Compiling quantum algorithms for near-term quantum computers (accounting for connectivity and native gate alphabets) is a major challenge that has received significant attention both by industry and academia. Avoiding the exponential overhead of classical simulation of quantum dynamics will allow compilation of larger algorithms, and a strategy for this is to evaluate an algorithm's cost on a quantum computer. To this end, we propose a variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithm called quantum-assisted quantum compiling (QAQC). In QAQC, we use the overlap between a target unitary U and a trainable unitary V as the cost function to be evaluated on the quantum computer. More precisely, to ensure that QAQC scales well with problem size, our cost involves not only the global overlap T r ( V † U ) but also the local overlaps with respect to individual qubits. We introduce novel short-depth quantum circuits to quantify the terms in our cost function, and we prove that our cost cannot be efficiently approximated with a classical algorithm under reasonable complexity assumptions. We present both gradient-free and gradient-based approaches to minimizing this cost. As a demonstration of QAQC, we compile various one-qubit gates on IBM's and Rigetti's quantum computers into their respective native gate alphabets. Furthermore, we successfully simulate QAQC up to a problem size of 9 qubits, and these simulations highlight both the scalability of our cost function as well as the noise resilience of QAQC. Future applications of QAQC include algorithm depth compression, black-box compiling, noise mitigation, and benchmarking.
Compiling quantum algorithms for near-term quantum computers (accounting for connectivity and native gate alphabets) is a major challenge that has received significant attention both by industry and academia. Avoiding the exponential overhead of classical simulation of quantum dynamics will allow compilation of larger algorithms, and a strategy for this is to evaluate an algorithm's cost on a quantum computer. To this end, we propose a variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithm called quantum-assisted quantum compiling (QAQC). In QAQC, we use the overlap between a target unitary U and a trainable unitary V as the cost function to be evaluated on the quantum computer. More precisely, to ensure that QAQC scales well with problem size, our cost involves not only the global overlap T r ( V † U ) but also the local overlaps with respect to individual qubits. We introduce novel short-depth quantum circuits to quantify the terms in our cost function, and we prove that our cost cannot be efficiently approximated with a classical algorithm under reasonable complexity assumptions. We present both gradient-free and gradient-based approaches to minimizing this cost. As a demonstration of QAQC, we compile various one-qubit gates on IBM's and Rigetti's quantum computers into their respective native gate alphabets. Furthermore, we successfully simulate QAQC up to a problem size of 9 qubits, and these simulations highlight both the scalability of our cost function as well as the noise resilience of QAQC. Future applications of QAQC include algorithm depth compression, black-box compiling, noise mitigation, and benchmarking.
Variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithms (VHQCAs) are near-term algorithms that leverage classical optimization to minimize a cost function, which is efficiently evaluated on a quantum computer. Recently VHQCAs have been proposed for quantum compiling, where a target unitary U is compiled into a short-depth gate sequence V. In this work, we report on a surprising form of noise resilience for these algorithms. Namely, we find one often learns the correct gate sequence V (i.e. the correct variational parameters) despite various sources of incoherent noise acting during the cost-evaluation circuit. Our main results are rigorous theorems stating that the optimal variational parameters are unaffected by a broad class of noise models, such as measurement noise, gate noise, and Pauli channel noise. Furthermore, our numerical implementations on IBM's noisy simulator demonstrate resilience when compiling the quantum Fourier transform, Toffoli gate, and W-state preparation. Hence, variational quantum compiling, due to its robustness, could be practically useful for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. Finally, we speculate that this noise resilience may be a general phenomenon that applies to other VHQCAs such as the variational quantum eigensolver.
Abstract Variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithms (VHQCAs) are near-term algorithms that leverage classical optimization to minimize a cost function, which is efficiently evaluated on a quantum computer. Recently VHQCAs have been proposed for quantum compiling, where a target unitary U is compiled into a short-depth gate sequence V . In this work, we report on a surprising form of noise resilience for these algorithms. Namely, we find one often learns the correct gate sequence V (i.e. the correct variational parameters) despite various sources of incoherent noise acting during the cost-evaluation circuit. Our main results are rigorous theorems stating that the optimal variational parameters are unaffected by a broad class of noise models, such as measurement noise, gate noise, and Pauli channel noise. Furthermore, our numerical implementations on IBM’s noisy simulator demonstrate resilience when compiling the quantum Fourier transform, Toffoli gate, and W-state preparation. Hence, variational quantum compiling, due to its robustness, could be practically useful for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. Finally, we speculate that this noise resilience may be a general phenomenon that applies to other VHQCAs such as the variational quantum eigensolver.
Solving linear systems of equations is central to many engineering and
scientific fields. Several quantum algorithms have been proposed for linear
systems, where the goal is to prepare ∣x⟩ such that A∣x⟩∝∣b⟩. While these algorithms are promising, the time horizon for their
implementation is long due to the required quantum circuit depth. In this work,
we propose a variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for solving linear
systems, with the aim of reducing the circuit depth and doing much of the
computation classically. We propose a cost function based on the overlap
between ∣b⟩ and A∣x⟩, and we derive an operational meaning for
this cost in terms of the solution precision ϵ. We also introduce a
quantum circuit to estimate this cost, while showing that this cost cannot be
efficiently estimated classically. Using Rigetti's quantum computer, we
successfully implement our algorithm up to a problem size of 32×32.
Furthermore, we numerically find that the complexity of our algorithm scales
efficiently in both 1/ϵ and κ, with κ the condition
number of A. Our algorithm provides a heuristic for quantum linear systems
that could make this application more near term.
Abstract Implementing quantum algorithms on realistic devices requires translating high-level global operations into sequences of hardware-native logic gates, a process known as quantum compiling. Physical limitations, such as constraints in connectivity and gate alphabets, often result in unacceptable implementation costs. To enable successful near-term applications, it is crucial to optimize compilation by exploiting the capabilities of existing hardware. Here we implement a resource-efficient construction for a quantum version of AND logic that can reduce the compilation overhead, enabling the execution of key quantum circuits. On a high-scalability superconducting quantum processor, we demonstrate low-depth synthesis of high-fidelity generalized Toffoli gates with up to 8 qubits and Grover’s search algorithm in a search space of up to 64 entries. Our experimental demonstration illustrates a scalable and widely applicable approach to implementing quantum algorithms, bringing more meaningful quantum applications on noisy devices within reach.
Variational quantum compiling (VQC) algorithms aim to approximate deep quantum circuits with shallow parameterized ansatzes, making them more suitable for NISQ hardware. In this article a variant of VQC named the recursive variational quantum compiling (RVQC) algorithm is proposed. Existing VQC algorithms typically require coherently executing the full circuit during compilation. Under the influence of noise, sufficiently deep target circuits make compiling unfeasible using ordinary VQC. Since the compiling is often accomplished using a gradient-based quantum-classical approach, the quantum noise manifest as a noisy gradient during optimization, making convergence hard to obtain. On the other hand, RVQC can compile a circuit by first dividing it into N shorter sub-circuits, then evaluate one sub-circuit at a time. As a result, the circuit depth required to implement RVQC is not dependent on the depth of the target circuit, but on the depth of the sub-circuits. Choosing a high enough N thus ensures sufficiently shallow sub-circuit which can be successfully compiled individually. We show mathematical evidence of this property. RVQC was compared with VQC on a noise model of the IBM Santiago device with the goal of compiling several randomly generated five-qubit circuits of approximately depth 1000. It was shown that VQC was not able to converge within 500 iterations of optimization. On the other hand, RVQC was able to converge to a fidelity of 0.90±0.05 within a total of 500 iterations when splitting the target circuits into N=5 parts. We argue that this comes as a result of the mitigation of noise-induced barren plateaus.
Simulation of quantum many-body systems is one of the most promising applications of quantum computers. It is crucial to efficiently implement the time-evolution operator as a quantum circuit to execute such simulations on near-term quantum computing devices with limited computational resources. However, standard approaches such as Trotterization sometimes require a deep quantum circuit, which is hard to implement on near-term quantum computers. Here, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, called local subspace variational quantum compilation (LSVQC), for compiling the time-evolution operator of quantum many-body systems. The LSVQC performs a variational optimization to reproduce the action of the target time-evolution operator within a physically reasonable subspace. The optimization is performed for small local subsystems based on the Lieb-Robinson bound, which allows us to execute the cost function evaluation using small-scale quantum devices and/or classical computers. We demonstrate the validity of the LSVQC algorithm through numerical simulations of a simple spin-lattice model and an effective model of a parent compound of cuprate superconductors, Sr 2 CuO 3 , constructed by the downfolding method. It is shown that the LSVQC achieves a 95% reduction of the circuit depth for simulating quantum many-body dynamics compared to the Trotterization at best while maintaining the same computational accuracy. We also demonstrate that the restriction to a subspace leads to a substantial reduction of required resources and improved accuracy compared to the case of considering the entire Hilbert space. Furthermore, we estimate the gate count needed to execute the quantum simulations using the LSVQC on near-term quantum computing architectures in the noisy intermediate-scale or early fault-tolerant quantum computing era. Our estimation suggests that the acceptable physical gate error rate for the LSVQC can be about one order of magnitude larger than that for the Trotterization.