One of the lowest-order corrections to Gaussian quantum mechanics in infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces are Airy functions: a uniformization of the stationary phase method applied in the path integral perspective. We introduce a "periodized stationary phase method" to discrete Wigner functions of systems with odd prime dimension and show that the π8 gate is the discrete analog of the Airy function. We then establish a relationship between the stabilizer rank of states and the number of quadratic Gauss sums necessary in the periodized stationary phase method. This allows us to develop a classical strong simulation of a single qutrit marginal on t qutrit π8 gates that are followed by Clifford evolution, and show that this only requires 3t2+1 quadratic Gauss sums. This outperforms the best alternative qutrit algorithm (based on Wigner negativity and scaling as ∼30.8t for 10−2 precision) for any number of π8 gates to full precision.
One of the lowest-order corrections to Gaussian quantum mechanics in infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces are Airy functions: a uniformization of the stationary phase method applied in the path integral perspective. We introduce a "periodized stationary phase method" to discrete Wigner functions of systems with odd prime dimension and show that the π8 gate is the discrete analog of the Airy function. We then establish a relationship between the stabilizer rank of states and the number of quadratic Gauss sums necessary in the periodized stationary phase method. This allows us to develop a classical strong simulation of a single qutrit marginal on t qutrit π8 gates that are followed by Clifford evolution, and show that this only requires 3t2+1 quadratic Gauss sums. This outperforms the best alternative qutrit algorithm (based on Wigner negativity and scaling as ∼30.8t for 10−2 precision) for any number of π8 gates to full precision.
We develop a path integral representation for the dynamics of quantum systems with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, formulated entirely within a discrete phase space. Starting from the discrete Wigner function on Zd×Zd (d an odd prime) and the associated Weyl transform built from generalized displacement operators, we derive an exact kernel that propagates the discrete Wigner function in time and, by iterating its composition law through a short-time approximation, obtain a sum-over-paths expression weighted by a discrete phase-space action -- the natural finite-dimensional counterpart of Marinov's functional. For Hamiltonians linear in the phase-space coordinates and at times strictly commensurate with the lattice, the fluctuation sum collapses to a deterministic shift, realizing the discrete analog of classical Hamiltonian flow. Applying the formalism to one and to two interacting qutrits (d=3), we show that the full entanglement dynamics -- captured by a closed-form linear entropy valid for all times -- requires the coherent contribution of all fluctuation sectors; the boundary-term (mean-field) sector alone fails to reproduce it. For a non-stabilizer Hamiltonian, where the short-time kernel is only approximate, the time-sliced path integral converges to the exact dynamics, including the dynamical generation of Wigner negativity. We discuss implications for the semiclassical simulation of many-body spin systems and for the characterization of non-classicality through Wigner negativity.
Bravyi and Gosset [S. Bravyi and D. Gosset, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 250501 (2016)] recently gave classical simulation algorithms for quantum circuits dominated by Clifford operations. These algorithms scale exponentially with the number of T gates in the circuit, but polynomially in the number of qubits and Clifford operations. Here we extend their algorithm to qudits of odd prime dimension. We generalize their approximate stabilizer rank method for weak simulation to qudits and obtain the scaling of the approximate stabilizer rank with the number of single-qudit magic states. We also relate the canonical form of qudit stabilizer states to Gauss sum evaluations and give an O(n3) algorithm for calculating the inner product of two n-qudit stabilizer states.
The Gottesman–Knill theorem established that stabilizer states and Clifford operations can be efficiently simulated classically. For qudits with odd dimension three and greater, stabilizer states and Clifford operations have been found to correspond to positive discrete Wigner functions and dynamics. We present a discrete Wigner function-based simulation algorithm for odd-d qudits that has the same time and space complexity as the Aaronson–Gottesman algorithm for qubits. We show that the efficiency of both algorithms is due to harmonic evolution in the symplectic structure of discrete phase space. The differences between the Wigner function algorithm for odd-d and the Aaronson–Gottesman algorithm for qubits are likely due only to the fact that the Weyl–Heisenberg group is not in S U ( d ) for d = 2 and that qubits exhibit state-independent contextuality. This may provide a guide for extending the discrete Wigner function approach to qubits.
It is straightforward to compute the transition amplitudes of a quantum circuit using the sum-over-paths methodology when the gates in the circuit are balanced, where a balanced gate is one for which all non-zero transition amplitudes are of equal magnitude. Here we consider the question of whether, for such circuits, the relative phases of different discrete-time paths through the configuration space can be defined in terms of a classical action, as they are for continuous-time paths. We show how to do so for certain kinds of quantum circuits, namely, Clifford circuits where the elementary systems are continuous-variable systems or discrete systems of odd-prime dimension. These types of circuit are distinguished by having phase-space representations that serve to define their classical counterparts. For discrete systems, the phase-space coordinates are also discrete variables. We show that for each gate in the generating set, one can associate a symplectomorphism on the phase-space and to each of these one can associate a generating function, defined on two copies of the configuration space. For discrete systems, the latter association is achieved using tools from algebraic geometry. Finally, we show that if the action functional for a discrete-time path through a sequence of gates is defined using the sum of the corresponding generating functions, then it yields the correct relative phases for the path-sum expression. These results are likely to be relevant for quantizing physical theories where time is fundamentally discrete, characterizing the classical limit of discrete-time quantum dynamics, and proving complexity results for quantum circuits.
An important problem in quantum computation is to characterize the resources required for a computational speedup over classical computation. Veitch et al. showed that one necessary condition for a computational speedup in the model of quantum computation with magic states is that the discrete Wigner function representing the input state of the quantum circuit must take negative values. The amount of negativity in the discrete Wigner function quantifies the complexity of classical simulation of a quantum computation with simulation being efficient if the Wigner function is nonnegative everywhere. In this sense, negativity of the Wigner quasiprobability representation serves as an indicator of quantumness from a computational perspective. However, this result only holds for systems of qudits where the local Hilbert space dimension is odd. The first main result discussed in this thesis relates to a discrete Wigner function suitable for describing quantum computation with magic states defined for any local Hilbert space dimension. When the local Hilbert space dimension is odd it subsumes the standard discrete Wigner function. When the local Hilbert space dimension is even, as a result of state-independent proofs of contextuality among multiqubit (or multi-even-dimensional-qudit) Pauli observables, the phase space over which the Wigner function is defined becomes much larger. However, for systems of qubits, the properties required for simulation of quantum computation with magic states remain. This simulation method effectively extends the result described above for odd-dimensional qudits to qubits. Although in the even-dimensional case the phase space is much larger, points in multiqubit phase space can be characterized and classified and some structure can be imparted on the phase space. The second main result discussed here is a hidden variable model for quantum computation with magic states on qubits. This model is similar in structure to quasiprobability representations like the discrete Wigner function, but unlike those representations the model is capable of representing all elements of any quantum computation---states, operations, and measurements---using only classical probabilities. No negativity is required. This calls into question the role of negativity in quasiprobability representations as an indicator of quantumness for models of quantum computation.
Abstract Low-order nonlinear phase gates allow the construction of versatile higher-order nonlinearities for bosonic systems and grant access to continuous variable quantum simulations of many unexplored aspects of nonlinear quantum dynamics. The resulting nonlinear transformations produce, even with small strength, multiple regions of negativity in the Wigner function and thus show an immediate departure from classical phase space. Towards the development of realistic, bounded versions of these gates we show that the action of a quartic-bounded cubic gate on an arbitrary multimode quantum state in phase space can be understood as an Airy transform of the Wigner function. This toolbox generalises the symplectic transformations associated with Gaussian operations and allows for the practical calculation, analysis and interpretation of explicit Wigner functions and the quantum non-Gaussian phenomena resulting from bounded nonlinear potentials.