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We describe a cohomological framework for measurement based quantum computation, in which symmetry plays a central role. Therein, the essential information about the computational output is contained in topological invariants, namely elements of two cohomology groups. One of those invariants applies to the deterministic case, and the other to the general probabilistic case. The same invariants also witness quantumness in the form of contextuality. In result, they give rise to fundamental algebraic structures underlying quantum computation.
Adiabatic Quantum Computing (AQC) is an attractive paradigm for solving hard integer polynomial optimization problems. Available hardware restricts the Hamiltonians to be of a structure that allows only pairwise interactions. This requires that the original optimization problem to be first converted -- from its polynomial form -- to a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem, which we frame as a problem in algebraic geometry. Additionally, the hardware graph where such a QUBO-Hamiltonian needs to be embedded -- assigning variables of the problem to the qubits of the physical optimizer -- is not a complete graph, but rather one with limited connectivity. This problem graph to hardware graph embedding can also be framed as a problem of computing a Groebner basis of a certain specially constructed polynomial ideal. We develop a systematic computational approach to prepare a given polynomial optimization problem for AQC in three steps. The first step reduces an input polynomial optimization problem into a QUBO through the computation of the Groebner basis of a toric ideal generated from the monomials of the input objective function. The second step computes feasible embeddings. The third step computes the spectral gap of the adiabatic Hamiltonian associated to a given embedding. These steps are applicable well beyond the integer polynomial optimization problem. Our paper provides the first general purpose computational procedure that can be used directly as a $translator$ to solve polynomial integer optimization. Alternatively, it can be used as a test-bed (with small size problems) to help design efficient heuristic quantum compilers by studying various choices of reductions and embeddings in a systematic and comprehensive manner. An added benefit of our framework is in designing Ising architectures through the study of $mathcal Y-$minor universal graphs.
The widely held belief that BQP strictly contains BPP raises fundamental questions: Upcoming generations of quantum computers might already be too large to be simulated classically. Is it possible to experimentally test that these systems perform as they should, if we cannot efficiently compute predictions for their behavior? Vazirani has asked: If predicting Quantum Mechanical systems requires exponential resources, is QM a falsifiable theory? In cryptographic settings, an untrusted future company wants to sell a quantum computer or perform a delegated quantum computation. Can the customer be convinced of correctness without the ability to compare results to predictions? To answer these questions, we define Quantum Prover Interactive Proofs (QPIP). Whereas in standard Interactive Proofs the prover is computationally unbounded, here our prover is in BQP, representing a quantum computer. The verifier models our current computational capabilities: it is a BPP machine, with access to few qubits. Our main theorem can be roughly stated as: Any language in BQP has a QPIP, and moreover, a fault tolerant one. We provide two proofs. The simpler one uses a new (possibly of independent interest) quantum authentication scheme (QAS) based on random Clifford elements. This QPIP however, is not fault tolerant. Our second protocol uses polynomial codes QAS due to BCGHS, combined with quantum fault tolerance and multiparty quantum computation techniques. A slight modification of our constructions makes the protocol blind: the quantum computation and input are unknown to the prover. After we have derived the results, we have learned that Broadbent at al. have independently derived universal blind quantum computation using completely different methods. Their construction implicitly implies similar implications.
The widely held belief that BQP strictly contains BPP raises fundamental questions: if we cannot efficiently compute predictions for the behavior of quantum systems, how can we test their behavior? In other words, is quantum mechanics falsifiable? In cryptographic settings, how can a customer of a future untrusted quantum computing company be convinced of the correctness of its quantum computations? To provide answers to these questions, we define Quantum Prover Interactive Proofs (QPIP). Whereas in standard interactive proofs the prover is computationally unbounded, here our prover is in BQP, representing a quantum computer. The verifier models our current computational capabilities: it is a BPP machine, with access to only a few qubits. Our main theorem states, roughly: Any language in BQP has a QPIP, which also hides the computation from the prover. We provide two proofs, one based on a quantum authentication scheme (QAS) relying on random Clifford rotations and the other based on a QAS which uses polynomial codes (BOCG+ 06), combined with secure multiparty computation methods. This is the journal version of work reported in 2008 (ABOE08) and presented in ICS 2010; here we have completed the details and made the proofs rigorous. Some of the proofs required major modifications and corrections. Notably, the claim that the polynomial QPIP is fault tolerant was removed. Similar results (with different protocols) were reported independently around the same time of the original version in BFK08. The initial independent works (ABOE08, BFK08) ignited a long line of research of blind verifiable quantum computation, which we survey here, along with connections to various cryptographic problems. Importantly, the problems of making the results fault tolerant as well as removing the need for quantum communication altogether remain open.
The computation of the ground state (i.e. the eigenvector related to the smallest eigenvalue) is an important task in the simulation of quantum many-body systems. As the dimension of the underlying vector space grows exponentially in the number of particles, one has to consider appropriate subsets promising both convenient approximation properties and efficient computations. The variational ansatz for this numerical approach leads to the minimization of the Rayleigh quotient. The Alternating Least Squares technique is then applied to break down the eigenvector computation to problems of appropriate size, which can be solved by classical methods. Efficient computations require fast computation of the matrix-vector product and of the inner product of two decomposed vectors. To this end, both appropriate representations of vectors and efficient contraction schemes are needed. Here approaches from many-body quantum physics for one-dimensional and two-dimensional systems (Matrix Product States and Projected Entangled Pair States) are treated mathematically in terms of tensors. We give the definition of these concepts, bring some results concerning uniqueness and numerical stability and show how computations can be executed efficiently within these concepts. Based on this overview we present some modifications and generalizations of these concepts and show that they still allow efficient computations such as applicable contraction schemes. In this context we consider the minimization of the Rayleigh quotient in terms of the {sc parafac} (CP) formalism, where we also allow different tensor partitions. This approach makes use of efficient contraction schemes for the calculation of inner products in a way that can easily be extended to the mps format but also to higher dimensional problems.
We describe a general methodology for enhancing the efficiency of adiabatic quantum computations (AQC). It consists of homotopically deforming the original Hamiltonian surface in a way that the redistribution of the Gaussian curvature weakens the effect of the anti-crossing, thus yielding the desired improvement. Our approach is not pertubative but instead is built on our previous global description of AQC in the language of Morse theory. Through the homotopy deformation we witness the birth and death of critical points whilst, in parallel, the Gauss-Bonnet theorem reshuffles the curvature around the changing set of critical points. Therefore, by creating enough critical points around the anti-crossing, the total curvature--which was initially centered at the original anti-crossing--gets redistributed around the new neighbouring critical points, which weakens its severity and so improves the speedup of the AQC. We illustrate this on two examples taken from the literature.