Possibilistic simulation of quantum circuits by classical circuits
Daochen Wang
备注：
8 pages; v2: major revision of v1 claims due to circuit depth costing error, cf. footnote 29; v3: reverted title back to v1's, refined main theorem statement, and improved presentation; v4: added comparison to weak and strong simulation, further improved presentation
In breakthrough work, Bravyi, Gosset, and König (BGK) [Science, 2018] unconditionally proved that constant depth quantum circuits are more powerful than their classical counterparts. Their result is equivalent to saying that a particular family of constant depth quantum circuits takes classical circuits at least $Ω(\log n)$ depth to "simulate", in a certain sense. In our paper, we formalise their sense of simulation, which we call "possibilistic simulation" or "p-simulation", and construct explicit classical circuits that can p-simulate any depth-$d$ quantum circuit with Clifford and $t$ $T$-gates in depth $O(d+t)$. Our classical circuits use $\{\text{NOT, AND, OR}\}$ gates of fan-in $\leq 2$.
Contextuality and nonlocality are non-classical properties exhibited by quantum statistics whose implications profoundly impact both foundations and applications of quantum theory. In this paper we provide some insights into logical contextuality and inequality-free proofs. The former can be understood as the possibility version of contextuality, while the latter refers to proofs of quantum contextuality/nonlocality that are not based on violations of some noncontextuality (or Bell) inequality. The present work aims to build a bridge between these two concepts from what we call possibilistic p…
The study of quantum circuits composed of commuting gates is particularly useful to understand the delicate boundary between quantum and classical computation. Indeed, while being a restricted class, commuting circuits exhibit genuine quantum effects such as entanglement. In this paper we show that the computational power of commuting circuits exhibits a surprisingly rich structure. First we show that every 2-local commuting circuit acting on d-level systems and followed by single-qudit measurements can be efficiently simulated classically with high accuracy. In contrast, we prove that such st…
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We consider Gaussian quantum circuits supplemented with non-Gaussian input states and derive sufficient conditions for efficient classical strong simulation of these circuits. In particular, we generalise the stellar representation of continuous-variable quantum states to the multimode setting and relate the stellar rank of the input non-Gaussian states, a recently introduced measure of non-Gaussianity, to the cost of evaluating classically the output probability densities of these circuits. Our results have consequences for the strong simulability of a large class of near-term continuous-vari…
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Quantum circuits which perform integer arithmetic could potentially outperform their classical counterparts. In this paper, a quantum circuit is considered which performs a specific computational pattern on classically represented integers to accelerate the computation. Such a hybrid circuit could be embedded in a conventional computer architecture as a quantum device or accelerator. In particular, a quantum multiply-add circuit (QMAC) using a Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) is proposed which can perform the calculation on conventional integers faster than its conventional counterpart. Whereas…
High-connectivity circuits are a major roadblock for current quantum hardware. We propose a hybrid classical-quantum algorithm to simulate such circuits without swap-gate ladders. As main technical tool, we introduce quantum-classical-quantum interfaces. These replace an experimentally problematic gate (e.g. a long-range one) by single-qubit random measurements followed by state-preparations sampled according to a classical quasi-probability simulation of the noiseless gate. Each interface introduces a multiplicative statistical overhead which is remarkably independent of the on-chip qubit dis…
Electronic devices all around us contain classical control circuits. Such circuits consist of a network of controllers which can read and write signals to wires of the circuit with the goal to minimize the cost function of the circuit's output signal. Here, we propose the use of shared entanglement between controllers as a resource to improve the performance of otherwise purely classical control circuits. We study a well-known example from the classical control literature and demonstrate that allowing two controllers to share entanglement improves their ability to control. More precisely, we e…
We exploit a recently constructed mapping between quantum circuits and graphs in order to prove that circuits corresponding to certain planar graphs can be efficiently simulated classically. The proof uses an expression for the Ising model partition function in terms of quadratically signed weight enumerators (QWGTs), which are polynomials that arise naturally in an expansion of quantum circuits in terms of rotations involving Pauli matrices. We combine this expression with a known efficient classical algorithm for the Ising partition function of any planar graph in the absence of an external …
The quantum Fourier transform (QFT) is sometimes said to be the source of various exponential quantum speed-ups. In this paper we introduce a class of quantum circuits which cannot outperform classical computers even though the QFT constitutes an essential component. More precisely, we consider normalizer circuits. A normalizer circuit over a finite Abelian group is any quantum circuit comprising the QFT over the group, gates which compute automorphisms and gates which realize quadratic functions on the group. We prove that all normalizer circuits have polynomial-time classical simulations. Th…
Sampling from probability distributions of quantum circuits is a fundamentally and practically important task which can be used to demonstrate quantum supremacy using noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. In the present work, we examine classical simulability of sampling from the output photon-number distribution of linear-optical circuits composed of random beam splitters with equally distributed squeezed vacuum states and single-photon states input. We provide efficient classical algorithms to simulate linear-optical random circuits and show that the algorithms' error is exponentially sm…
We introduce a distributed classical simulation algorithm for general quantum circuits, and present numerical results for calculating the output probabilities of universal random circuits. We find that we can simulate more qubits to greater depth than previously reported using the cluster supported by the Data Infrastructure and Search Technology Division of the Alibaba Group. For example, computing a single amplitude of an $8\times 8$ qubit circuit with depth $40$ was previously beyond the reach of supercomputers. Our algorithm can compute this within $2$ minutes using a small portion ($\appr…
The question of finding a lower bound on the number of Toffoli gates in a classical reversible circuit is addressed. A method based on quantum information concepts is proposed. The method involves solely concepts from quantum information - there is no need for an actual physical quantum computer. The method is illustrated on the example of classical Shannon data compression.
We study classical simulation of quantum computation, taking the Gottesman-Knill theorem as a starting point. We show how each Clifford circuit can be reduced to an equivalent, manifestly simulatable circuit (normal form). This provides a simple proof of the Gottesman-Knill theorem without resorting to stabilizer techniques. The normal form highlights why Clifford circuits have such limited computational power in spite of their high entangling power. At the same time, the normal form shows how the classical simulation of Clifford circuits fits into the standard way of embedding classical compu…
We identify a broad class of physical processes in an optical quantum circuit that can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer: this class includes unitary transformations, amplification, noise, and measurements. This simulatability result places powerful constraints on the capability to realize exponential quantum speedups as well as on inducing an optical nonlinear transformation via linear optics, photodetection-based measurement and classical feedforward of measurement results, optimal cloning, and a wide range of other processes.
We devise a classical algorithm which efficiently computes the quantum expectation values arising in a class of continuous variable quantum circuits wherein the final quantum observable | after the Heisenberg evolution associated with the circuits | is at most second order in momentum. The classical computational algorithm exploits a specific epistemic restriction in classical phase space which directly captures the quantum uncertainty relation, to transform the quantum circuits in the complex Hilbert space into classical albeit unconventional stochastic processes in the phase space. The resul…
We present a complete optimization procedure for hybrid quantum-classical circuits with classical parity logic. While common optimization techniques for quantum algorithms focus on rewriting solely the pure quantum segments, there is interest in applying a global optimization process for applications such as quantum error correction and quantum assertions. This work, based on the pure-quantum circuit optimization procedure by Duncan et al., uses an extension of the formal graphical ZX-calculus called ZX-ground as an intermediary representation of the hybrid circuits to allow for granular optim…
We give some quantum circuits for calculating the probability $P(G|D)$ of a graph $G$ given data $D$. $G$ together with a transition probability matrix for each node of the graph, constitutes a Classical Bayesian Network, or CB net for short. Bayesian methods for calculating $P(G|D)$ have been given before (the so called structural modular and ordered modular models), but these earlier methods were designed to work on a classical computer. The goal of this paper is to "quantum computerize" those earlier methods.
In this work a simple classical analog of the quantum Zeno effect is suggested. As it is well known, in the quantum mechanics, in the limit of the infinite series of alternative short dynamical evolution and measurement, an unstable quantum system will never decay, that is called quantum Zeno effect. Here an ideal (without resistance), classical LC oscillating circuit with quick switch ON-OFF alternation is considered. In the limit of the infinite series of alternative short electrical current regime (switch in the ON state) and no-current regime (current breaking by quick switch ON-OFF state …
Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are the quantum analog of classical neural networks (NNs). A VQA consists of a parameterized quantum circuit (PQC) which is composed of multiple layers of ansatzes (simpler PQCs, which are an analogy of NN layers) that differ only in selections of parameters. Previous work has identified the alternating layered ansatz as potentially a new standard ansatz in near-term quantum computing. Indeed, shallow alternating layered VQAs are easy to implement and have been shown to be both trainable and expressive. In this work, we introduce a training algorithm with …
We present a method for classically simulating quantum circuits based on the tensor contraction model of Markov and Shi (quant-ph/0511069). Using this method we are able to classically simulate the approximate quantum Fourier transform in polynomial time. Moreover, our approach allows us to formulate a condition for the composability of simulable quantum circuits. We use this condition to show that any circuit composed of a constant number of approximate quantum Fourier transform circuits and log-depth circuits with limited interaction range can also be efficiently simulated.
We propose a random circuit model to analyze the impact of noise on the performance of variational quantum circuits for classical optimization problems. Our model accounts for the propagation of arbitrary single qubit errors through the circuit. We find that even with a small noise rate, the quality of the obtained classical optima is low on average and a single-qubit error rate of $1 / nD$, where $n$ is the number of qubits and $D$ is the circuit depth, is needed for the possibility of a quantum advantage. We estimate that this translates to an error rate lower than $10^{-6}$ using QAOA for c…
Parameterized quantum circuits play an essential role in the performance of many variational hybrid quantum-classical (HQC) algorithms. One challenge in implementing such algorithms is to choose an effective circuit that well represents the solution space while maintaining a low circuit depth and number of parameters. To characterize and identify expressible, yet compact, parameterized circuits, we propose several descriptors, including measures of expressibility and entangling capability, that can be statistically estimated from classical simulations of parameterized quantum circuits. We comp…
A polynomial-time classical sampler for noisy quantum circuits from statistical mechanics
University of Maryland, College Park（马里兰大学帕克分校）；Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, UCLA（加州大学洛杉矶分校电气与计算机工程系）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University（普林斯顿大学电气与计算机工程系）；QuEra Computing Inc.（QuEra计算公司）；Department of Physics, Stanford University（斯坦福大学物理系）
Matchgates are a restricted set of two-qubit gates known to be classically simulable under particular conditions. Specifically, if a circuit consists only of nearest-neighbour matchgates, an efficient classical simulation is possible if either (i) the input is a computational basis state and the simulation requires computing probabilities of multi-qubit outcomes (including also adaptive measurements), or (ii) if the input is an arbitrary product state, but the output of the circuit consists of a single qubit. In this paper we extend these results to show that matchgates are classically simulab…
The well-known Deutsch Algorithm (DA) and Deutsch-Jozsha Algorithm (DJA) both are used as an evidence to the power of quantum computers over classical computation mediums. In these theoretical experiments, it has been shown that a quantum computer can find the answer with certainty within a few steps although classical electronic systems must evaluate more iterations than quantum computer. In this paper, it is shown that a classical computation system formed by using ordinary electronic parts may perform the same task with equal performance than quantum computers. DA and DJA quantum circuits a…
Pilot-Wave Simulator: Exact Classical Sampling from Ideal and Noisy Quantum Circuits up to Hundreds of Qubits
Lomonosov Moscow State University（莫斯科国立大学）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Peking University（北京大学）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）
A prerequisite for many quantum information processing tasks to truly surpass classical approaches is an efficient procedure to encode classical data in quantum superposition states. In this work, we present a circuit-based flip-flop quantum random access memory to construct a quantum database of classical information in a systematic and flexible way. For registering or updating classical data consisting of $M$ entries, each represented by $n$ bits, the method requires $O(n)$ qubits and $O(Mn)$ steps. With post-selection at an additional cost, our method can also store continuous data as proba…
Random circuit sampling has become a popular means for demonstrating the superiority of quantum computers over classical supercomputers. While quantum chips are evolving rapidly, classical sampling algorithms are also getting better and better. The major challenge is to generate bitstrings exhibiting an XEB fidelity above that of the quantum chips. Here we present a classical sampling algorithm for producing the probability distribution of any given random quantum circuit, where the fidelity can be rigorously bounded. Specifically, our algorithm performs rejection sampling after the introduced…
Generalizing a recent analysis, we model the quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects with a quickly switched, ideal LC/LR circuit, in the limiting case of it alternating very many times between its short LC and even shorter LR regime. If the initial current is arranged to be negligible, the capacitor turns out never to discharge. If the initial current is made dominant, this capacitor discharges, and faster than the exponential decay to which it limits. The existence and simplicity of these phases in such a rudimentary model indicates that the corresponding effects are ubiquitous throughout physics…
Let G(A,B) denote the 2-qubit gate which acts as the 1-qubit SU(2) gates A and B in the even and odd parity subspaces respectively, of two qubits. Using a Clifford algebra formalism we show that arbitrary uniform families of circuits of these gates, restricted to act only on nearest neighbour (n.n.) qubit lines, can be classically efficiently simulated. This reproduces a result originally proved by Valiant using his matchgate formalism, and subsequently related by others to free fermionic physics. We further show that if the n.n. condition is slightly relaxed, to allowing the same gates to act…
We study the computational power of unitary Clifford circuits with solely magic state inputs (CM circuits), supplemented by classical efficient computation. We show that CM circuits are hard to classically simulate up to multiplicative error (assuming PH non-collapse), and also up to additive error under plausible average-case hardness conjectures. Unlike other such known classes, a broad variety of possible conjectures apply. Along the way we give an extension of the Gottesman-Knill theorem that applies to universal computation, showing that for Clifford circuits with joint stabiliser and non…
This document describes a family of quantum circuits which load classical data into a quantum state. When loading $N$ classical bits, the result quantum state is of order $\log_2(N)$ qubits. Furthermore the gate depth of the data loading circuit is of order $\log_2(N)$. Limitations to the efficiency of the data loading process such as the Holevo bound are discussed. Methods to improve the efficiency of the data loading procedure such as combining classical compression techniques with quantum decompression circuitry, are also discussed. Simulations using the Quipper language were conducted to v…
Permutational Quantum Computing (PQC) [\emph{Quantum~Info.~Comput.}, \textbf{10}, 470--497, (2010)] is a natural quantum computational model conjectured to capture non-classical aspects of quantum computation. An argument backing this conjecture was the observation that there was no efficient classical algorithm for estimation of matrix elements of the $S_n$ irreducible representation matrices in the Young's orthogonal form, which correspond to transition amplitudes of a broad class of PQC circuits. This problem can be solved with a PQC machine in polynomial time, but no efficient classical al…
