and recast its non-interacting part as a quantum wire via addition of a Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten term and non-Abelian bosonization.

Spin-Wave Quantum Computing with Atoms in a Single-Mode Cavity - Kevin C. Cox; Przemyslaw Bienias; David H. Meyer; Paul D. Kunz; Donald P. Fahey; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2021)
We present a method for network-capable quantum computing that relies on holographic spin-wave excitations stored collectively in ensembles of qubits. We construct an orthogonal basis of spin waves in a one-dimensional array and show that high-fidelity universal linear controllability can be achieved using only phase shifts, applied in both momentum and position space. Neither single-site addressability nor high single-qubit cooperativity is required, and the spin waves can be read out with high efficiency into a single cavity mode for quantum computing and networking applications.

Subdiffusive hydrodynamics of nearly-integrable anisotropic spin chains - Jacopo De Nardis; Sarang Gopalakrishnan; Romain Vasseur; Brayden Ware (2021)
We address spin transport in the easy-axis Heisenberg spin chain subject to integrability-breaking perturbations. We find that spin transport is subdiffusive with dynamical exponent z=4 up to a timescale that is parametrically long in the anisotropy. In the limit of infinite anisotropy, transport is subdiffusive at all times; for large finite anisotropy, one eventually recovers diffusion at late times, but with a diffusion constant independent of the strength of the integrability breaking perturbation. We provide numerical evidence for these findings, and explain them by adapting the generalized hydrodynamics framework to nearly integrable dynamics. Our results show that the diffusion constant of near-integrable interacting spin chains is not generically a continuous function of the integrability-breaking parameter.

Surface code compilation via edge-disjoint paths - Michael Beverland; Vadym Kliuchnikov; Eddie Schoute (2021)
We provide an efficient algorithm to compile quantum circuits for fault-tolerant execution. We target surface codes, which form a 2D grid of logical qubits with nearest-neighbor logical operations. Embedding an input circuit's qubits in surface codes can result in long-range two-qubit operations across the grid. We show how to prepare many long-range Bell pairs on qubits connected by edge-disjoint paths of ancillas in constant depth which can be used to perform these long-range operations. This forms one core part of our Edge-Disjoint Paths Compilation (EDPC) algorithm, by easily performing parallel long-range Clifford operations in constant depth. It also allows us to establish a connection between surface code compilation and several well-studied edge-disjoint paths problems. Similar techniques allow us to perform non-Clifford single-qubit rotations far from magic state distillation factories. In this case, we can easily find the maximum set of paths by a max-flow reduction, which forms the other major part of our EDPC algorithm. We compare EDPC to other compilation approaches including a SWAP-based algorithm, and find significantly improved performance for circuits built from parallel CNOTs, and for circuits which implement the multi-controlled X gate.

Synchronous Values of Games - J. William Helton; Hamoon Mousavi; Seyed Sajjad Nezhadi; Vern I. Paulsen; Travis B. Russell (2021)
We study synchronous values of games, especially synchronous games. It is known that a synchronous game has a perfect strategy if and only if it has a perfect synchronous strategy. However, we give examples of synchronous games, in particular graph colouring games, with synchronous value that is strictly smaller than their ordinary value. Thus, the optimal strategy for a synchronous game need not be synchronous. We derive a formula for the synchronous value of an XOR game as an optimization problem over a spectrahedron involving a matrix related to the cost matrix. We give an example of a game such that the synchronous value of repeated products of the game is strictly increasing. We show that the synchronous quantum bias of the XOR of two XOR games is not multiplicative. Finally, we derive geometric and algebraic conditions that a set of projections that yields the synchronous value of a game must satisfy.

Testing quantum gravity with interactive information sensing - Daniel Carney; Holger Müller; Jacob M. Taylor (2021)
We suggest a test of a central prediction of perturbatively quantized general relativity: the coherent communication of quantum information between massive objects through gravity. To do this, we introduce the concept of interactive quantum information sensing, a protocol tailored to the verification of dynamical entanglement generation between a pair of systems. Concretely, we propose to monitor the periodic wavefunction collapse and revival in an atomic interferometer which is gravitationally coupled to a mechanical oscillator. We prove a theorem which shows that, under the assumption of time-translation invariance, this collapse and revival is possible if and only if the gravitational interaction forms an entangling channel. Remarkably, as this approach improves at moderate temperatures and relies primarily upon atomic coherence, our numerical estimates indicate feasibility with current devices.

Theory of Trotter Error with Commutator Scaling - Andrew M. Childs; Yuan Su; Minh C. Tran; Nathan Wiebe; Shuchen Zhu (Phys. Rev. X, 2021)
The Lie-Trotter formula, together with its higher-order generalizations, provides a direct approach to decomposing the exponential of a sum of operators. Despite significant effort, the error scaling of such product formulas remains poorly understood. We develop a theory of Trotter error that overcomes the limitations of prior approaches based on truncating the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff expansion. Our analysis directly exploits the commutativity of operator summands, producing tighter error bounds for both real- and imaginary-time evolutions. Whereas previous work achieves similar goals for systems with geometric locality or Lie-algebraic structure, our approach holds in general. We give a host of improved algorithms for digital quantum simulation and quantum Monte Carlo methods, including simulations of second-quantized plane-wave electronic structure, k-local Hamiltonians, rapidly decaying power-law interactions, clustered Hamiltonians, the transverse field Ising model, and quantum ferromagnets, nearly matching or even outperforming the best previous results. We obtain further speedups using the fact that product formulas can preserve the locality of the simulated system. Specifically, we show that local observables can be simulated with complexity independent of the system size for power-law interacting systems, which implies a Lieb-Robinson bound as a byproduct. Our analysis reproduces known tight bounds for first- and second-order formulas. Our higher-order bound overestimates the complexity of simulating a one-dimensional Heisenberg model with an even-odd ordering of terms by only a factor of 5, and is close to tight for power-law interactions and other orderings of terms. This suggests that our theory can accurately characterize Trotter error in terms of both asymptotic scaling and constant prefactor.

A Threshold for Quantum Advantage in Derivative Pricing - Shouvanik Chakrabarti; Rajiv Krishnakumar; Guglielmo Mazzola; Nikitas Stamatopoulos; Stefan Woerner; William J. Zeng (Quantum, 2021)
We give an upper bound on the resources required for valuable quantum advantage in pricing derivatives. To do so, we give the first complete resource estimates for useful quantum derivative pricing, using autocallable and Target Accrual Redemption Forward (TARF) derivatives as benchmark use cases. We uncover blocking challenges in known approaches and introduce a new method for quantum derivative pricing - the re-parameterization method - that avoids them. This method combines pre-trained variational circuits with fault-tolerant quantum computing to dramatically reduce resource requirements. We find that the benchmark use cases we examine require 7.5k logical qubits and a T-depth of 46 million and thus estimate that quantum advantage would require a logical clock speed of 10Mhz. While the resource requirements given here are out of reach of current systems, we hope they will provide a roadmap for further improvements in algorithms, implementations, and planned hardware architectures.

Tight bounds on the convergence of noisy random circuits to uniform - Abhinav Deshpande; Bill Fefferman; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Michael Gullans; Pradeep Niroula; Oles Shtanko (2021)
We study the properties of output distributions of noisy, random circuits. We obtain upper and lower bounds on the expected distance of the output distribution from the uniform distribution. These bounds are tight with respect to the dependence on circuit depth. Our proof techniques also allow us to make statements about the presence or absence of anticoncentration for both noisy and noiseless circuits. We uncover a number of interesting consequences for hardness proofs of sampling schemes that aim to show a quantum computational advantage over classical computation. Specifically, we discuss recent barrier results for depth-agnostic and/or noise-agnostic proof techniques. We show that in certain depth regimes, noise-agnostic proof techniques might still work in order to prove an often-conjectured claim in the literature on quantum computational advantage, contrary to what was thought prior to this work.

Torus Spectroscopy of the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa Quantum Field Theory: Free Dirac versus Chiral Ising Fixed Point - Michael Schuler; Stephan Hesselmann; Seth Whitsitt; Thomas C. Lang; Stefan Wessel; Andreas M. Läuchli (Phys. Rev. B, 2021)
We establish the universal torus low-energy spectra at the free Dirac fixed point and at the strongly coupled chiral Ising fixed point and their subtle crossover behaviour in the Gross-Neuveu-Yukawa field theory with nD=4 component Dirac spinors in D=(2+1) dimensions. These fixed points and the field theories are directly relevant for the long-wavelength physics of certain interacting Dirac systems, such as repulsive spinless fermions on the honeycomb lattice or π-flux square lattice. The torus energy spectrum has been shown previously to serve as a characteristic fingerprint of relativistic fixed points and is a powerful tool to discriminate quantum critical behaviour in numerical simulations. Here, we use a combination of exact diagonalization and quantum Monte Carlo simulations of strongly interacting fermionic lattice models, to compute the critical torus energy spectrum on finite-size clusters with periodic boundaries and extrapolate them to the thermodynamic limit. Additionally, we compute the torus energy spectrum analytically using the perturbative expansion in ε=4−D, which is in good agreement with the numerical results, thereby validating the presence of the chiral Ising fixed point in the lattice models at hand. We show that the strong interaction between the spinor field and the scalar order-parameter field strongly influences the critical torus energy spectrum and we observe prominent multiplicity features related to an emergent symmetry predicted from the quantum field theory. Building on these results we are able to address the subtle crossover physics of the low-energy spectrum flowing from the chiral Ising fixed point to the Dirac fixed point, and analyze earlier flawed attempts to extract Fermi velocity renormalizations from the low-energy spectrum.

Trading Locality for Time: Certifiable Randomness from Low-Depth Circuits - Matthew Coudron; Stark, Jalex; Vidick, Thomas (Communications in Mathematical Physics, 2021)
The generation of certifiable randomness is the most fundamental informationtheoretic task that meaningfully separates quantum devices from their classical counterparts. We propose a protocol for exponential certified randomness expansion using a single quantum device. The protocol calls for the device to implement a simple quantum circuit of constant depth on a 2D lattice of qubits. The output of the circuit can be verified classically in linear time, and is guaranteed to contain a polynomial number of certified random bits assuming that the device used to generate the output operated using a (classical or quantum) circuit of sub-logarithmic depth. This assumption contrasts with the locality assumption used for randomness certification based on Bell inequality violation and more recent proposals for randomness certification based on computational assumptions. Furthermore, to demonstrate randomness generation it is sufficient for a device to sample from the ideal output distribution within constant statistical distance.  Our procedure is inspired by recent work of Bravyi et al. (Science 362(6412):308–311, 2018), who introduced a relational problem that can be solved by a constant-depth quantum circuit, but provably cannot be solved by any classical circuit of sub-logarithmic depth. We develop the discovery of Bravyi et al. into a framework for robust randomness expansion. Our results lead to a new proposal for a demonstrated quantum advantage that has some advantages compared to existing proposals. First, our proposal does not rest on any complexity-theoretic conjectures, but relies on the physical assumption that the adversarial device being tested implements a circuit of sub-logarithmic depth. Second, success on our task can be easily verified in classical linear time. Finally, our task is more noise-tolerant than most other existing proposals that can only tolerate multiplicative error, or require additional conjectures from complexity theory; in contrast, we are able to allow a small constant additive error in total variation distance between the sampled and ideal distributions.

Trapped electrons and ions as particle detectors - Daniel Carney; Hartmut Häffner; David C. Moore; J. M. Taylor (Phys. Rev. Lett., 2021)
Electrons and ions trapped with electromagnetic fields have long served as important high-precision metrological instruments, and more recently have also been proposed as a platform for quantum information processing. Here we point out that these systems can also be used as highly sensitive detectors of passing charged particles, due to the combination of their extreme charge-to-mass ratio and low-noise quantum readout and control. In particular, these systems can be used to detect energy depositions many orders of magnitude below typical ionization scales. As an illustration, we show that current devices can be used to provide competitive sensitivity to models where ambient dark matter particles carry small electric millicharges ≪e. Our calculations may also be useful in the characterization of noise in quantum computers coming from backgrounds of charged particles.

Tunable three-body loss in a nonlinear Rydberg medium - Dalia P. Ornelas Huerta; Przemyslaw Bienias; Alexander N. Craddock; Michael Gullans; Andrew J. Hachtel; Marcin Kalinowski; Mary E. Lyon; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Steven L. Rolston; J. V. Porto (Phys. Rev. Lett., in press, 2021)
Long-range Rydberg interactions, in combination with electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), give rise to strongly interacting photons where the strength, sign, and form of the interactions are widely tunable and controllable. Such control can be applied to both coherent and dissipative interactions, which provides the potential to generate novel few-photon states. Recently it has been shown that Rydberg-EIT is a rare system in which three-body interactions can be as strong or stronger than two-body interactions. In this work, we study a three-body scattering loss for Rydberg-EIT in a wide regime of single and two-photon detunings. Our numerical simulations of the full three-body wavefunction and analytical estimates based on Fermi's Golden Rule strongly suggest that the observed features in the outgoing photonic correlations are caused by the resonant enhancement of the three-body losses.

Ultralight dark matter detection with mechanical quantum sensors - Daniel Carney; Anson Hook; Zhen Liu; J. M. Taylor; Yue Zhao (New Journal of Physics, 2021)
We consider the use of quantum-limited mechanical force sensors to detect ultralight (sub-meV) dark matter candidates which are weakly coupled to the standard model. We show that mechanical sensors with masses around or below the milligram scale, operating around the standard quantum limit, would enable novel searches for dark matter with natural frequencies around the kHz scale. This would complement existing strategies based on torsion balances, atom interferometers, and atomic clock systems

Unifying Quantum and Classical Speed Limits on Observables - Luis Pedro García-Pintos; Schuyler Nicholson; Jason R. Green; Adolfo del Campo; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2021)
The presence of noise or the interaction with an environment can radically change the dynamics of observables of an otherwise isolated quantum system. We derive a bound on the speed with which observables of open quantum systems evolve. This speed limit divides into Mandalestam and Tamm's original time-energy uncertainty relation and a time-information uncertainty relation recently derived for classical systems, generalizing both to open quantum systems. By isolating the coherent and incoherent contributions to the system dynamics, we derive both lower and upper bounds to the speed of evolution. We prove that the latter provide tighter limits on the speed of observables than previously known quantum speed limits, and that a preferred basis of speed operators serves to completely characterize the observables that saturate the speed limits. We use this construction to bound the effect of incoherent dynamics on the evolution of an observable and to find the Hamiltonian that gives the maximum coherent speedup to the evolution of an observable.

Using an Atom Interferometer to Infer Gravitational Entanglement Generation - Carney, Daniel; Müller, Holger; Taylor, Jacob M. (PRX Quantum, 2021)
If gravitational perturbations are quantized into gravitons in analogy with the electromagnetic field and photons, the resulting graviton interactions should lead to an entangling interaction between massive objects. We suggest a test of this prediction. To do this, we introduce the concept of interactive quantum information sensing. This novel sensing protocol is tailored to provable verification of weak dynamical entanglement generation between a pair of systems. We show that this protocol is highly robust to typical thermal noise sources. The sensitivity can moreover be increased both using an initial thermal state and/or an initial phase of entangling via a non-gravitational interaction. We outline a concrete implementation testing the ability of the gravitational field to generate entanglement between an atomic interferometer and mechanical oscillator. Preliminary numerical estimates suggest that near-term devices could feasibly be used to perform the experiment.

Verified Compilation of Quantum Oracles - Liyi Li; Finnegan Voichick; Kesha Hietala; Yuxiang Peng; Xiaodi Wu; Michael Hicks (2021)
Quantum algorithms often apply classical operations, such as arithmetic or predicate checks, over a quantum superposition of classical data; these so-called oracles are often the largest components of a quantum algorithm. To ease the construction of efficient, correct oracle functions, this paper presents VQO, a high-assurance framework implemented with the Coq proof assistant. The core of VQO is OQASM, the oracle quantum assembly language. OQASM operations move qubits among three different bases via the Quantum Fourier Transform and Hadamard operations, thus admitting important optimizations, but without inducing entanglement and the exponential blowup that comes with it. OQASM's design enabled us to prove correct VQO's compilers -- from a simple imperative language called OQIMP to OQASM, and from OQASM to SQIR, a general-purpose quantum assembly language -- and allowed us to efficiently test properties of OQASM programs using the QuickChick property-based testing framework. We have used VQO to implement oracles used in Shor's and Grover's algorithms, as well as several common arithmetic operators. VQO's oracles have performance comparable to those produced by Quipper, a state-of-the-art but unverified quantum programming platform.

A Verified Optimizer for Quantum Circuits - Kesha Hietala; Robert Rand; Shih-Han Hung; Xiaodi Wu; Michael Hicks (Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, 2021)
We present VOQC, the first fully verified compiler for quantum circuits, written using the Coq proof assistant. Quantum circuits are expressed as programs in a simple, low-level language called SQIR, which is deeply embedded in Coq. Optimizations and other transformations are expressed as Coq functions, which are proved correct with respect to a semantics of SQIR programs. We evaluate VOQC's verified optimizations on a series of benchmarks, and it performs comparably to industrial-strength compilers. VOQC's optimizations reduce total gate counts on average by 17.7% on a benchmark of 29 circuit programs compared to a 10.7% reduction when using IBM's Qiskit compiler.

Accessing scrambling using matrix product operators - Shenglong Xu; Brian Swingle (Nature Physics, 2020)
Scrambling, a process in which quantum information spreads over a complex quantum system becoming inaccessible to simple probes, happens in generic chaotic quantum many-body systems, ranging from spin chains, to metals, even to black holes. Scrambling can be measured using out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), which are closely tied to the growth of Heisenberg operators. In this work, we present a general method to calculate OTOCs of local operators in local one-dimensional systems based on approximating Heisenberg operators as matrix-product operators (MPOs). Contrary to the common belief that such tensor network methods work only at early times, we show that the entire early growth region of the OTOC can be captured using an MPO approximation with modest bond dimension. We analytically establish the goodness of the approximation by showing that if an appropriate OTOC is close to its initial value, then the associated Heisenberg operator has low entanglement across a given cut. We use the method to study scrambling in a chaotic spin chain with 201 sites. Based on this data and OTOC results for black holes, local random circuit models, and non-interacting systems, we conjecture a universal form for the dynamics of the OTOC near the wavefront. We show that this form collapses the chaotic spin chain data over more than fifteen orders of magnitude.

Approximate optimization of MAXCUT with a local spin algorithm - Aniruddha Bapat; Stephen P. Jordan (2020)
Local tensor methods are a class of optimization algorithms that was introduced in [Hastings,arXiv:1905.07047v2][1] as a classical analogue of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). These algorithms treat the cost function as a Hamiltonian on spin degrees of freedom and simulate the relaxation of the system to a low energy configuration using local update rules on the spins. Whereas the emphasis in [1] was on theoretical worst-case analysis, we here investigate performance in practice through benchmarking experiments on instances of the MAXCUT problem.Through heuristic arguments we propose formulas for choosing the hyperparameters of the algorithm which are found to be in good agreement with the optimal choices determined from experiment. We observe that the local tensor method is closely related to gradient descent on a relaxation of maxcut to continuous variables, but consistently outperforms gradient descent in all instances tested. We find time to solution achieved by the local tensor method is highly uncorrelated with that achieved by a widely used commercial optimization package; on some MAXCUT instances the local tensor method beats the commercial solver in time to solution by up to two orders of magnitude and vice-versa. Finally, we argue that the local tensor method closely follows discretized, imaginary-time dynamics of the system under the problem Hamiltonian.

Approximate Quantum Fourier Transform with O(nlog(n)) T gates - Yunseong Nam; Yuan Su; Dmitri Maslov (npj Quantum Information, 2020)
The ability to implement the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) efficiently on a quantum computer enables the advantages offered by a variety of fundamental quantum algorithms, such as those for integer factoring, computing discrete logarithm over Abelian groups, and phase estimation. The standard fault-tolerant implementation of an n-qubit QFT approximates the desired transformation by removing small-angle controlled rotations and synthesizing the remaining ones into Clifford+t gates, incurring the t-count complexity of O(n log2 (n)). In this paper we show how to obtain approximate QFT with the t-count of O(n log(n)). Our approach relies on quantum circuits with measurements and feedforward, and on reusing a special quantum state that induces the phase gradient transformation. We report asymptotic analysis as well as concrete circuits, demonstrating significant advantages in both theory and practice.

Approximate recovery and relative entropy I. general von Neumann subalgebras - Thomas Faulkner; Stefan Hollands; Brian Swingle; Yixu Wang (2020)
We prove the existence of a universal recovery channel that approximately recovers states on a v. Neumann subalgebra when the change in relative entropy, with respect to a fixed reference state, is small. Our result is a generalization of previous results that applied to type-I v. Neumann algebras by Junge at al. [arXiv:1509.07127]. We broadly follow their proof strategy but consider here arbitrary v. Neumann algebras, where qualitatively new issues arise. Our results hinge on the construction of certain analytic vectors and computations/estimations of their Araki-Masuda Lp norms. We comment on applications to the quantum null energy condition.

Approximate recovery and relative entropy I. general von Neumann subalgebras - Thomas Faulkner; Stefan Hollands; Brian Swingle; Yixu Wang (2020)
We prove the existence of a universal recovery channel that approximately recovers states on a v. Neumann subalgebra when the change in relative entropy, with respect to a fixed reference state, is small. Our result is a generalization of previous results that applied to type-I v. Neumann algebras by Junge at al. [arXiv:1509.07127]. We broadly follow their proof strategy but consider here arbitrary v. Neumann algebras, where qualitatively new issues arise. Our results hinge on the construction of certain analytic vectors and computations/estimations of their Araki-Masuda Lp norms. We comment on applications to the quantum null energy condition.

Asymmetric blockade and multi-qubit gates via dipole-dipole interactions - Jeremy T. Young; Przemyslaw Bienias; Ron Belyansky; Adam M. Kaufman; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2020)
Due to their strong and tunable interactions, Rydberg atoms can be used to realize fast two-qubit entangling gates. We propose a generalization of a generic two-qubit Rydberg-blockade gate to multi-qubit Rydberg-blockade gates which involve both many control qubits and many target qubits simultaneously. This is achieved by using strong microwave fields to dress nearby Rydberg states, leading to asymmetric blockade in which control-target interactions are much stronger than control-control and target-target interactions. The implementation of these multi-qubit gates can drastically simplify both quantum algorithms and state preparation. To illustrate this, we show that a 25-atom GHZ state can be created using only three gates with an error of 7.8%.

Auditing and Debugging Deep Learning Models via Decision Boundaries: Individual-level and Group-level Analysis - Roozbeh Yousefzadeh; Dianne P. O'Leary (2020)
Deep learning models have been criticized for their lack of easy interpretation, which undermines confidence in their use for important applications. Nevertheless, they are consistently utilized in many applications, consequential to humans' lives, mostly because of their better performance. Therefore, there is a great need for computational methods that can explain, audit, and debug such models. Here, we use flip points to accomplish these goals for deep learning models with continuous output scores (e.g., computed by softmax), used in social applications. A flip point is any point that lies on the boundary between two output classes: e.g. for a model with a binary yes/no output, a flip point is any input that generates equal scores for "yes" and "no". The flip point closest to a given input is of particular importance because it reveals the least changes in the input that would change a model's classification, and we show that it is the solution to a well-posed optimization problem. Flip points also enable us to systematically study the decision boundaries of a deep learning classifier. The resulting insight into the decision boundaries of a deep model can clearly explain the model's output on the individual-level, via an explanation report that is understandable by non-experts. We also develop a procedure to understand and audit model behavior towards groups of people. Flip points can also be used to alter the decision boundaries in order to improve undesirable behaviors. We demonstrate our methods by investigating several models trained on standard datasets used in social applications of machine learning. We also identify the features that are most responsible for particular classifications and misclassifications.

Auto-tuning of double dot devices in situ with machine learning - Justyna P. Zwolak; Thomas McJunkin; Sandesh S. Kalantre; J. P. Dodson; E. R. MacQuarrie; D. E. Savage; M. G. Lagally; S. N. Coppersmith; Mark A. Eriksson; J. M. Taylor (Phys. Rev. Applied, 2020)
There are myriad quantum computing approaches, each having its own set of challenges to understand and effectively control their operation. Electrons confined in arrays of semiconductor nanostructures, called quantum dots (QDs), is one such approach. The easy access to control parameters, fast measurements, long qubit lifetimes, and the potential for scalability make QDs especially attractive. However, as the size of the QD array grows, so does the number of parameters needed for control and thus the tuning complexity. The current practice of manually tuning the qubits is a relatively time-consuming procedure and is inherently impractical for scaling up and applications. In this work, we report on the in situ implementation of an auto-tuning protocol proposed by Kalantre et al. [arXiv:1712.04914]. In particular, we discuss how to establish a seamless communication protocol between a machine learning (ML)-based auto-tuner and the experimental apparatus. We then show that a ML algorithm trained exclusively on synthetic data coming from a physical model to quantitatively classify the state of the QD device, combined with an optimization routine, can be used to replace manual tuning of gate voltages in devices. A success rate of over 85 % is determined for tuning to a double quantum dot regime when at least one of the plunger gates is initiated sufficiently close to the desired state. Modifications to the training network, fitness function, and optimizer are discussed as a path towards further improvement in the success rate when starting both near and far detuned from the target double dot range.

Back-action evading impulse measurement with mechanical quantum sensors - Sohitri Ghosh; Daniel Carney; Peter Shawhan; J. M. Taylor (Phys. Rev. A, 2020)
The quantum measurement of any observable naturally leads to noise added by the act of measurement. Approaches to evade or reduce this noise can lead to substantial improvements in a wide variety of sensors, from laser interferometers to precision magnetometers and more. In this paper, we develop a measurement protocol based upon pioneering work by the gravitational wave community which allows for reduction of added noise from measurement by coupling an optical field to the momentum of a small mirror. As a specific implementation, we present a continuous measurement protocol using a double-ring optomechanical cavity. We demonstrate that with experimentally-relevant parameters, this protocol can lead to significant back-action noise evasion, yielding measurement noise below the standard quantum limit over many decades of frequency.

A Black-Box Approach to Post-Quantum Zero-Knowledge in Constant Rounds - Nai-Hui Chia; Kai-Min Chung; Takashi Yamakawa (2020)
In a recent seminal work, Bitansky and Shmueli (STOC '20) gave the first construction of a constant round zero-knowledge argument for NP secure against quantum attacks. However, their construction has several drawbacks compared to the classical counterparts. Specifically, their construction only achieves computational soundness, requires strong assumptions of quantum hardness of learning with errors (QLWE assumption) and the existence of quantum fully homomorphic encryption (QFHE), and relies on non-black-box simulation. In this paper, we resolve these issues at the cost of weakening the notion of zero-knowledge to what is called ε-zero-knowledge. Concretely, we construct the following protocols: - We construct a constant round interactive proof for NP that satisfies statistical soundness and black-box ε-zero-knowledge against quantum attacks assuming the existence of collapsing hash functions, which is a quantum counterpart of collision-resistant hash functions. Interestingly, this construction is just an adapted version of the classical protocol by Goldreich and Kahan (JoC '96) though the proof of ε-zero-knowledge property against quantum adversaries requires novel ideas. - We construct a constant round interactive argument for NP that satisfies computational soundness and black-box ε-zero-knowledge against quantum attacks only assuming the existence of post-quantum one-way functions. At the heart of our results is a new quantum rewinding technique that enables a simulator to extract a committed message of a malicious verifier while simulating verifier's internal state in an appropriate sense.

Building Bulk Geometry from the Tensor Radon Transform - ChunJun Cao; Xiao-Liang Q; Brian Swingle; Eugene Tang (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2020)
Using the tensor Radon transform and related numerical methods, we study how bulk geometries can be explicitly reconstructed from boundary entanglement entropies in the specific case of AdS3/CFT2. We find that, given the boundary entanglement entropies of a 2d CFT, this framework provides a quantitative measure that detects whether the bulk dual is geometric in the perturbative (near AdS) limit. In the case where a well-defined bulk geometry exists, we explicitly reconstruct the unique bulk metric tensor once a gauge choice is made. We then examine the emergent bulk geometries for static and dynamical scenarios in holography and in many-body systems. Apart from the physics results, our work demonstrates that numerical methods are feasible and effective in the study of bulk reconstruction in AdS/CFT.

Can graph properties have exponential quantum speedup? - Andrew M. Childs; Daochen Wang (2020)
Quantum computers can sometimes exponentially outperform classical ones, but only for problems with sufficient structure. While it is well known that query problems with full permutation symmetry can have at most polynomial quantum speedup -- even for partial functions -- it is unclear how far this condition must be relaxed to enable exponential speedup. In particular, it is natural to ask whether exponential speedup is possible for (partial) graph properties, in which the input describes a graph and the output can only depend on its isomorphism class. We show that the answer to this question depends strongly on the input model. In the adjacency matrix model, we prove that the bounded-error randomized query complexity R of any graph property P has R(P)=O(Q(P)6), where Q is the bounded-error quantum query complexity. This negatively resolves an open question of Montanaro and de Wolf in the adjacency matrix model. More generally, we prove R(P)=O(Q(P)3l) for any l-uniform hypergraph property P in the adjacency matrix model. In direct contrast, in the adjacency list model for bounded-degree graphs, we exhibit a promise problem that shows an exponential separation between the randomized and quantum query complexities.

The Character of Motional Modes for Entanglement and Sympathetic Cooling of Mixed-Species Trapped Ion Chains - Ksenia Sosnova; Allison Carter; Christopher Monroe (2020)
Modular mixed-species ion-trap networks are a promising framework for scalable quantum information processing, where one species acts as a memory qubit and another as a communication qubit. This architecture requires high-fidelity mixed-species entangling gates to transfer information from communication to memory qubits through their collective motion. We investigate the character of the motional modes of a mixed-species ion chain for entangling operations and also sympathetic cooling. We find that the laser power required for high-fidelity entangling gates based on transverse modes is at least an order of magnitude higher than that based on axial modes for widely different masses of the two species. We also find that for even moderate mass differences, the transverse modes are much harder to cool than the axial modes regardless of the ion chain configuration. Therefore, transverse modes conventionally used for operations in single-species ion chains may not be well suited for mixed-species chains with widely different masses.

Circuit Complexity across a Topological Phase Transition - Fangli Liu; Rex Lundgren; Paraj Titum; James R. Garrison; Alexey V. Gorshkov (Physical Review Research, 2020)
We use Nielsen's approach to quantify the circuit complexity in the one-dimensional Kitaev model. In equilibrium, we find that the circuit complexity of ground states exhibits a divergent derivative at the critical point, signaling the presence of a topological phase transition. Out of equilibrium, we study the complexity dynamics after a sudden quench, and find that the steady-state complexity exhibits nonanalytical behavior when quenched across critical points. We generalize our results to the long-range interacting case, and demonstrate that the circuit complexity correctly predicts the critical point between regions with different semi-integer topological numbers. Our results establish a connection between circuit complexity and quantum phase transitions both in and out of equilibrium, and can be easily generalized to topological phase transitions in higher dimensions. Our study opens a new avenue to using circuit complexity as a novel quantity to understand many-body systems.

Classical Models of Entanglement in Monitored Random Circuits - Oles Shtanko; Yaroslav A. Kharkov; Luis Pedro García-Pintos; Alexey V. Gorshkov (2020)
The evolution of entanglement entropy in quantum circuits composed of Haar-random gates and projective measurements shows versatile behavior, with connections to phase transitions and complexity theory. We reformulate the problem in terms of a classical Markov process for the dynamics of bipartition purities and establish a probabilistic cellular-automaton algorithm to compute entanglement entropy in monitored random circuits on arbitrary graphs. In one dimension, we further relate the evolution of the entropy to a simple classical spin model that naturally generalizes a two-dimensional lattice percolation problem. We also establish a Markov model for the evolution of the zeroth Rényi entropy and demonstrate that, in one dimension and in the limit of large local dimension, it coincides with the corresponding second-Rényi-entropy model. Finally, we extend the Markovian description to a more general setting that incorporates continuous-time dynamics, defined by stochastic Hamiltonians and weak local measurements continuously monitoring the system.

Coherent transport of spin by adiabatic passage in quantum dot arrays - Michael Gullans; Petta, J. R. (Physical Review B, 2020)
We introduce an adiabatic transfer protocol for spin states in large quantum dot arrays that is based on time-dependent modulation of the Heisenberg exchange interaction in the presence of a magnetic field gradient. We refer to this protocol as spin-CTAP (coherent transport by adiabatic passage) in analogy to a related protocol developed for charge state transfer in quantum dot arrays. The insensitivity of this adiabatic protocol to pulse imperfections has potential advantages for reading out extended spin qubit arrays. When the static exchange interaction varies across the array, a quantum-controlled version of spin-CTAP is possible, where the transfer process is conditional on the spin states in the middle of the array. This conditional operation can be used to generate N-qubit entangled GHZ states. Using a realistic noise model, we analyze the robustness of the spin-CTAP operations and find that high-fidelity (>95%) spin eigenstate transfer and GHZ state preparation is feasible in current devices.

Coherent transport of spin by adiabatic passage in quantum dot arrays - Michael Gullans; J. R. Petta (Phys. Rev. B, 2020)
We introduce an adiabatic transfer protocol for spin states in large quantum dot arrays that is based on time-dependent modulation of the Heisenberg exchange interaction in the presence of a magnetic field gradient. We refer to this protocol as spin-CTAP (coherent transport by adiabatic passage) in analogy to a related protocol developed for charge state transfer in quantum dot arrays. The insensitivity of this adiabatic protocol to pulse imperfections has potential advantages for reading out extended spin qubit arrays. When the static exchange interaction varies across the array, a quantum-controlled version of spin-CTAP is possible, where the transfer process is conditional on the spin states in the middle of the array. This conditional operation can be used to generate N-qubit entangled GHZ states. Using a realistic noise model, we analyze the robustness of the spin-CTAP operations and find that high-fidelity (>95%) spin eigenstate transfer and GHZ state preparation is feasible in current devices.

Collisions of room-temperature helium with ultracold lithium and the van der Waals bound state of HeLi - Constantinos Makrides; Daniel S Barker; James A Fedchak; Julia Scherschligt; Stephen Eckel; Eite Tiesinga (Phys. Rev. A, 2020)
We have computed the thermally averaged total, elastic rate coefficient for the collision of a room-temperature helium atom with an ultracold lithium atom. This rate coefficient has been computed as part of the characterization of a cold-atom vacuum sensor based on laser-cooled Li 6 or Li 7 atoms that will operate in the ultrahigh-vacuum (p< 10− 6 Pa) and extreme-high-vacuum (p< 10− 10 Pa) regimes. The analysis involves computing the X 2 Σ+ HeLi Born-Oppenheimer potential followed by the numerical solution of the relevant radial Schrödinger equation. The potential is computed using a single-reference-coupled-cluster electronic-structure method with basis sets of different completeness in order to characterize our uncertainty budget. We predict that the rate coefficient for a 300 K helium gas and a 1 μ K Li gas is 1.467 (13)× 10− 9 cm 3/s for He 4+ Li 6 and 1.471 (13)× 10− 9 cm 3/s for He 4+ Li 7, where the …

Computations with Greater Quantum Depth Are Strictly More Powerful (Relative to an Oracle) - Matthew Coudron; Sanketh Menda (Accepted to the Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC) 2020 conference, 2020)
A conjecture of Jozsa [Jozsa06] states that any polynomial-time quantum computation can be simulated by polylogarithmic-depth quantum computation interleaved with polynomial-depth classical computation. Separately, Aaronson [Aaronson05, Aaronson11, Aaronson14] conjectured that there exists an oracle O such that BQPO≠(BPPBQNC)O. These conjectures are intriguing allusions to the unresolved potential of combining classical and low-depth quantum computation. In this work we show that the Welded Tree Problem, which is an oracle problem that can be solved in quantum polynomial time as shown by Childs et al. [ChildsCDFGS03], cannot be solved in BPPBQNC, nor can it be solved in the class that Jozsa describes. This proves Aaronson's oracle separation conjecture and provides a counterpoint to Jozsa's conjecture relative to the Welded Tree oracle problem. More precisely, we define two complexity classes, HQC and JC whose languages are decided by two different families of interleaved quantum-classical circuits. HQC contains BPPBQNC and is therefore relevant to Aaronson's conjecture, while JC captures the model of computation that Jozsa considers. We show that the Welded Tree Problem gives an oracle separation between either of {JC,HQC} and BQP. Therefore, even when interleaved with arbitrary polynomial-time classical computation, greater "quantum depth" leads to strictly greater computational ability in this relativized setting.

Confronting lattice parton distributions with global QCD analysis - Jacob Bringewatt; N. Sato; W. Melnitchouk; Jian-Wei Qiu; F. Steffens; M. Constantinou (2020)
We present the first Monte Carlo based global QCD analysis of spin-averaged and spin-dependent parton distribution functions (PDFs) that includes nucleon isovector matrix elements in coordinate space from lattice QCD. We investigate the degree of universality of the extracted PDFs when the lattice and experimental data are treated under the same conditions within the Bayesian likelihood analysis. For the unpolarized sector, we find rather weak constraints from the current lattice data on the phenomenological PDFs, and difficulties in describing the lattice matrix elements at large spatial distances. In contrast, for the polarized PDFs we find good agreement between experiment and lattice data, with the latter providing significant constraints on the spin-dependent isovector quark and antiquark distributions

Constant-round Blind Classical Verification of Quantum Sampling - Kai-Min Chung; Yi Lee; Han-Hsuan Lin; Xiaodi Wu (2020)
In a recent breakthrough, Mahadev constructed a classical verification of quantum computation (CVQC) protocol for a classical client to delegate decision problems in BQP to an untrusted quantum prover under computational assumptions. In this work, we explore further the feasibility of CVQC with the more general sampling problems in BQP and with the desirable blindness property. We contribute affirmative solutions to both as follows. (1) Motivated by the sampling nature of many quantum applications (e.g., quantum algorithms for machine learning and quantum supremacy tasks), we initiate the study of CVQC for quantum sampling problems (denoted by SampBQP). More precisely, in a CVQC protocol for a SampBQP problem, the prover and the verifier are given an input x∈{0,1}n and a quantum circuit C, and the goal of the classical client is to learn a sample from the output z←C(x) up to a small error, from its interaction with an untrusted prover. We demonstrate its feasibility by constructing a four-message CVQC protocol for SampBQP based on the quantum Learning With Error assumption. (2) The blindness of CVQC protocols refers to a property of the protocol where the prover learns nothing, and hence is blind, about the client's input. It is a highly desirable property that has been intensively studied for the delegation of quantum computation. We provide a simple yet powerful generic compiler that transforms any CVQC protocol to a blind one while preserving its completeness and soundness errors as well as the number of rounds. Applying our compiler to (a parallel repetition of) Mahadev's CVQC protocol for BQP and our CVQC protocol for SampBQP yields the first constant-round blind CVQC protocol for BQP and SampBQP respectively, with negligible completeness and soundness errors.

Constructing Multipartite Bell inequalities from stabilizers - Qi Zhao; You Zhou (2020)
Bell inequality with self-testing property has played an important role in quantum information field with both fundamental and practical applications. However, it is generally challenging to find Bell inequalities with self-testing property for multipartite states and actually there are not many known candidates. In this work, we propose a systematical framework to construct Bell inequalities from stabilizers which are maximally violated by general stabilizer states, with two observables for each local party. We show that the constructed Bell inequalities can self-test any stabilizer state which is essentially device-independent, if and only if these stabilizers can uniquely determine the state in a device-dependent manner. This bridges the gap between device-independent and device-dependent verification methods. Our framework can provide plenty of Bell inequalities for self-testing stabilizer states. Among them, we give two families of Bell inequalities with different advantages: (1) a family of Bell inequalities with a constant ratio of quantum and classical bounds using 2N correlations, (2) Single pair inequalities improving on all previous robustness self-testing bounds using N+1 correlations, which are both efficient and suitable for realizations in multipartite systems. Our framework can not only inspire more fruitful multipartite Bell inequalities from conventional verification methods, but also pave the way for their practical applications.

Continuous symmetries and approximate quantum error correction - Philippe Faist; Sepehr Nezami; Victor V. Albert; Grant Salton; Fernando Pastawski; Patrick Hayden; John Preskill (Phys. Rev. X, 2020)
Quantum error correction and symmetry arise in many areas of physics, including many-body systems, metrology in the presence of noise, fault-tolerant computation, and holographic quantum gravity. Here we study the compatibility of these two important principles. If a logical quantum system is encoded into n physical subsystems, we say that the code is covariant with respect to a symmetry group G if a G transformation on the logical system can be realized by performing transformations on the individual subsystems. For a G-covariant code with G a continuous group, we derive a lower bound on the error correction infidelity following erasure of a subsystem. This bound approaches zero when the number of subsystems n or the dimension d of each subsystem is large. We exhibit codes achieving approximately the same scaling of infidelity with n or d as the lower bound. Leveraging tools from representation theory, we prove an approximate version of the Eastin-Knill theorem: If a code admits a universal set of transversal gates and corrects erasure with fixed accuracy, then, for each logical qubit, we need a number of physical qubits per subsystem that is inversely proportional to the error parameter. We construct codes covariant with respect to the full logical unitary group, achieving good accuracy for large d (using random codes) or n (using codes based on W-states). We systematically construct codes covariant with respect to general groups, obtaining natural generalizations of qubit codes to, for instance, oscillators and rotors. In the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, our approach provides insight into how time evolution in the bulk corresponds to time evolution on the boundary without violating the Eastin-Knill theorem, and our five-rotor code can be stacked to form a covariant holographic code.

Critical Theory for the Breakdown of Photon Blockade - Jonathan B. Curtis; Igor Boettcher; Jeremy T. Young; Mohammad F. Maghrebi; Howard Carmichael; Alexey V. Gorshkov; Michael Foss-Feig (2020)
Photon blockade is the result of the interplay between the quantized nature of light and strong optical nonlinearities, whereby strong photon-photon repulsion prevents a quantum optical system from absorbing multiple photons. We theoretically study a single atom coupled to the light field, described by the resonantly driven Jaynes--Cummings model, in which case the photon blockade breaks down in a second order phase transition at a critical drive strength. We show that this transition is associated to the spontaneous breaking of an anti-unitary PT-symmetry. Within a semiclassical approximation we calculate the expectation values of observables in the steady state. We then move beyond the semiclassical approximation and approach the critical point from the disordered (blockaded) phase by reducing the Lindblad quantum master equation to a classical rate equation that we solve. The width of the steady-state distribution in Fock space is found to diverge as we approach the critical point with a simple power-law, allowing us to calculate the critical scaling of steady state observables without invoking mean-field theory. We propose a simple physical toy model for biased diffusion in the space of occupation numbers, which captures the universal properties of the steady state. We list several experimental platforms where this phenomenon may be observed.

Destructive Error Interference in Product-Formula Lattice Simulation - Minh C. Tran; Su-Kuan Chu; Yuan Su; Andrew M. Childs; Alexey V. Gorshkov (Phys. Rev. Lett., 2020)
Quantum computers can efficiently simulate the dynamics of quantum systems. In this paper, we study the cost of digitally simulating the dynamics of several physically relevant systems using the first-order product formula algorithm. We show that the errors from different Trotterization steps in the algorithm can interfere destructively, yielding a much smaller error than previously estimated. In particular, we prove that the total error in simulating a nearest-neighbor interacting system of n sites for time t using the first-order product formula with r time slices is O(nt/r+nt3/r2) when nt2/r is less than a small constant. Given an error tolerance ε, the error bound yields an estimate of max{O(n2t/ε),O(n2t3/2/ε1/2)} for the total gate count of the simulation. The estimate is tighter than previous bounds and matches the empirical performance observed in Childs et al. [PNAS 115, 9456-9461 (2018)]. We also provide numerical evidence for potential improvements and conjecture an even tighter estimate for the gate count.

Discrete Time Crystals - Dominic V. Else; Christopher Monroe; Chetan Nayak; Norman Y. Yao (Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, 2020)
Experimental advances have allowed for the exploration of nearly isolated quantum many-body systems whose coupling to an external bath is very weak. A particularly interesting class of such systems is those which do not thermalize under their own isolated quantum dynamics. In this review, we highlight the possibility for such systems to exhibit new non-equilibrium phases of matter. In particular, we focus on "discrete time crystals", which are many-body phases of matter characterized by a spontaneously broken discrete time translation symmetry. We give a definition of discrete time crystals from several points of view, emphasizing that they are a non-equilibrium phenomenon, which is stabilized by many-body interactions, with no analog in non-interacting systems. We explain the theory behind several proposed models of discrete time crystals, and compare a number of recent realizations, in different experimental contexts.

Distinct Critical Behaviors from the Same State in Quantum Spin and Population Dynamics Perspectives - Christopher L. Baldwin; S. Shivam; S. L. Sondhi; M. Kardar (2020)
There is a deep connection between the ground states of transverse-field spin systems and the late-time distributions of evolving viral populations -- within simple models, both are obtained from the principal eigenvector of the same matrix. However, that vector is the wavefunction amplitude in the quantum spin model, whereas it is the probability itself in the population model. We show that this seemingly minor difference has significant consequences: phase transitions which are discontinuous in the spin system become continuous when viewed through the population perspective, and transitions which are continuous become governed by new critical exponents. We introduce a more general class of models which encompasses both cases, and that can be solved exactly in a mean-field limit. Numerical results are also presented for a number of one-dimensional chains with power-law interactions. We see that well-worn spin models of quantum statistical mechanics can contain unexpected new physics and insights when treated as population-dynamical models and beyond, motivating further studies.

Distributional property testing in a quantum world - Andras Gilyen; Tongyang Li (Proceedings of ITCS 2020, 2020)
A fundamental problem in statistics and learning theory is to test properties of distributions. We show that quantum computers can solve such problems with significant speed-ups. In particular, we give fast quantum algorithms for testing closeness between unknown distributions, testing independence between two distributions, and estimating the Shannon / von Neumann entropy of distributions. The distributions can be either classical or quantum, however our quantum algorithms require coherent quantum access to a process preparing the samples. Our results build on the recent technique of quantum singular value transformation, combined with more standard tricks such as divide-and-conquer. The presented approach is a natural fit for distributional property testing both in the classical and the quantum case, demonstrating the first speed-ups for testing properties of density operators that can be accessed coherently rather than only via sampling; for classical distributions our algorithms significantly improve the precision dependence of some earlier results.

Dynamical Purification Phase Transition Induced by Quantum Measurements - Michael Gullans; Huse, David A. (Physical Review X, 2020)
Continuously monitoring the environment of a quantum many-body system reduces the entropy of (purifies) the reduced density matrix of the system, conditional on the outcomes of the measurements. We show that, for mixed initial states, a balanced competition between measurements and entangling interactions within the system can result in a dynamical purification phase transition between (i) a phase that locally purifies at a constant system-size-independent rate, and (ii) a "mixed" phase where the purification time diverges exponentially in the system size. The residual entropy density in the mixed phase implies the existence of a quantum error-protected subspace where quantum information is reliably encoded against the future non-unitary evolution of the system. We show that these codes are of potential relevance to fault-tolerant quantum computation as they are often highly degenerate and satisfy optimal tradeoffs between encoded information densities and error thresholds. In spatially local models in 1+1 dimensions, this phase transition for mixed initial states occurs concurrently with a recently identified class of entanglement phase transitions for pure initial states. The mutual information of an initially completely-mixed state in 1+1 dimensions grows sublinearly in time due to the formation of the error protected subspace. The purification transition studied here also generalizes to systems with long-range interactions, where conventional notions of entanglement transitions have to be reformulated. Purification dynamics is likely a more robust probe of the transition in experiments, where imperfections generically reduce entanglement and drive the system towards mixed states. We describe the motivations for studying this novel class of non-equilibrium quantum dynamics in the context of advanced quantum computing platforms and fault-tolerant quantum computation.

Effective gaps are not effective: quasipolynomial classical simulation of obstructed stoquastic Hamiltonians - Jacob Bringewatt; Michael Jarret (2020)
All known examples confirming the possibility of an exponential separation between classical simulation algorithms and stoquastic adiabatic quantum computing (AQC) exploit symmetries that constrain adiabatic dynamics to effective, symmetric subspaces. The symmetries produce large effective eigenvalue gaps, which in turn make adiabatic computation efficient. We present a classical algorithm to efficiently sample from the effective subspace of a k-local stoquastic Hamiltonian H, without a priori knowledge of its symmetries (or near-symmetries). Our algorithm maps any k-local Hamiltonian to a graph G=(V,E) with |V|=O(poly(n)) where n is the number of qubits. Given the well-known result of Babai, we exploit graph isomorphism to study the automorphisms of G and arrive at an algorithm quasi-polynomial in |V| for producing samples from the effective subspace eigenstates of H. Our results rule out exponential separations between stoquastic AQC and classical computation that arise from hidden symmetries in k-local Hamiltonians. Furthermore, our graph representation of H is not limited to stoquastic Hamiltonians and may rule out corresponding obstructions in non-stoquastic cases, or be useful in studying additional properties of k-local Hamiltonians.

Efficient randomness certification by quantum probability estimation - Yanbao Zhang; Honghao Fu; Emanuel Knill (Phys. Rev. Research, 2020)
For practical applications of quantum randomness generation, it is important to certify and further produce a fixed block of fresh random bits with as few trials as possible. Consequently, protocols with high finite-data efficiency are preferred. To yield such protocols with respect to quantum side information, we develop quantum probability estimation. Our approach is applicable to device-independent as well as device-dependent scenarios, and it generalizes techniques from previous works [Miller and Shi, SIAM J. Comput. 46, 1304 (2017); Arnon-Friedman et al., Nat. Commun. 9, 459 (2018)]. Quantum probability estimation can adapt to changing experimental conditions, allows stopping the experiment as soon as the prespecified randomness goal is achieved, and can tolerate imperfect knowledge of the input distribution. Moreover, the randomness rate achieved at constant error is asymptotically optimal. For the device-independent scenario, our approach certifies the amount of randomness available in experimental results without first searching for relations between randomness and violations of fixed Bell inequalities. We implement quantum probability estimation for device-independent randomness generation in the CHSH Bell-test configuration, and we show significant improvements in finite-data efficiency, particularly at small Bell violations which are typical in current photonic loophole-free Bell tests.

Efficient Simulation of Random States and Random Unitaries - Gorjan Alagic; Christian Majenz; Alexander Russell (In: Canteaut A., Ishai Y. (eds) Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Cham, 2020)
We consider the problem of efficiently simulating random quantum states and random unitary operators, in a manner which is convincing to unbounded adversaries with black-box oracle access. This problem has previously only been considered for restricted adversaries. Against adversaries with an a priori bound on the number of queries, it is well-known that t-designs suffice. Against polynomial-time adversaries, one can use pseudorandom states (PRS) and pseudorandom unitaries (PRU), as defined in a recent work of Ji, Liu, and Song; unfortunately, no provably secure construction is known for PRUs. In our setting, we are concerned with unbounded adversaries. Nonetheless, we are able to give stateful quantum algorithms which simulate the ideal object in both settings of interest. In the case of Haar-random states, our simulator is polynomial-time, has negligible error, and can also simulate verification and reflection through the simulated state. This yields an immediate application to quantum money: a money scheme which is information-theoretically unforgeable and untraceable. In the case of Haar-random unitaries, our simulator takes polynomial space, but simulates both forward and inverse access with zero error. These results can be seen as the first significant steps in developing a theory of lazy sampling for random quantum objects.

Efficiently computable bounds for magic state distillation - Xin Wang; Mark M. Wilde; Yuan Su (Phys. Rev. Lett., 2020)
Magic state manipulation is a crucial component in the leading approaches to realizing scalable, fault-tolerant, and universal quantum computation. Related to magic state manipulation is the resource theory of magic states, for which one of the goals is to characterize and quantify quantum "magic." In this paper, we introduce the family of thauma measures to quantify the amount of magic in a quantum state, and we exploit this family of measures to address several open questions in the resource theory of magic states. As a first application, we use the min-thauma to bound the regularized relative entropy of magic. As a consequence of this bound, we find that two classes of states with maximal mana, a previously established magic measure, cannot be interconverted in the asymptotic regime at a rate equal to one. This result resolves a basic question in the resource theory of magic states and reveals a fundamental difference between the resource theory of magic states and other resource theories such as entanglement and coherence. As a second application, we establish the hypothesis testing thauma as an efficiently computable benchmark for the one-shot distillable magic, which in turn leads to a variety of bounds on the rate at which magic can be distilled, as well as on the overhead of magic state distillation. Finally, we prove that the max-thauma can outperform mana in benchmarking the efficiency of magic state distillation.

Entanglement Bounds on the Performance of Quantum Computing Architectures - Zachary Eldredge; Leo Zhou; Aniruddha Bapat; James R. Garrison; Abhinav Deshpande; Frederic T. Chong; Alexey V. Gorshkov (Phys. Rev. Research, 2020)
There are many possible architectures for future quantum computers that designers will need to choose between. However, the process of evaluating a particular connectivity graph's performance as a quantum architecture can be difficult. In this paper, we establish a connection between a quantity known as the isoperimetric number and a lower bound on the time required to create highly entangled states. The metric we propose counts resources based on the use of two-qubit unitary operations, while allowing for arbitrarily fast measurements and classical feedback. We describe how these results can be applied to the evaluation of the hierarchical architecture proposed in Phys. Rev. A 98, 062328 (2018). We also show that the time-complexity bound we place on the creation of highly-entangled states can be saturated up to a multiplicative factor logarithmic in the number of qubits.