In this paper, we propose Proq, a runtime assertion scheme for testing and debugging quantum programs on a quantum computer. The predicates in Proq are represented by projections (or equivalently, closed subspaces of the state space), following Birkh
off-von Neumann quantum logic. The satisfaction of a projection by a quantum state can be directly checked upon a small number of projective measurements rather than a large number of repeated executions. On the theory side, we rigorously prove that checking projection-based assertions can help locate bugs or statistically assure that the semantic function of the tested program is close to what we expect, for both exact and approximate quantum programs. On the practice side, we consider hardware constraints and introduce several techniques to transform the assertions, making them directly executable on the measurement-restricted quantum computers. We also propose to achieve simplified assertion implementation using local projection technique with soundness guaranteed. We compare Proq with existing quantum program assertions and demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of Proq by its applications to assert two ingenious quantum algorithms, the Harrow-Hassidim-Lloyd algorithm and Shors algorithm.
We start with the task of discriminating finitely many multipartite quantum states using LOCC protocols, with the goal to optimize the probability of correctly identifying the state. We provide two different methods to show that finitely many measure
ment outcomes in every step are sufficient for approaching the optimal probability of discrimination. In the first method, each measurement of an optimal LOCC protocol, applied to a $d_{rm loc}$-dim local system, is replaced by one with at most $2d_{rm loc}^2$ outcomes, without changing the probability of success. In the second method, we decompose any LOCC protocol into a convex combination of a number of slim protocols in which each measurement applied to a $d_{rm loc}$-dim local system has at most $d_{rm loc}^2$ outcomes. To maximize any convex functions in LOCC (including the probability of state discrimination or fidelity of state transformation), an optimal protocol can be replaced by the best slim protocol in the convex decomposition without using shared randomness. For either method, the bound on the number of outcomes per measurement is independent of the global dimension, the number of parties, the depth of the protocol, how deep the measurement is located, and applies to LOCC protocols with infinite rounds, and the measurement compression can be done top-down -- independent of later operations in the LOCC protocol. The second method can be generalized to implement LOCC instruments with finitely many outcomes: if the instrument has $n$ coarse-grained final measurement outcomes, global input dimension $D_0$ and global output dimension $D_i$ for $i=1,...,n$ conditioned on the $i$-th outcome, then one can obtain the instrument as a convex combination of no more than $R=sum_{i=1}^n D_0^2 D_i^2 - D_0^2 + 1$ slim protocols; in other words, $log_2 R$ bits of shared randomess suffice.
We investigate quantum state tomography (QST) for pure states and quantum process tomography (QPT) for unitary channels via $adaptive$ measurements. For a quantum system with a $d$-dimensional Hilbert space, we first propose an adaptive protocol wher
e only $2d-1$ measurement outcomes are used to accomplish the QST for $all$ pure states. This idea is then extended to study QPT for unitary channels, where an adaptive unitary process tomography (AUPT) protocol of $d^2+d-1$ measurement outcomes is constructed for any unitary channel. We experimentally implement the AUPT protocol in a 2-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance system. We examine the performance of the AUPT protocol when applied to Hadamard gate, $T$ gate ($pi/8$ phase gate), and controlled-NOT gate, respectively, as these gates form the universal gate set for quantum information processing purpose. As a comparison, standard QPT is also implemented for each gate. Our experimental results show that the AUPT protocol that reconstructing unitary channels via adaptive measurements significantly reduce the number of experiments required by standard QPT without considerable loss of fidelity.
We discuss quantum capacities for two types of entanglement networks: $mathcal{Q}$ for the quantum repeater network with free classical communication, and $mathcal{R}$ for the tensor network as the rank of the linear operation represented by the tens
or network. We find that $mathcal{Q}$ always equals $mathcal{R}$ in the regularized case for the samenetwork graph. However, the relationships between the corresponding one-shot capacities $mathcal{Q}_1$ and $mathcal{R}_1$ are more complicated, and the min-cut upper bound is in general not achievable. We show that the tensor network can be viewed as a stochastic protocol with the quantum repeater network, such that $mathcal{R}_1$ is a natural upper bound of $mathcal{Q}_1$. We analyze the possible gap between $mathcal{R}_1$ and $mathcal{Q}_1$ for certain networks, and compare them with the one-shot classical capacity of the corresponding classical network.
Entanglement, one of the central mysteries of quantum mechanics, plays an essential role in numerous applications of quantum information theory. A natural question of both theoretical and experimental importance is whether universal entanglement dete
ction is possible without full state tomography. In this work, we prove a no-go theorem that rules out this possibility for any non-adaptive schemes that employ single-copy measurements only. We also examine in detail a previously implemented experiment, which claimed to detect entanglement of two-qubit states via adaptive single-copy measurements without full state tomography. By performing the experiment and analyzing the data, we demonstrate that the information gathered is indeed sufficient to reconstruct the state. These results reveal a fundamental limit for single-copy measurements in entanglement detection, and provides a general framework to study the detection of other interesting properties of quantum states, such as the positivity of partial transpose and the $k$-symmetric extendibility.
We study the possible difference between the quantum and the private capacities of a quantum channel in the zero-error setting. For a family of channels introduced by arXiv:1312.4989, we demonstrate an extreme difference: the zero-error quantum capac
ity is zero, whereas the zero-error private capacity is maximum given the quantum output dimension.
