We report a proof-of-concept demonstration of a quantum order-finding algorithm for factoring the integer 21. Our demonstration involves the use of a compiled version of the quantum phase estimation routine, and builds upon a previous demonstration by Martin-L{o}pez et al. in Nature Photonics 6, 773 (2012). We go beyond this work by using a configuration of approximate Toffoli gates with residual phase shifts, which preserves the functional correctness and allows us to achieve a complete factoring of N=21. We implemented the algorithm on IBM quantum processors using only 5 qubits and successfully verified the presence of entanglement between the control and work register qubits, which is a necessary condition for the algorithms speedup in general. The techniques we employ may be useful in carrying out Shors algorithm for larger integers, or other algorithms in systems with a limited number of noisy qubits.
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