Entanglement has been shown to be necessary for pure state quantum computation to have an advantage over classical computation. However, it remains open whether entanglement is necessary for quantum computers that use mixed states to also have an advantage. The one clean qubit model is a form of quantum computer in which the input is the maximally mixed state plus one pure qubit. Previous work has shown that there is a limited amount of entanglement present in these computations, despite the fact that they can efficiently solve some problems that are seemingly hard to solve classically. This casts doubt on the notion that entanglement is necessary for quantum speedups. In this work we show that entanglement is indeed crucial for efficient computation in this model, because without it the one clean qubit model is efficiently classically simulable.
Entanglement has been shown to be necessary for pure state quantum computation to have an advantage over classical computation. However, it remains open whether entanglement is necessary for quantum computers that use mixed states to also have an advantage. The one clean qubit model is a form of quantum computer in which the input is the maximally mixed state plus one pure qubit. Previous work has shown that there is a limited amount of entanglement present in these computations, despite the fact that they can efficiently solve some problems that are seemingly hard to solve classically. This casts doubt on the notion that entanglement is necessary for quantum speedups. In this work we show that entanglement is indeed crucial for efficient computation in this model, because without it the one clean qubit model is efficiently classically simulable.
In a quantum computation with pure states, the generation of large amounts of entanglement is known to be necessary for a speedup with respect to classical computations. However, examples of quantum computations with mixed states are known, such as the deterministic computation with one quantum qubit (DQC1) model [Knill and Laflamme, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5672 (1998)], in which entanglement is at most marginally present, and yet a computational speedup is believed to occur. Correlations, and not entanglement, have been identified as a necessary ingredient for mixed-state quantum computation speedups. Here we show that correlations, as measured through the operator Schmidt rank, are indeed present in large amounts in the DQC1 circuit. This provides evidence for the preclusion of efficient classical simulation of DQC1 by means of a whole class of classical simulation algorithms, thereby reinforcing the conjecture that DQC1 leads to a genuine quantum computational speedup.
We present a classical protocol to efficiently simulate any pure-state quantum computation that involves only a restricted amount of entanglement. More generally, we show how to classically simulate pure-state quantum computations on n qubits by using computational resources that grow linearly in n and exponentially in the amount of entanglement in the quantum computer. Our results imply that a necessary condition for an exponential computational speedup (with respect to classical computations) is that the amount of entanglement increases with the size n of the computation, and provide an explicit lower bound on the required growth.
Of the many and varied applications of quantum information theory, perhaps the most fascinating is the sub-field of quantum computation. In this sub-field, computational algorithms are designed which utilise the resources available in quantum systems in order to compute solutions to computational problems with, in some cases, exponentially fewer resources than any known classical algorithm. While the fact of quantum computational speedup is almost beyond doubt, the source of quantum speedup is still a matter of debate. In this paper I argue that entanglement is a necessary component for any explanation of quantum speedup and I address some purported counter-examples that some claim show that the contrary is true. In particular, I address Biham et al.'s mixed-state version of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, and Knill \& Laflamme's deterministic quantum computation with one qubit (DQC1) model of quantum computation. I argue that these examples do not demonstrate that entanglement is unnecessary for the explanation of quantum speedup, but that they rather illuminate and clarify the role that entanglement does play.
Deterministic quantum computation with one quantum bit (DQC1), or the one clean qubit model, [E. Knill and R. Laflamme, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf81}, 5672 (1998)] is a model of quantum computing where the input is the tensor product of a single pure qubit and many completely-mixed states, and only the single qubit is measured at the end of the computation. In spite of its naive appearance, the DQC1 model can efficiently solve some problems for which no classical efficient algorithms are known, and therefore it has been conjectured that the DQC1 model is more powerful than classical computing (under the assumption of $\mbox{BPP}\subsetneq\mbox{BQP}$). Here we show that the output probability distribution of the DQC1 model cannot be classically efficiently approximated (exactly within a polynomial bit length or in the fully polynomial randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) with at most a constant error) unless $\mbox{BQP}\subseteq\mbox{BPP}$.
Deterministic quantum computation with one quantum bit (DQC1) [E. Knill and R. Laflamme, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5672 (1998)] is a model of quantum computing where the input is restricted to containing a single qubit in a pure state and has all other qubits in a completely mixed state. Only the single pure qubit is measured at the end of the computation. While it is known that DQC1 can efficiently solve several problems for which no known classical efficient algorithms exist, the question of whether DQC1 is really more powerful than classical computation remains open. In this Letter, we introduce a slightly modified version of DQC1, which we call DQC1(k), where k output qubits are measured, and show that DQC1(k) cannot be classically efficiently simulated for any k≥3 unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses at the third level.
The one-clean-qubit model of quantum computation (DQC1) efficiently implements a computational task that is not known to have a classical alternative. During the computation, there is never more than a small but finite amount of entanglement present, and it is typically vanishingly small in the system size. In this paper, we demonstrate that there is nothing unexpected hidden within the DQC1 model---Grover's search, when acting on a mixed state, provably exhibits a speedup over classical, with guarantees as to the presence of only vanishingly small amounts of quantum correlations (entanglement and quantum discord)---while arguing that this is not an artifact of the oracle-based construction. We also present some important refinements in the evaluation of how much entanglement may be present in the DQC1 and how the typical entanglement of the system must be evaluated.