No Arabic abstract
Despite the rapid development of quantum computing these years, state-of-the-art quantum devices still contain only a very limited number of qubits. One possible way to execute more realistic algorithms in near-term quantum devices is to employ dynamic quantum circuits, in which measurements can happen during the circuit and their outcomes are used to control other parts of the circuit. This technique can help to significantly reduce the resources required to achieve a given accuracy of a quantum algorithm. However, since this type of quantum circuits are more flexible, their verification is much more challenging. In this paper, we give a formal definition of dynamic quantum circuits and then propose to characterise their functionality in terms of ensembles of linear operators. Based on this novel semantics, two dynamic quantum circuits are equivalent if they have the same functionality. We further propose and implement two decision diagram-based algorithms for checking the equivalence of dynamic quantum circuits. Experiments show that embedding classical logic into conventional quantum circuits does not incur significant time and space burden.
We study the fundamental design automation problem of equivalence checking in the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) computing realm where quantum noise is present inevitably. The notion of approximate equivalence of (possibly noisy) quantum circuits is defined based on the Jamiolkowski fidelity which measures the average distance between output states of two super-operators when the input is chosen at random. By employing tensor network contraction, we present two algorithms, aiming at different situations where the number of noises varies, for computing the fidelity between an ideal quantum circuit and its noisy implementation. The effectiveness of our algorithms is demonstrated by experimenting on benchmarks of real NISQ circuits. When compared with the state-of-the-art implementation incorporated in Qiskit, experimental results show that the proposed algorithms outperform in both efficiency and scalability.
Suppose two quantum circuit chips are located at different places, for which we do not have any prior knowledge, and cannot see the internal structures either. If we want to find out whether they have the same functions or not with certainty, what should we do? In this paper, we show that this realistic problem can be solved from the viewpoints of quantum nonlocality. Specifically, we design an elegant protocol that examines underlying quantum nonlocality. We prove that in the protocol the strongest nonlocality can be observed if and only if two quantum circuits are equivalent to each other. We show that the protocol also works approximately, where the distance between two quantum circuits can be lower and upper bounded analytically by observed quantum nonlocality. Furthermore, we also discuss the possibility to generalize the protocol to multipartite cases, i.e., if we do equivalence checking for multiple quantum circuits, we try to solve the problem in one go. Our work introduces a nontrivial application of quantum nonlocality in quantum engineering.
In this talk, we will describe a framework for assertion-based verification (ABV) of quantum circuits by applying model checking techniques for quantum systems developed in our previous work, in which: (i) Noiseless and noisy quantum circuits are modelled as operator- and super-operator-valued transition systems, respectively, both of which can be further represented by tensor networks. (ii) Quantum assertions are specified by a temporal extension of Birkhoff-von Neumann quantum logic. Their semantics is defined based on the design decision: they will be used in verification of quantum circuits by simulation on classical computers or human reasoning rather than by quantum physics experiments (e.g. testing through measurements); (iii) Algorithms for reachability analysis and model checking of quantum circuits are developed based on contraction of tensor networks. We observe that many optimisation techniques for computing relational products used in BDD-based model checking algorithms can be generalised for contracting tensor networks of quantum circuits.
In this paper, we introduce the model of quantum Mealy machines and study the equivalence checking and minimisation problems of them. Two efficient algorithms are developed for checking equivalence of two states in the same machine and for checking equivalence of two machines. As an application, they are used in equivalence checking of quantum circuits. Moreover, the minimisation problem is proved to be in $textbf{PSPACE}$.
The execution of quantum circuits on real systems has largely been limited to those which are simply time-ordered sequences of unitary operations followed by a projective measurement. As hardware platforms for quantum computing continue to mature in size and capability, it is imperative to enable quantum circuits beyond their conventional construction. Here we break into the realm of dynamic quantum circuits on a superconducting-based quantum system. Dynamic quantum circuits involve not only the evolution of the quantum state throughout the computation, but also periodic measurements of a subset of qubits mid-circuit and concurrent processing of the resulting classical information within timescales shorter than the execution times of the circuits. Using noisy quantum hardware, we explore one of the most fundamental quantum algorithms, quantum phase estimation, in its adaptive version, which exploits dynamic circuits, and compare the results to a non-adaptive implementation of the same algorithm. We demonstrate that the version of real-time quantum computing with dynamic circuits can offer a substantial and tangible advantage when noise and latency are sufficiently low in the system, opening the door to a new realm of available algorithms on real quantum systems.