No Arabic abstract
In this thesis, I investigate aspects of local Hamiltonians in quantum computing. First, I focus on the Adiabatic Quantum Computing model, based on evolution with a time dependent Hamiltonian. I show that to succeed using AQC, the Hamiltonian involved must have local structure, which leads to a result about eigenvalue gaps from information theory. I also improve results about simulating quantum circuits with AQC. Second, I look at classically simulating time evolution with local Hamiltonians and finding their ground state properties. I give a numerical method for finding the ground state of translationally invariant Hamiltonians on an infinite tree. This method is based on imaginary time evolution within the Matrix Product State ansatz, and uses a new method for bringing the state back to the ansatz after each imaginary time step. I then use it to investigate the phase transition in the transverse field Ising model on the Bethe lattice. Third, I focus on locally constrained quantum problems Local Hamiltonian and Quantum Satisfiability and prove several new results about their complexity. Finally, I define a Hamiltonian Quantum Cellular Automaton, a continuous-time model of computation which doesnt require control during the computation process, only preparation of product initial states. I construct two of these, showing that time evolution with a simple, local, translationally invariant and time-independent Hamiltonian can be used to simulate quantum circuits.
We present two universal models of quantum computation with a time-independent, frustration-free Hamiltonian. The first construction uses 3-local (qubit) projectors, and the second one requires only 2-local qubit-qutrit projectors. We build on Feynmans Hamiltonian computer idea and use a railroad-switch type clock register. The resources required to simulate a quantum circuit with L gates in this model are O(L) small-dimensional quantum systems (qubits or qutrits), a time-independent Hamiltonian composed of O(L) local, constant norm, projector terms, the possibility to prepare computational basis product states, a running time O(L log^2 L), and the possibility to measure a few qubits in the computational basis. Our models also give a simplified proof of the universality of 3-local Adiabatic Quantum Computation.
Experimental groups are now fabricating quantum processors powerful enough to execute small instances of quantum algorithms and definitively demonstrate quantum error correction that extends the lifetime of quantum data, adding urgency to architectural investigations. Although other options continue to be explored, effort is coalescing around topological coding models as the most practical implementation option for error correction on realizable microarchitectures. Scalability concerns have also motivated architects to propose distributed memory multicomputer architectures, with experimental efforts demonstrating some of the basic building blocks to make such designs possible. We compile the latest results from a variety of different systems aiming at the construction of a scalable quantum computer.
The main challenges in achieving high-fidelity quantum gates are to reduce the influence of control errors caused by imperfect Hamiltonians and the influence of decoherence caused by environment noise. To overcome control errors, a promising proposal is nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation, which has attracted much attention in both theories and experiments. While the merit of holonomic operations resisting control errors has been well exploited, an important issue following is how to shorten the evolution time needed for realizing a holonomic gate so as to avoid the influence of environment noise as much as possible. In this paper, we put forward a general approach of constructing Hamiltonians for nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation, which makes it possible to minimize the evolution time and might open a new horizon for the realistic implementation of nonadiabatic holonomic quantum computation.
Traditional quantum physics solves ground states for a given Hamiltonian, while quantum information science asks for the existence and construction of certain Hamiltonians for given ground states. In practical situations, one would be mainly interested in local Hamiltonians with certain interaction patterns, such as nearest neighbour interactions on some type of lattices. A necessary condition for a space $V$ to be the ground-state space of some local Hamiltonian with a given interaction pattern, is that the maximally mixed state supported on $V$ is uniquely determined by its reduced density matrices associated with the given pattern, based on the principle of maximum entropy. However, it is unclear whether this condition is in general also sufficient. We examine the situations for the existence of such a local Hamiltonian to have $V$ satisfying the necessary condition mentioned above as its ground-state space, by linking to faces of the convex body of the local reduced states. We further discuss some methods for constructing the corresponding local Hamiltonians with given interaction patterns, mainly from physical points of view, including constructions related to perturbation methods, local frustration-free Hamiltonians, as well as thermodynamical ensembles.
We introduce a framework for constructing a quantum error correcting code from any classical error correcting code. This includes CSS codes and goes beyond the stabilizer formalism to allow quantum codes to be constructed from classical codes that are not necessarily linear or self-orthogonal (Fig. 1). We give an algorithm that explicitly constructs quantum codes with linear distance and constant rate from classical codes with a linear distance and rate. As illustrations for small size codes, we obtain Steanes $7-$qubit code uniquely from Hammings [7,4,3] code, and obtain other error detecting quantum codes from other explicit classical codes of length 4 and 6. Motivated by quantum LDPC codes and the use of physics to protect quantum information, we introduce a new 2-local frustration free quantum spin chain Hamiltonian whose ground space we analytically characterize completely. By mapping classical codewords to basis states of the ground space, we utilize our framework to demonstrate that the ground space contains explicit quantum codes with linear distance. This side-steps the Bravyi-Terhal no-go theorem because our work allows for more general quantum codes beyond the stabilizer and/or linear codes. We hesitate to call this an example of {it subspace} quantum LDPC code with linear distance.