No Arabic abstract
Integer factorization has been one of the cornerstone applications of the field of quantum computing since the discovery of an efficient algorithm for factoring by Peter Shor. Unfortunately, factoring via Shors algorithm is well beyond the capabilities of todays noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. In this work, we revisit the problem of factoring, developing an alternative to Shors algorithm, which employs established techniques to map the factoring problem to the ground state of an Ising Hamiltonian. The proposed variational quantum factoring (VQF) algorithm starts by simplifying equations over Boolean variables in a preprocessing step to reduce the number of qubits needed for the Hamiltonian. Then, it seeks an approximate ground state of the resulting Ising Hamiltonian by training variational circuits using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). We benchmark the VQF algorithm on various instances of factoring and present numerical results on its performance.
In the near-term, hybrid quantum-classical algorithms hold great potential for outperforming classical approaches. Understanding how these two computing paradigms work in tandem is critical for identifying areas where such hybrid algorithms could provide a quantum advantage. In this work, we study a QAOA-based quantum optimization algorithm by implementing the Variational Quantum Factoring (VQF) algorithm. We execute experimental demonstrations using a superconducting quantum processor and investigate the trade-off between quantum resources (number of qubits and circuit depth) and the probability that a given biprime is successfully factored. In our experiments, the integers 1099551473989, 3127, and 6557 are factored with 3, 4, and 5 qubits, respectively, using a QAOA ansatz with up to 8 layers and we are able to identify the optimal number of circuit layers for a given instance to maximize success probability. Furthermore, we demonstrate the impact of different noise sources on the performance of QAOA and reveal the coherent error caused by the residual ZZ-coupling between qubits as a dominant source of error in the superconducting quantum processor.
There exists a Hamiltonian formulation of the factorisation problem which also needs the definition of a factorisation ensemble (a set to which factorable numbers, $N=xy$, having the same trivial factorisation algorithmic complexity, belong). For the primes therein, a function $E$, that may take only discrete values, should be the analogous of the energy from a confined system of charges in a magnetic trap. This is the quantum factoring simulator hypothesis connecting quantum mechanics with number theory. In this work, we report numerical evidence of the existence of this kind of discrete spectrum from the statistical analysis of the values of $E$ in a sample of random OpenSSL n-bits moduli (which may be taken as a part of the factorisation ensemble). Here, we show that the unfolded distance probability of these $E$s fits to a {it Gaussian Unitary Ensemble}, consistently as required, if they actually correspond to the quantum energy levels spacing of a magnetically confined system that exhibits chaos. The confirmation of these predictions bears out the quantum simulator hypothesis and, thereby, it points to the existence of a liaison between quantum mechanics and number theory. Shors polynomial time complexity of the quantum factorisation problem, from pure quantum simulation primitives, was obtained.
We propose a prime factorizer operated in a framework of quantum annealing (QA). The idea is inverse operation of a multiplier implemented with QA-based Boolean logic circuits. We designed the QA machine on an application-specific-annealing-computing architecture which efficiently increases available hardware budgets at the cost of restricted functionality. The invertible operation of QA logic gates consisting of superconducting flux qubits was confirmed by circuit simulation with classical noise sources. The circuits were implemented and fabricated by using superconducting integrated circuit technologies with Nb/AlOx/Nb Josephson junctions. We also propose a 2.5Dimensional packaging scheme of a qubit-chip/interpose /package-substrate structure for realizing practically large-scale QA systems.
The quantum multicomputer consists of a large number of small nodes and a qubus interconnect for creating entangled state between the nodes. The primary metric chosen is the performance of such a system on Shors algorithm for factoring large numbers: specifically, the quantum modular exponentiation step that is the computational bottleneck. This dissertation introduces a number of optimizations for the modular exponentiation. My algorithms reduce the latency, or circuit depth, to complete the modular exponentiation of an n-bit number from O(n^3) to O(n log^2 n) or O(n^2 log n), depending on architecture. Calculations show that these algorithms are one million times and thirteen thousand times faster, when factoring a 6,000-bit number, depending on architecture. Extending to the quantum multicomputer, five different qubus interconnect topologies are considered, and two forms of carry-ripple adder are found to be the fastest for a wide range of performance parameters. The links in the quantum multicomputer are serial; parallel links would provide only very modest improvements in system reliability and performance. Two levels of the Steane [[23,1,7]] error correction code will adequately protect our data for factoring a 1,024-bit number even when the qubit teleportation failure rate is one percent.
Variational autoencoders (VAEs) are powerful generative models with the salient ability to perform inference. Here, we introduce a quantum variational autoencoder (QVAE): a VAE whose latent generative process is implemented as a quantum Boltzmann machine (QBM). We show that our model can be trained end-to-end by maximizing a well-defined loss-function: a quantum lower-bound to a variational approximation of the log-likelihood. We use quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations to train and evaluate the performance of QVAEs. To achieve the best performance, we first create a VAE platform with discrete latent space generated by a restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM). Our model achieves state-of-the-art performance on the MNIST dataset when compared against similar approaches that only involve discrete variables in the generative process. We consider QVAEs with a smaller number of latent units to be able to perform QMC simulations, which are computationally expensive. We show that QVAEs can be trained effectively in regimes where quantum effects are relevant despite training via the quantum bound. Our findings open the way to the use of quantum computers to train QVAEs to achieve competitive performance for generative models. Placing a QBM in the latent space of a VAE leverages the full potential of current and next-generation quantum computers as sampling devices.