In this paper is presented an abstract theory of quantum processors and controllers, special kind of quantum computational network defined on a composite quantum system with two parts: the controlling and controlled subsystems. Such approach formally differs from consideration of quantum control as some external influence on a system using some set of Hamiltonians or quantum gates. The model of programmed quantum controllers discussed in present paper is based on theory of universal deterministic quantum processors (programmable gate arrays). Such quantum devices may simulate arbitrary evolution of quantum system and so demonstrate an example of universal quantum control.
Keywords: Quantum, Computer, Control, Processor, Universal
The rapid progress seen in the development of quantum coherent devices for information processing has motivated serious consideration of quantum computer architecture and organization. One topic which remains open for investigation and optimization relates to the design of the classical-quantum interface, where control operations on individual qubits are applied according to higher-level algorithms; accommodating competing demands on performance and scalability remains a major outstanding challenge. In this work we present a resource-efficient, scalable framework for the implementation of embe…
Most modern classical processors support so-called von Neumann architecture with program and data registers. In present work is revisited similar approach to models of quantum processors. Deterministic programmable quantum gate arrays are considered as an example. They are also called von Neumann quantum processors here and use conditional quantum dynamics. Such devices have some problems with universality, but consideration of hybrid quantum processors, i.e., models with both continuous and discrete quantum variables resolves the problems. It is also discussed comparison of such a model of qu…
Energy efficient routing in wireless sensor networks has attracted attention from researchers in both academia and industry, most recently motivated by the opportunity to use SDN (software defined network)-inspired approaches. These problems are NP-hard, with algorithms needing computation time which scales faster than polynomial in the problem size. Consequently, heuristic algorithms are used in practice, which are unable to guarantee optimally. In this short paper, we show proof-of-principle for the use of a quantum annealing processor instead of a classical processor, to find optimal or nea…
A quantum processor to import, process, and export optical quantum states is a common core technology enabling various photonic quantum information processing. However, there has been no photonic processor which is simultaneously universal, scalable, and programmable. Here, we report on an original loop-based single-mode versatile photonic quantum processor which is designed to be universal, scalable, and programmable. Our processor can perform arbitrarily many steps of programmable quantum operations on a given single-mode optical quantum state by time-domain processing in a dynamically contr…
A quantum processor is a device with a data register and a program register. The input to the program register determines the operation, which is a completely positive linear map, that will be performed on the state in the data register. We develop a mathematical description for these devices, and apply it to several different examples of processors. The problem of finding a processor that will be able to implement a given set of mappings is also examined, and it is shown that while it is possible to design a finite processor to realize the phase-damping channel, it is not possible to do so fo…
By combining telecloning and programmable quantum gate array presented by Nielsen and Chuang [Phys.Rev.Lett. 79 :321(1997)], we propose a programmable quantum processor which can be programmed to implement restricted set of operations with several identical data outputs. The outputs are approximately-transformed versions of input data. The processor successes with certain probability.
We analyze and compare the optimality of approximate and probabilistic universal programmable quantum processors. We define several characteristics how to quantify the optimality and we study in detail performance of three types of programmable quantum processors based on (1) the C-NOT gate, (2) the SWAP operation, and (3) the model of the quantum information distributor - the QID processor. We show under which conditions the measurement assisted QID processor is optimal. We also investigate optimality of the so-called U-processors and we also compare the optimal approximative implementation o…
Quantum computers, which take advantage of the superposition and entanglement of physical states, could outperform their classical counterparts in solving problems with technological impact, such as factoring large numbers and searching databases. A quantum processor executes algorithms by applying a programmable sequence of gates to an initialized state of qubits, which coherently evolves into a final state containing the result of the computation. Although quantum processors with a few qubits have been demonstrated on multiple quantum computing platforms, realization of solid-state programma…
We present a simple and powerful technique for finding a good error model for a quantum processor. The technique iteratively tests a nested sequence of models against data obtained from the processor, and keeps track of the best-fit model and its wildcard error (a quantification of the unmodeled error) at each step. Each best-fit model, along with a quantification of its unmodeled error, constitute a characterization of the processor. We explain how quantum processor models can be compared with experimental data and to each other. We demonstrate the technique by using it to characterize a simu…
We present a systematic analysis how one can improve performance of probabilistic programmable quantum processors. We generalize a simple Vidal-Masanes-Cirac processor that realizes U(1) rotations on a qubit with the phase of the rotation encoded in a state of the program register. We show how the probability of success of the probabilistic processor can be enhanced by using the processor in loops. In addition we show that the same strategy can be utilized for a probabilistic implementation of non-unitary transformations on qubits. In addtion, we show that an arbitrary SU(2) transformations of…
Schemes of experimental realization of the main two qubit processors for quantum computers and Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm are derived in virtual spin representation. The results are applicable for every four quantum states allowing the required properties for quantum processor implementation if for qubit encoding virtual spin representation is used. Four dimensional Hilbert space of nuclear spin 3/2 is considered in details for this aim
Even if Google AI's Sycamore processor is efficient for the particular task it has been designed for it fails to deliver universal computational capacity. Furthermore, even classical devices implementing transverse homoclinic orbits realize exponential speedups with respect to universal classical as well as quantum computations. Moreover, relative to the validity of quantum mechanics, there already exist quantum oracles which violate the Church-Turing thesis.
Here is discussed the Hamiltonian approach to construction of deterministic universal (in approximate sense) programmable quantum circuits with qubits or any other quantum systems with dimension of Hilbert space is $n \ge 2$.
A quantum processor is a programmable quantum circuit in which both the data and the program, which specifies the operation that is carried out on the data, are quantum states. We study the situation in which we want to use such a processor to approximate a set of unitary operators to a specified level of precision. We measure how well an operation is performed by the process fidelity between the desired operation and the operation produced by the processor. We show how to find the program for a given processor that produces the best approximation of a particular unitary operation. We also pla…
A universal programmable quantum processor uses program quantum states to apply an arbitrary quantum channel to an input state. We generalize the concept of a finite-dimensional programmable quantum processor to infinite dimension assuming an energy constraint on the input and output of the target quantum channels. By proving reductions to and from finite-dimensional processors, we obtain upper and lower bounds on the program dimension required to approximately implement energy-limited quantum channels. In particular, we consider the implementation of Gaussian channels. Due to their practical …
This paper presents an overview of the topology of D-Wave's next-generation quantum processors. It provides examples of minor embeddings and discusses performance of embedding algorithms for the new topology compared to the existing Chimera topology. It also presents some initial performance results for simple, standard Ising model classes of problems.
Advances in development of quantum computing processors brought ample opportunities to test the performance of various quantum algorithms with practical implementations. In this paper we report on implementations of quantum compression algorithm that can efficiently compress unknown quantum information. We restricted ourselves to compression of three pure qubits into two qubits, as the complexity of even such a simple implementation is barely within the reach of today's quantum processors. We implemented the algorithm on IBM quantum processors with two different topological layouts - a fully c…
We study possible realizations of generalized quantum measurements on measurement-assisted programmable quantum processors. We focus our attention on the realization of von Neumann measurements and informationally complete POVMs. It is known that two unitary transformations implementable by the same programmable processor require mutually {\it orthogonal} states. It turns out that the situation with von Neumann measurements is different. Specifically, in order to realize two such measurements one does not have to use orthogonal program states. On the other hand, the number of the implementable…
Fixed-frequency superconducting quantum processors are one of the most mature quantum computing architectures with high-coherence qubits and simple controls. However, high-fidelity multi-qubit gates pose tight requirements on individual qubit frequencies in these processors , and these constraints are difficult to satisfy when constructing larger processors due to the large dispersion in the fabrication of Josephson junctions. In this article, we propose a mixed-integer-programming-based optimization approach that determines qubit frequencies to maximize the fabrication yield of quantum proces…
In this paper, five techniques, for the representation of a digital image inside a quantum processor, are compared. The techniques are: flexible representation of quantum images (FRQI), novel enhanced quantum representation (NEQR), generalized quantum image representation (GQIR), multi-channel representation for quantum images (MCQI), and quantum Boolean image processing (QBIP). The comparison will be based on implementations on the Quirk simulator, and on the IBM Q Experience processors, from the point of view of performance, robustness (noise immunity), deterioration of the outcomes due to d…
We present a probabilistic quantum processor for qudits. The processor itself is represented by a fixed array of gates. The input of the processor consists of two registers. In the program register the set of instructions (program) is encoded. This program is applied to the data register. The processor can perform any operation on a single qudit of the dimension N with a certain probability. If the operation is unitary, the probability is in general 1/N^2, but for more restricted sets of operators the probability can be higher. In fact, this probability can be independent of the dimension of t…
Recently quantum states discrimination has been frequently studied. In this paper we study them from the other way round, the likeness of two quantum states. The fidelity is used to describe the likeness of two quantum states. Then we presented a scheme to obtain the fidelity of two unknown qubits directly from the integral area of the spectra of the assistant qubit(spin) on an NMR Quantum Information Processor. Finally we demonstrated the scheme on a three-qubit quantum information processor. The experimental data are consistent with the theoretical expectation with an average error of 0.05, …
A quantum processor (the programmable gate array) is a quantum network with a fixed structure. A space of states is represented as tensor product of data and program registers. Different unitary operations with the data register correspond to "loaded" programs without any changing or "tuning" of network itself. Due to such property and undesirability of entanglement between program and data registers, universality of quantum processors is subject of rather strong restrictions. By different authors was developed universal "stochastic" quantum gate arrays. It was proved also, that "deterministic…
We devise a new technique to enhance transmission of quantum information through linear optical quantum information processors. The idea is based on applying the Quantum Zeno effect to the process of photon absorption. By frequently monitoring the presence of the photon through a QND (quantum non-demolition) measurement the absorption is suppressed. Quantum information is encoded in the polarization degrees of freedom and is therefore not affected by the measurement. Some implementations of the QND measurement are proposed.
We present a method for characterizing the performance of noisy quantum processors using discrete time crystals. Deviations from ideal persistent oscillatory behavior give rise to numerical scores by which relative quantum processor capabilities can be measured. We construct small sets of qubit layouts that cover the full topology of a target system, and execute our metric over these sets on a wide range of IBM Quantum processors. We show that there is a large variability in scores, not only across multiple processors, but between different circuit layouts over individual devices. The stabilit…
Quantum simulation of complex quantum systems and their properties often requires the ability to prepare initial states in an eigenstate of the Hamiltonian to be simulated. In addition, to compute the eigenvalues of a Hamiltonian is in general a non-trivial problem. Here, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical probabilistic method to compute eigenvalues and prepare eigenstates of Hamiltonians which are simulatable with a trapped-ion quantum processor.
Quantum computers can potentially provide an unprecedented speed-up with respect to traditional computers. However, a significant increase in the number of quantum bits (qubits) and their performance is required to demonstrate such quantum supremacy. While scaling up the underlying quantum processor is extremely challenging, building the electronics required to interface such large-scale processor is just as relevant and arduous. This paper discusses the challenges in designing a scalable electronic interface for quantum processors. To that end, we discuss the requirements dictated by differen…
Advancements in computing based on qubit networks, and in particular the flux-qubit processor architecture developed by D-Wave System's Inc., have enabled the physical simulation of quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) networks beyond the limit of classical methods. However, the embedding of QCA networks onto the available processor architecture is a key challenge in preparing such simulations. In this work, two approaches to embedding QCA circuits are characterized: a dense placement algorithm that uses a routing method based on negotiated congestion; and a heuristic method implemented in D-Wa…
Diamond quantum processors consisting of a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre and surrounding nuclear spins have been the key to significant advancements in room-temperature quantum computing, quantum sensing and microscopy. The optimisation of these processors is crucial for the development of large-scale diamond quantum computers and the next generation of enhanced quantum sensors and microscopes. Here, we present a full model of multi-qubit diamond quantum processors and develop a semi-analytical method for designing gate pulses. This method optimises gate speed and fidelity in the presence of ra…
Random quantum sampling, a task to sample bit-strings from a random quantum circuit, is considered one of suitable benchmark tasks to demonstrate the outperformance of quantum computers even with noisy qubits. Recently, random quantum sampling was performed on the Sycamore quantum processor with 53 qubits [Nature 574, 505 (2019)] and on the Zuchongzhi quantum processor with 56 qubits [Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 180501 (2021)]. Here, we analyze and compare statistical properties of the outputs of random quantum sampling by Sycamore and Zuchongzhi. Using the Marchenko-Pastur law and the Wasssertein d…
Processing quantum information using quantum three-level systems or qutrits as the fundamental unit is an alternative to contemporary qubit-based architectures with the potential to provide significant computational advantages. We demonstrate a fully programmable two-qutrit quantum processor by utilizing the third energy eigenstates of two transmons. We develop a parametric coupler to achieve excellent connectivity in the nine-dimensional Hilbert space enabling efficient implementations of two-qutrit gates. We characterize our processor by realizing several algorithms like Deutsch-Jozsa, Berns…
We report a quantum-classical hybrid scheme for factorization of bi-prime numbers (which are odd and square-free) using IBM's quantum processors. The hybrid scheme proposed here involves both classical optimization techniques and adiabatic quantum optimization techniques, and is build by extending a previous scheme of hybrid factorization [Pal et al., Pramana 92, 26 (2019) and Xu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 130501 (2012)]. The quantum part of the scheme is very general in the sense that it can be implemented using any quantum computing architecture. Here, as an example, we experimentally imp…
The observation of genuine quantum effects in systems governed by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians has been an outstanding challenge in the field. Here we simulate the evolution under such Hamiltonians in the quantum regime on a superconducting quantum processor by using a dilation procedure involving an ancillary qubit. We observe the parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$)-symmetry breaking phase transition at the exceptional points, obtain the critical exponent, and show that this transition is associated with a loss of state distinguishability. In a two-qubit setting, we show that the entanglement can be m…
Four-body interaction plays an important role in many-body systems, and it can exhibit interesting phase transition behaviors. Historically it was the need to efficiently simulate quantum systems that lead the idea of a quantum computer. In this Letter, we report the experimental demonstration of a four-body interaction in a four- qubit nuclear magnetic resonance quantum information processor. The strongly modulating pulse is used to implement spin selective excitation. The results show a good agreement between theory and experiment.
Existing protocols for benchmarking current quantum co-processors fail to meet the usual standards for assessing the performance of High-Performance-Computing platforms. After a synthetic review of these protocols -- whether at the gate, circuit or application level -- we introduce a new benchmark, dubbed Atos Q-score (TM), that is application-centric, hardware-agnostic and scalable to quantum advantage processor sizes and beyond. The Q-score measures the maximum number of qubits that can be used effectively to solve the MaxCut combinatorial optimization problem with the Quantum Approximate Op…
An unknown unitary gates, which is secretly chosen from several known ones, can always be distinguished perfectly. In this paper, we implement such a task on IBM's quantum processor. More precisely, we experimentally demonstrate the discrimination of two qubit unitary gates, the identity gate and the $\frac{2}{3}π$-phase shift gate, using two discrimination schemes -- the parallel scheme and the sequential scheme. We program these two schemes on the \emph{ibmqx4}, a $5$-qubit superconducting quantum processor via IBM cloud, with the help of the $QSI$ modules [S. Liu et al.,~arXiv:1710.09500, 2…
We propose a realization of a scalable, high-performance quantum processor whose qubits are represented by the ground and subradiant states of effective dimers formed by pairs of two-level systems coupled by resonant dipole-dipole interaction. The dimers are implanted in low-temperature solid host material at controllable nanoscale separations. The two-qubit entanglement either relies on the coherent excitation exchange between the dimers or is mediated by external laser fields.
We present a continuous monitoring system for intermediate-scale quantum processors that allows extracting estimates of noisy native gate and read-out measurements based on the set of executed quantum circuits and resulting measurement outcomes. In contrast to standard approaches for calibration and benchmarking quantum processors, the executed circuits, which are input to the monitoring system, are assumed to be out of any control. We provide the results of applying our system to the synthetically generated data obtained from a quantum emulator, as well as to the experimental data collected f…
PyGSTi is a Python software package for assessing and characterizing the performance of quantum computing processors. It can be used as a standalone application, or as a library, to perform a wide variety of quantum characterization, verification, and validation (QCVV) protocols on as-built quantum processors. We outline pyGSTi's structure, and what it can do, using multiple examples. We cover its main characterization protocols with end-to-end implementations. These include gate set tomography, randomized benchmarking on one or many qubits, and several specialized techniques. We also discuss …
We report the implementation of a 3-qubit quantum error correction code (QECC) on a quantum information processor realized by the magnetic resonance of Carbon nuclei in a single crystal of Malonic Acid. The code corrects for phase errors induced on the qubits due to imperfect decoupling of the magnetic environment represented by nearby spins, as well as unwanted evolution under the internal Hamiltonian. We also experimentally demonstrate sufficiently high fidelity control to implement two rounds of quantum error correction. This is a demonstration of state-of-the-art control in solid state nuc…
We show that it is possible to control the trade-off between information gain and disturbance in generalized measurements of qudits by utilizing the programmable quantum processor. This universal quantum machine allows us to perform a generalized measurement on the initial state of the input qudit to construct a Husimi function of this state. The trade-off between the gain and the disturbance of the qudit is controlled by the initial state of ancillary system that acts as a program register for the quantum-information distributor. The trade-off fidelity does not depend on the initial state of …
Interaction of molecules with light may lead to electronic transitions and simultaneous vibrational excitations. Franck-Condon factors (FCFs) play an important role in quantifying the intensities of such vibronic transitions occurring during molecular photo-excitations. In this article, we describe a general method for estimating FCFs using a quantum information processor. The method involves the application of a translation operator followed by the measurement of certain projections. We also illustrate the method by experimentally estimating FCFs with the help of a three-qubit NMR quantum inf…
Full connectivity of qubits is necessary for most quantum algorithms, which is difficult to directly implement on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum processors. However, inserting swap gate to enable the two-qubit gates between uncoupled qubits significantly decreases the computation result fidelity. To this end, we propose a Special-Purpose Quantum Processor Design method that can design suitable structures for different quantum algorithms. Our method extends the processor structure from two-dimensional lattice graph to general planar graph and arranges the physical couplers according to the tw…
Simulating the topological phases of matter in synthetic quantum simulators is a topic of considerable interest. Given the universality of digital quantum simulators, the prospect of digitally simulating exotic topological phases is greatly enhanced. However, it is still an open question how to realize digital quantum simulation of topological phases of matter. Here, using common single- and two-qubit elementary quantum gates, we propose and demonstrate an approach to design topologically protected quantum circuits on the current generation of noisy quantum processors where spin-orbital coupli…
As progress is made towards the first generation of error-corrected quantum computers, robust characterization and validation protocols are required to assess the noise environments of physical quantum processors. While standard coherence metrics and characterization protocols such as T1 and T2, process tomography, and randomized benchmarking are now ubiquitous, these techniques provide only partial information about the dynamic multi-qubit loss channels responsible for processor errors, which can be described more fully by a Lindblad operator in the master equation formalism. Here, we introdu…
High performance quantum computing requires a calibration system that learns optimal control parameters much faster than system drift. In some cases, the learning procedure requires solving complex optimization problems that are non-convex, high-dimensional, highly constrained, and have astronomical search spaces. Such problems pose an obstacle for scalability since traditional global optimizers are often too inefficient and slow for even small-scale processors comprising tens of qubits. In this whitepaper, we introduce the Snake Optimizer for efficiently and quickly solving such optimization …
The existence of contextuality in quantum mechanics is a fundamental departure from the classical description of the world. Currently, the quest to identify scenarios which cannot be more contextual than quantum theory is at the forefront of research in quantum contextuality. In this work, we experimentally test two inequalities, which are capable of revealing fully contextual quantum correlations, on a Hilbert space of dimension 8 and 4 respectively, on an NMR quantum information processor. The projectors associated with the contextuality inequalities are first reformulated in terms of Pauli …
In the evaluation of quantum annealers, metrics based on ground state success rates have two major drawbacks. First, evaluation requires computation time for both quantum and classical processors that grows exponentially with problem size. This makes evaluation itself computationally prohibitive. Second, results are heavily dependent on the effects of analog noise on the quantum processors, which is an engineering issue that complicates the study of the underlying quantum annealing algorithm. We introduce a novel "time-to-target" metric which avoids these two issues by challenging software sol…
We examine the execution of general U(1) transformations on programmable quantum processors. We show that, with only the minimal assumption of availability of copies of the one-qubit program state, that the apparent advantage of existing schemes proposed by G.Vidal it et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 047905 (2002)] and M.Hillery et al. [Phys. Rev. A. 65, 022301 (2003)] to execute a general U(1) transformation with greater probability using complex program states appears not to hold.
We present two protocols for constructing quantum processor nodes in randomly doped rare-earth-ion crystals and analyze their properties. By varying the doping concentration and the accessible laser tunability, the processor nodes can contain anywhere from only a few tens to almost $1000$ qubits. Furthermore, the average number of qubits each qubit can interact with, denoted by the connectivity, can be partly tailored to lie between just a few and roughly one hundred. We also study how a limited tunability of the laser affects the results, and conclude that a tuning range of $100$ GHz limits t…
We describe the experimental implementation of a recently proposed quantum algorithm involving quantum entanglement at the level of two qubits using NMR. The algorithm solves a generalisation of the Deutsch problem and distinguishes between even and odd functions using fewer function calls than is possible classically. The manipulation of entangled states of the two qubits is essential here, unlike the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm and the Grover's search algorithm for two bits.
