It has long been known that to minimise the heat emitted by a deterministic computer during it's operation it is necessary to make the computation act in a logically reversible manner\cite{Lan61}. Such logically reversible operations require a number of auxiliary bits to be stored, maintaining a history of the computation, and which allows the initial state to be reconstructed by running the computation in reverse. These auxiliary bits are wasteful of resources and may require a dissipation of energy for them to be reused. A simple procedure due to Bennett\cite{Ben73} allows these auxiliary bits to be "tidied", without dissipating energy, on a classical computer. All reversible classical computations can be made tidy in this way. However, this procedure depends upon a classical operation ("cloning") that cannot be generalised to quantum computers\cite{WZ82}. Quantum computations must be logically reversible, and therefore produce auxiliary qbits during their operation. We show that there are classes of quantum computation for which Bennett's procedure cannot be implemented. For some of these computations there may exist another method for which the computation may be "tidied". However, we also show there are quantum computations for which there is no possible method for tidying the auxiliary qbits. Not all reversible quantum computations can be made "tidy". This represents a fundamental additional energy burden to quantum computations. This paper extends results in \cite{Mar01}.
We show how to perform reversible universal quantum computation on a translationally invariant pure state, using only global operations based on next-neighbor interactions. We do not need not to break the translational symmetry of the state at any time during the computation. Since the proposed scheme fulfills the locality condition of a quantum cellular automata, we present a reversible quantum cellular automaton capable of universal quantum computation.
One-way functions are used in modern cryto-systems as doortraps because their inverse functions are supposed to be difficult to compute. Nonetheless with the discovery of reversible computation, it seems that one may break a one-way function by running a reversible computer backward. Here, we argue that reversible computation alone poses no threat to the existence of one-way functions because of the generation of ``garbage bits'' during computations. Consequently, we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for a one-to-one function to be a one-way in terms of the growth rate of the total nu…
Reversible algorithms play a crucial role both in classical and quantum computation. While for a classical bit the only nontrivial reversible operation is the bit-flip, nature is far more versatile in what it allows to do to a quantum bit. The reversible operations that a quantum computer can perform on a qubit are group of linear unitary transformations. However, laws of quantum mechanics prohibit implementation of anti-linear anti-unitary gates, even though they are perfectly reversible. Here we show that such a restriction on possible set of reversible operations is, remarkably, a fundament…
A hierarchical, reversible mapping between levels of tree structured computation, applicable for structuring the Quantum Computation algorithm for NP-complete problem is presented. It is proven that confining the state of a quantum computer to a subspace of the available Hilbert space, where states are consistent with the problem constraints, can be done in polynomial time. The proposed mapping, together with the method of state reduction can be potentially used for solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time.
Noisy computation and reversible computation have been studied separately, and it is known that they are as powerful as unrestricted computation. We study the case where both noise and reversibility are combined and show that the combined model is weaker than unrestricted computation. In our noisy reversible circuits, each wire is flipped with probability p each time step, and all the inputs to the circuit are present in time 0. We prove that any noisy reversible circuit must have size exponential in its depth in order to compute a function with high probability. This is tight as we show that …
The computational efficiency of quantum mechanics can be defined in terms of the qubit circuit model, which is characterized by a few simple properties: each computational gate is a reversible transformation in a connected matrix group; single wires carry quantum bits, i.e. states of a three-dimensional Bloch ball; states on two or more wires are uniquely determined by local measurement statistics and their correlations. In this paper, we ask whether other types of computation are possible if we relax one of those characteristics (and keep all others), namely, if we allow wires to be described…
We present a model in which, due to the quantum nature of the signals controlling the implementation time of successive unitary computational steps, \emph{physical} irreversibility appears in the execution of a \emph{logically} reversible computation.
Predictions for measurement outcomes in physical theories are usually computed by combining two distinct notions: a state, describing the physical system, and an observable, describing the measurement which is performed. In quantum theory, however, both notions are in some sense identical: outcome probabilities are given by the overlap between two state vectors - quantum theory is self-dual. In this paper, we show that this notion of self-duality can be understood from a dynamical point of view. We prove that self-duality follows from a computational primitive called bit symmetry: every logica…
The relation between entropy and information has great significance for computation. Based on the strict reversibility of the laws of microphysics, Landauer (1961), Bennett (1973), Priese (1976), Fredkin and Toffoli (1982), Feynman (1985) and others envisioned a reversible computer that cannot allow any ambiguity in backward steps of a calculation. It is this backward capacity that makes reversible computing radically different from ordinary, irreversible computing. The proposal aims at a higher kind of computer that would give the actual output of a computation together with the original inpu…
Reversible simulation of irreversible algorithms is analyzed in the stylized form of a `reversible' pebble game. While such simulations incur little overhead in additional computation time, they use a large amount of additional memory space during the computation. The reacheable reversible simulation instantaneous descriptions (pebble configurations) are characterized completely. As a corollary we obtain the reversible simulation by Bennett and that among all simulations that can be modelled by the pebble game, Bennett's simulation is optimal in that it uses the least auxiliary space for the g…
Classical reversible circuits, acting on $w$~bits, are represented by permutation matrices of size $2^w \times 2^w$. Those matrices form the group P($2^w$), isomorphic to the symmetric group {\bf S}$_{2^w}$. The permutation group P($n$), isomorphic to {\bf S}$_n$, contains cycles with length~$p$, ranging from~1 to $L(n)$, where $L(n)$ is the so-called Landau function. By Lagrange interpolation between the $p$~matrices of the cycle, we step from a finite cyclic group of order~$p$ to a 1-dimensional Lie group, subgroup of the unitary group U($n$). As U($2^w$) is the group of all possible quantum…
Reversible logic has applications in low-power computing and quantum computing. However, there are few existing designs for reversible floating-point adders and none suitable for quantum computation. In this paper we propose a space-efficient reversible floating-point adder, suitable for binary quantum computation, improving the design of Nachtigal et al. Our work focuses on improving the reversible designs of the alignment unit and the normalization unit, which are the most expensive parts. By changing a few elements of the existing algorithm, including the circuit designs of the RLZC (revers…
Reversibility is a key issue in the interface between computation and physics, and of growing importance as miniaturization progresses towards its physical limits. Most foundational work on reversible computing to date has focussed on simulations of low-level machine models. By contrast, we develop a more structural approach. We show how high-level functional programs can be mapped compositionally (i.e. in a syntax-directed fashion) into a simple kind of automata which are immediately seen to be reversible. The size of the automaton is linear in the size of the functional term. In mathematical…
We introduce a model of computation based on read only memory (ROM), which allows us to compare the space-efficiency of reversible, error-free classical computation with reversible, error-free quantum computation. We show that a ROM-based quantum computer with one writable qubit is universal, whilst two writable bits are required for a universal classical ROM-based computer. We also comment on the time-efficiency advantages of quantum computation within this model.
We have analyzed energy dissipation in a digital device (``Single-Electron Parametron'') in which discrete degrees of freedom are used for presenting digital information. If the switching speed is not too high, the device may operate reversibly (adiabatically), and the energy dissipation ${\cal E}$ per bit may be much less than the thermal energy $k_BT$. The energy-time product ${\cal E}τ$ is, however, much larger than Planck's constant $\hbar $, at least in the standard ``orthodox'' model of single-electron tunneling, which was used in our calculations.
We construct a new error-suppression scheme that makes use of the adjoint of reversible quantum algorithms. For decoherence induced errors such as depolarization, it is presented that provided the depolarization error probability is less than 1, our scheme can exponentially reduce the final output error rate to zero using a number of cycles, and the output state can be coherently sent to another stage of quantum computation process. Besides, experimental set-ups via optical approach have been proposed using Grover's search algorithm as an example. Some further discussion on the benefits and li…
Our main models of computation (the Turing Machine and the RAM) make fundamental assumptions about which primitive operations are realizable. The consensus is that these include logical operations like conjunction, disjunction and negation, as well as reading and writing to memory locations. This perspective conforms to a macro-level view of physics and indeed these operations are realizable using macro-level devices involving thousands of electrons. This point of view is however incompatible with quantum mechanics, or even elementary thermodynamics, as both imply that information is a conserv…
Mappings of classical computation onto statistical mechanics models have led to remarkable successes in addressing some complex computational problems. However, such mappings display thermodynamic phase transitions that may prevent reaching solution even for easy problems known to be solvable in polynomial time. Here we map universal reversible classical computations onto a planar vertex model that exhibits no bulk classical thermodynamic phase transition, independent of the computational circuit. Within our approach the solution of the computation is encoded in the ground state of the vertex …
This article is an attempt to generalize the classical theory of reversible computing, principally developed by Bennet [IBM J. Res. Develop., 17(1973)] and by Fredkin and Toffoli [Internat. J. Theoret. Phys., 21(1982)], to the quantum case. This is a fundamental step towards the construction of a quantum computer because a time efficient quantum computation is a reversible physical process. The paper is organized as follows. The first section reviews the classical theory of reversible computing. In the second section it is showed that the designs used in the classical framework to decrease the…
Landauer's principle asserts that any computation has an unavoidable energy cost that grows proportionally to its degree of logical irreversibility. But even a logically reversible operation, when run on a physical processor that operates on different energy levels, requires energy. Here we quantify this energy requirement, providing upper and lower bounds that coincide up to a constant factor. We derive these bounds from a general quantum resource-theoretic argument, which implies that the initial resource requirement for implementing a unitary operation within an error~$ε$ grows like $1/\sqr…
Future miniaturization and mobilization of computing devices requires energy parsimonious `adiabatic' computation. This is contingent on logical reversibility of computation. An example is the idea of quantum computations which are reversible except for the irreversible observation steps. We propose to study quantitatively the exchange of computational resources like time and space for irreversibility in computations. Reversible simulations of irreversible computations are memory intensive. Such (polynomial time) simulations are analysed here in terms of `reversible' pebble games. We show that…
The reversible computation paradigm aims to provide a new foundation for general classical digital computing that is capable of circumventing the thermodynamic limits to the energy efficiency of the conventional, non-reversible digital paradigm. However, to date, the essential rationale for and analysis of classical reversible computing (RC) has not yet been expressed in terms that leverage the modern formal methods of non-equilibrium quantum thermodynamics (NEQT). In this paper, we begin developing an NEQT-based foundation for the physics of reversible computing. We use the framework of Gorin…
We develop a tensor network technique that can solve universal reversible classical computational problems, formulated as vertex models on a square lattice [Nat. Commun. 8, 15303 (2017)]. By encoding the truth table of each vertex constraint in a tensor, the total number of solutions compatible with partial inputs/outputs at the boundary can be represented as the full contraction of a tensor network. We introduce an iterative compression-decimation (ICD) scheme that performs this contraction efficiently. The ICD algorithm first propagates local constraints to longer ranges via repeated contrac…
Reversible logic has applications in various research areas including low-power design and quantum computation. In this paper, a rule-based optimization approach for reversible circuits is proposed which uses both negative and positive control Toffoli gates during the optimization. To this end, a set of rules for removing NOT gates and optimizing sub-circuits with common-target gates are proposed. To evaluate the proposed approach, the best-reported synthesized circuits and the results of a recent synthesis algorithm which uses both negative and positive controls are used. Our experiments reve…
A rotation-based synthesis framework for reversible logic is proposed. We develop a canonical representation based on binary decision diagrams and introduce operators to manipulate the developed representation model. Furthermore, a recursive functional bi-decomposition approach is proposed to automatically synthesize a given function. While Boolean reversible logic is particularly addressed, our framework constructs intermediate quantum states that may be in superposition, hence we combine techniques from reversible Boolean logic and quantum computation. The proposed approach results in quadra…
Linear Nearest Neighbor (LNN) synthesis in reversible circuits has emerged as an important issue in terms of technological implementation for quantum computation. The objective is to obtain a LNN architecture with minimum gate cost. As achieving optimal synthesis is a hard problem, heuristic methods have been proposed in recent literature. In this work we present a graph partitioning based approach for LNN synthesis with reduction in circuit cost. In particular, the number of SWAP gates required to convert a given gate-level quantum circuit to its equivalent LNN configuration is minimized. Our…
In quantum computing the decoherence time of the qubits determines the computation time available and this time is very limited when using current hardware. In this paper we minimize the execution time (the depth) for a class of circuits referred to as linear reversible circuits, which has many applications in quantum computing (e.g., stabilizer circuits, CNOT+T circuits, etc.). We propose a practical formulation of a divide and conquer algorithm that produces quantum circuits that are twice as shallow as those produced by existing algorithms. We improve the theoretical upper bound of the dept…
The Hidden Weighted Bit function plays an important role in the study of classical models of computation. A common belief is that this function is exponentially hard for the implementation by reversible ancilla-free circuits, even though introducing a small number of ancillae allows a very efficient implementation. In this paper, we refute the exponential hardness conjecture by developing a polynomial-size reversible ancilla-free circuit computing the Hidden Weighted Bit function. Our circuit has size $O(n^{6.42})$, where $n$ is the number of input bits. We also show that the Hidden Weighted B…
Reversible Cellular Automata (RCA) are a physics-like model of computation consisting of an array of identical cells, evolving in discrete time steps by iterating a global evolution G. Further, G is required to be shift-invariant (it acts the same everywhere), causal (information cannot be transmitted faster than some fixed number of cells per time step), and reversible (it has an inverse which verifies the same requirements). An important, though only recently studied special case is that of Time-symmetric Cellular Automata (TSCA), for which G and its inverse are related via a local operation…
We examine the characteristic features of reversible and quantum computations in the presence of supplementary external information, known as advice. In particular, we present a simple, algebraic characterization of languages recognized by one-way reversible finite automata augmented with deterministic advice. With a further elaborate argument, we prove a similar but slightly weaker result for bounded-error one-way quantum finite automata with advice. Immediate applications of those properties lead to containments and separations among various language families when they are assisted by approp…
