No Arabic abstract
We have proposed and demonstrated a general and scalable scheme for programmable unitary gates. Our method is based on matrix decomposition into diagonal and Fourier factors. Thus, we are able to construct arbitrary matrix operators only by diagonal matrices alternately acting on two photonic encoding bases that belong to a Fourier transform pair. Thus, the technical difficulties to implement arbitrary unitary operators are significantly reduced. As examples, two protocols for optical OAM and path domain are considered to verify our proposal and evaluate the performance. For OAM domain, unitary matrices with dimensionality up to 6*6 are achieved and discussed with the numerical simulations. For path domain, an average fidelity of 0.98 is evaluated through 80 experimental results with dimensionality of 3*3. Furthermore, our proposal is also potential to provide a quantum operation protocol for any other photonic domain, if there exists the corresponding transformed domain.
Birkhoffs theorem tells that any doubly stochastic matrix can be decomposed as a weighted sum of permutation matrices. A similar theorem reveals that any unitary matrix can be decomposed as a weighted sum of complex permutation matrices. Unitary matrices of dimension equal to a power of~2 (say $2^w$) deserve special attention, as they represent quantum qubit circuits. We investigate which subgroup of the signed permutation matrices suffices to decompose an arbitrary such matrix. It turns out to be a matrix group isomorphic to the extraspecial group {bf E}$_{2^{2w+1}}^+$ of order $2^{2w+1}$. An associated projective group of order $2^{2w}$ equally suffices.
Electron transport in realistic physical and chemical systems often involves the non-trivial exchange of energy with a large environment, requiring the definition and treatment of open quantum systems. Because the time evolution of an open quantum system employs a non-unitary operator, the simulation of open quantum systems presents a challenge for universal quantum computers constructed from only unitary operators or gates. Here we present a general algorithm for implementing the action of any non-unitary operator on an arbitrary state on a quantum device. We show that any quantum operator can be exactly decomposed as a linear combination of at most four unitary operators. We demonstrate this method on a two-level system in both zero and finite temperature amplitude damping channels. The results are in agreement with classical calculations, showing promise in simulating non-unitary operations on intermediate-term and future quantum devices.
We study a method of producing approximately diagonal 1-qubit gates. For each positive integer, the method provides a sequence of gates that are defined iteratively from a fixed diagonal gate and an arbitrary gate. These sequences are conjectured to converge to diagonal gates doubly exponentially fast and are verified for small integers. We systemically study this conjecture and prove several important partial results. Some techniques are developed to pave the way for a final resolution of the conjecture. The sequences provided here have applications in quantum search algorithms, quantum circuit compilation, generation of leakage-free entangled gates in topological quantum computing, etc.
We derive a trade-off relation between the accuracy of implementing a desired unitary evolution using a restricted set of free unitaries and the size of the assisting system, in terms of the resource generating/losing capacity of the target unitary. In particular, this relation implies that, for any theory equipped with a resource measure satisfying lenient conditions, any resource changing unitary cannot be perfectly implemented by a free unitary applied to a system and an environment if the environment has finite dimensions. Our results are applicable to a wide class of resources including energy, asymmetry, coherence, entanglement, and magic, imposing ultimate limitations inherent in such important physical settings, as well as providing insights into operational restrictions in general resource theories.
Random unitary matrices find a number of applications in quantum information science, and are central to the recently defined boson sampling algorithm for photons in linear optics. We describe an operationally simple method to directly implement Haar random unitary matrices in optical circuits, with no requirement for prior or explicit matrix calculations. Our physically-motivated and compact representation directly maps independent probability density functions for parameters in Haar random unitary matrices, to optical circuit components. We go on to extend the results to the case of random unitaries for qubits.