Quantum computations usually take place under the control of the classical world. We introduce a Classically-controlled Quantum Turing Machine (CQTM) which is a Turing Machine (TM) with a quantum tape for acting on quantum data, and a classical transition function for a formalized classical control. In CQTM, unitary transformations and measurements are allowed. We show that any classical TM is simulated by a CQTM without loss of efficiency. The gap between classical and quantum computations, already pointed out in the framework of measurement-based quantum computation is confirmed. To appreciate the similarity of programming classical TM and CQTM, examples are given.
Quantum electrodynamics under conditions of distinguishability of interacting matter entities, and of controlled actions and back-actions between them, is considered. Such "mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics" is shown to share its dynamical structure with the classical stochastic electrodynamics. In formal terms, we demonstrate that all general relations of the mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics may be recast in a form lacking Planck's constant. Mesoscopic quantum electrodynamics is therefore subject to "doing quantum electrodynamics while thinking classically," allowing one to substitute esse…
Deterministic quantum computation with one quantum bit (DQC1) is a restricted model of quantum computing where the input state is the completely mixed state except for a single clean qubit, and only a single output qubit is measured at the end of the computing. It is proved that the restriction of quantum computation to the DQC1 model does not change the complexity classes NQP and SBQP. As a main consequence, it follows that the DQC1 model cannot be efficiently simulated by classical computers unless the polynomial-time hierarchy collapses to the second level (more precisely, to AM), which ans…
Entanglement has been shown to be necessary for pure state quantum computation to have an advantage over classical computation. However, it remains open whether entanglement is necessary for quantum computers that use mixed states to also have an advantage. The one clean qubit model is a form of quantum computer in which the input is the maximally mixed state plus one pure qubit. Previous work has shown that there is a limited amount of entanglement present in these computations, despite the fact that they can efficiently solve some problems that are seemingly hard to solve classically. This c…
We study the effect of noise on the classical simulatability of quantum circuits defined by computationally tractable (CT) states and efficiently computable sparse (ECS) operations. Examples of such circuits, which we call CT-ECS circuits, are IQP, Clifford Magic, and conjugated Clifford circuits. This means that there exist various CT-ECS circuits such that their output probability distributions are anti-concentrated and not classically simulatable in the noise-free setting (under plausible assumptions). First, we consider a noise model where a depolarizing channel with an arbitrarily small c…
We present evidence that there exist quantum computations that can be carried out in constant depth, using 2-qubit gates, that cannot be simulated classically with high accuracy. We prove that if one can simulate these circuits classically efficiently then the complexity class BQP is contained in AM.
Quantum circuits that are classically simulatable tell us when quantum computation becomes less powerful than or equivalent to classical computation. Such classically simulatable circuits are of importance because they illustrate what makes universal quantum computation different from classical computers. In this work, we propose a novel family of classically simulatable circuits by making use of dual-unitary quantum circuits (DUQCs), which have been recently investigated as exactly solvable models of non-equilibrium physics, and we characterize their computational power. Specifically, we inve…
We present simplification schemes for probabilistic and controlled teleportation of the unknown quantum states of both one-particle and two-particle and construct efficient quantum logic networks for implementing the new schemes by means of the primitive operations consisting of single-qubit gates, two-qubit controlled-not gates, Von Neumann measurement and classically controlled operations. In these schemes the teleportation are not always successful but with certain probability.
We study the classical simulatability of commuting quantum circuits with n input qubits and O(log n) output qubits, where a quantum circuit is classically simulatable if its output probability distribution can be sampled up to an exponentially small additive error in classical polynomial time. First, we show that there exists a commuting quantum circuit that is not classically simulatable unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the third level. This is the first formal evidence that a commuting quantum circuit is not classically simulatable even when the number of output qubits is exponen…
Clifford gates are a winsome class of quantum operations combining mathematical elegance with physical significance. The Gottesman-Knill theorem asserts that Clifford computations can be classically efficiently simulated but this is true only in a suitably restricted setting. Here we consider Clifford computations with a variety of additional ingredients: (a) strong vs. weak simulation, (b) inputs being computational basis states vs. general product states, (c) adaptive vs. non-adaptive choices of gates for circuits involving intermediate measurements, (d) single line outputs vs. multi-line ou…
Deterministic quantum computation with one quantum bit (DQC1) is a model of quantum computing where the input restricted to containing a single qubit in a pure state and with all other qubits in a completely-mixed state, with only a single qubit measurement at the end of the computation [E. Knill and R. Laflamme, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf81}, 5672 (1998)]. While it is known that DQC1 can efficiently solve several problems for which no known classical efficient algorithms exist, the question of whether DQC1 is really more powerful than classical computation remains open. In this paper, we introduce…
Blind quantum computation protocols allow a user to delegate a computation to a remote quantum computer in such a way that the privacy of their computation is preserved, even from the device implementing the computation. To date, such protocols are only known for settings involving at least two quantum devices: either a user with some quantum capabilities and a remote quantum server or two or more entangled but noncommunicating servers. In this work, we take the first step towards the construction of a blind quantum computing protocol with a completely classical client and single quantum serve…
A foundational question in quantum computational complexity asks how much more useful a quantum state can be in a given task than a comparable, classical string. Aaronson and Kuperberg showed such a separation in the presence of a quantum oracle, a black box unitary callable during quantum computation. Their quantum oracle responds to a random, marked, quantum state, which is intractable to specify classically. We constrain the marked state in ways that make it easy to specify classically while retaining separations in task complexity. Our method replaces query by state complexity. Furthermore…
We use the class of commuting quantum computations known as IQP (Instantaneous Quantum Polynomial time) to strengthen the conjecture that quantum computers are hard to simulate classically. We show that, if either of two plausible average-case hardness conjectures holds, then IQP computations are hard to simulate classically up to constant additive error. One conjecture relates to the hardness of estimating the complex-temperature partition function for random instances of the Ising model; the other concerns approximating the number of zeroes of random low-degree polynomials. We observe that b…
The ability of near-term quantum computers to represent classically-intractable quantum states has brought much interest in using such devices for estimating the ground and excited state energies of fermionic Hamiltonians. The usefulness of such near-term techniques, generally based on the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), however, is limited by device noise and the need to perform many circuit repetitions. This paper addresses these challenges by generalizing VQE to consider wavefunctions in a subspace spanned by classically tractable states and states that can be prepared on a quantum c…
We introduce and study quantized versions of Cop and Robber game. We achieve this by using graph-preserving quantum operations, which are the quantum analogues of stochastic operations preserving the graph. We provide the tight bound for the number of operations required to reach the given state. By extending them to the controlled operations, we define a quantum-controlled Cop and Robber game, which expands the classical Cop and Robber game, as well as the classically controlled quantum Cop and Robber game. In contrast to the typical scheme for introducing quantum games, we assume that both p…
We investigate the boundary between classical and quantum computational power. This work consists of two parts. First we develop new classical simulation algorithms that are centered on sampling methods. Using these techniques we generate new classes of classically simulatable quantum circuits where standard techniques relying on the exact computation of measurement probabilities fail to provide efficient simulations. For example, we show how various concatenations of matchgate, Toffoli, Clifford, bounded-depth, Fourier transform and other circuits are classically simulatable. We also prove th…
The cost of simulating classically tractable quantum circuits and dynamics
Los Alamos National Laboratory（洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室）；European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)（欧洲核子研究组织（CERN））；Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)（洛桑联邦理工学院（EPFL））；Chulalongkorn University（朱拉隆功大学）
We propose and analyze a novel interactive protocol for demonstrating quantum computational advantage, which is efficiently classically verifiable. Our protocol relies upon the cryptographic hardness of trapdoor claw-free functions (TCFs). Through a surprising connection to Bell's inequality, our protocol avoids the need for an adaptive hardcore bit, with essentially no increase in the quantum circuit complexity and no extra cryptographic assumptions. Crucially, this expands the set of compatible TCFs, and we propose two new constructions: one based upon the decisional Diffie-Hellman problem a…
Clifford circuits -- i.e. circuits composed of only CNOT, Hadamard, and $π/4$ phase gates -- play a central role in the study of quantum computation. However, their computational power is limited: a well-known result of Gottesman and Knill states that Clifford circuits are efficiently classically simulable. We show that in contrast, "conjugated Clifford circuits" (CCCs) -- where one additionally conjugates every qubit by the same one-qubit gate $U$ -- can perform hard sampling tasks. In particular, we fully classify the computational power of CCCs by showing that essentially any non-Clifford c…
The scheme for probabilistic teleportation of an N-particle state of general form is proposed. As the special cases we construct efficient quantum logic networks for implementing probabilistic teleportation of a two-particle state, a three-particle state and a four-particle state of general form, built from single qubit gates, two-qubit controlled-not gates, Von Neumann measurement and classically controlled operations.
A major challenge facing adiabatic quantum computing is that algorithm design and error correction can be difficult for adiabatic quantum computing. Recent work has considered addressing his challenge by using coherently controlled adiabatic evolutions in the place of classically controlled evolution. An important question remains: what is the relative power of controlled adiabatic evolution to traditional adiabatic evolutions? We address this by showing that coherent control and measurement provides a way to average different adiabatic evolutions in ways that cause their diabatic errors to ca…
Aaronson and Arkhipov recently used computational complexity theory to argue that classical computers very likely cannot efficiently simulate linear, multimode, quantum-optical interferometers with arbitrary Fock-state inputs [Aaronson and Arkhipov, Theory Comput. 9, 143 (2013)]. Here we present an elementary argument that utilizes only techniques from quantum optics. We explicitly construct the Hilbert space for such an interferometer and show that its dimension scales exponentially with all the physical resources. We also show in a simple example just how the Schrödinger and Heisenberg pictu…
Hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, such as variational quantum algorithms (VQA), are suitable for implementation on NISQ computers. In this Letter we expand an implicit step of VQAs: the classical pre-computation subroutine which can non-trivially use classical algorithms to simplify, transform, or specify problem instance-specific variational quantum circuits. In VQA there is a trade-off between quality of solution and difficulty of circuit construction and optimization. In one extreme, we find VQA for MAXCUT which are exact, but circuit design or variational optimization is NP-HARD. At the…
The class of commuting quantum circuits known as IQP (instantaneous quantum polynomial-time) has been shown to be hard to simulate classically, assuming certain complexity-theoretic conjectures. Here we study the power of IQP circuits in the presence of physically motivated constraints. First, we show that there is a family of sparse IQP circuits that can be implemented on a square lattice of n qubits in depth O(sqrt(n) log n), and which is likely hard to simulate classically. Next, we show that, if an arbitrarily small constant amount of noise is applied to each qubit at the end of any IQP ci…
We investigate the amount of noise required to turn a universal quantum gate set into one that can be efficiently modelled classically. This question is useful for providing upper bounds on fault tolerant thresholds, and for understanding the nature of the quantum/classical computational transition. We refine some previously known upper bounds using two different strategies. The first one involves the introduction of bi-entangling operations, a class of classically simulatable machines that can generate at most bipartite entanglement. Using this class we show that it is possible to sharpen pre…
As research on building scalable quantum computers advances, it is important to be able to certify their correctness. Due to the exponential hardness of classically simulating quantum computation, straight-forward verification through classical simulation fails. However, we can classically simulate small scale quantum computations and hence we are able to test that devices behave as expected in this domain. This constitutes the first step towards obtaining confidence in the anticipated quantum-advantage when we extend to scales which can no longer be simulated. Realistic devices have restricti…
Extended Clifford circuits straddle the boundary between classical and quantum computational power. Whether such circuits are efficiently classically simulable seems to depend delicately on the ingredients of the circuits. While some combinations of ingredients lead to efficiently classically simulable circuits, other combinations, which might just be slightly different, lead to circuits which are likely not. We extend the results of Jozsa and Van den Nest [Quant. Info. Comput. 14, 633 (2014)] by studying two further extensions of Clifford circuits. First, we consider how the classical simulat…
The quantum teleportation protocol is extracted directly out of a standard classical circuit that exchanges the states of two qubits using only controlled-NOT gates. This construction of teleportation from a classically transparent circuit generalizes straightforwardly to d-state systems.
Boson Sampling is the problem of sampling from the same distribution as indistinguishable single photons at the output of a linear optical interferometer. It is an example of a non-universal quantum computation which is believed to be feasible in the near term and cannot be simulated on a classical machine. Like all purported demonstrations of "quantum supremacy", this motivates optimizing classical simulation schemes for a realistic model of the problem, in this case Boson Sampling when the implementations experience lost or distinguishable photons. Although current simulation schemes for suf…
The functionality of classically-instructed remotely prepared random secret qubits was introduced in (Cojocaru et al 2018) as a way to enable classical parties to participate in secure quantum computation and communications protocols. The idea is that a classical party (client) instructs a quantum party (server) to generate a qubit to the server's side that is random, unknown to the server but known to the client. Such task is only possible under computational assumptions. In this contribution we define a simpler (basic) primitive consisting of only BB84 states, and give a protocol that realiz…
We consider quantum computations comprising only commuting gates, known as IQP computations, and provide compelling evidence that the task of sampling their output probability distributions is unlikely to be achievable by any efficient classical means. More specifically we introduce the class post-IQP of languages decided with bounded error by uniform families of IQP circuits with post-selection, and prove first that post-IQP equals the classical class PP. Using this result we show that if the output distributions of uniform IQP circuit families could be classically efficiently sampled, even u…
We show that a highly-mixed state in terms of a large min-entropy is useless as a resource state for measurement-based quantum computation in the sense that if a classically efficiently verifiable problem is efficiently solved with such a highly-mixed measurement-based quantum computation then such a problem can also be classically efficiently solved. We derive a similar result also for the DQC1$_k$ model, which is a generalized version of the DQC1 model where $k$ output qubits are measured. We also show that the measurement-based quantum computing on a highly-mixed resource state in terms of …
We show that quantum circuits where the initial state and all the following quantum operations can be represented by positive Wigner functions can be classically efficiently simulated. This is true both for continuous-variable as well as discrete variable systems in odd prime dimensions, two cases which will be treated on entirely the same footing. Noting the fact that Clifford and Gaussian operations preserve the positivity of the Wigner function, our result generalizes the Gottesman-Knill theorem. Our algorithm provides a way of sampling from the output distribution of a computation or a sim…
Classically, determining the gradient of a black-box function f:R^p->R requires p+1 evaluations. Using the quantum Fourier transform, two evaluations suffice. This is based on the approximate local periodicity of exp(2*pi*i*f(x)). It is shown that sufficiently precise machine arithmetic results in gradient estimates of any required accuracy.
There is a natural relationship between Jones polynomials and quantum computation. We use this relationship to show that the complexity of evaluating relative-error approximations of Jones polynomials can be used to bound the classical complexity of approximately simulating random quantum computations. We prove that random quantum computations cannot be classically simulated up to a constant total variation distance, under the assumption that (1) the Polynomial Hierarchy does not collapse and (2) the average-case complexity of relative-error approximations of the Jones polynomial matches the w…
Instantaneous quantum polynomial time (IQP) is a model of (probably) non-universal quantum computation. Since it has been proven that IQP circuits are unlikely to be simulated classically up to a multiplicative error and an error in the $l_1$ norm, IQP is considered as one of the promising classes that demonstrates quantum supremacy. Although IQP circuits can be realized more easily than a universal quantum computer, demonstrating quantum supremacy is still difficult. It is therefore desired to find subclasses of IQP that are easy to implement. In this paper, by imposing some restrictions on I…
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…
Quantum computation by adiabatic evolution, as described in quant-ph/0001106, will solve satisfiability problems if the running time is long enough. In certain special cases (that are classically easy) we know that the quantum algorithm requires a running time that grows as a polynomial in the number of bits. In this paper we present numerical results on randomly generated instances of an NP-complete problem and of a problem that can be solved classically in polynomial time. We simulate a quantum computer (of up to 16 qubits) by integrating the Schrodinger equation on a conventional computer. …
University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence（矢量人工智能研究院）；Canadian Institute for Advanced Research（加拿大高等研究院）
As we continue to find applications where the currently available noisy devices exhibit an advantage over their classical counterparts, the efficient use of quantum resources is highly desirable. The notion of quantum autoencoders was proposed as a way for the compression of quantum information to reduce resource requirements. Here, we present a strategy to design quantum autoencoders using evolutionary algorithms for transforming quantum information into lower-dimensional representations. We successfully demonstrate the initial applications of the algorithm for compressing different families …
