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arXiv:1909.05270 · ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing

Exact and Practical Pattern Matching for Quantum Circuit Optimization

Raban Iten, Romain Moyard, Tony Metger, David Sutter, Stefan Woerner

Published Jan 22, 2022• 45 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum computations are typically performed as a sequence of basic operations, called quantum gates. Different gate sequences, called quantum circuits, can implement the same overall quantum computation. Since every additional quantum gate takes time and introduces noise into the system, it is important to find the smallest possible quantum circuit that implements a given computation, especially for near-term quantum devices that can execute only a limited number of quantum gates before noise renders the computation useless. An important building block for many quantum circuit optimization techniques is pattern matching: given a large and small quantum circuit, we would like to find all maximal matches of the small circuit, called a pattern , in the large circuit, considering pairwise commutation of quantum gates. In this work, we present the first classical algorithm for pattern matching that provably finds all maximal matches and is efficient enough to be practical for circuit sizes typical for near-term devices. We demonstrate numerically 1 that combining our algorithm with known pattern-matching-based circuit optimization techniques reduces the gate count of a random quantum circuit by ∼ 30% and can further improve practically relevant quantum circuits that were already optimized with state-of-the-art techniques.

DOI
10.1145/3498325

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Quantum computations are typically performed as a sequence of basic operations, called quantum gates. Different gate sequences, called quantum circuits, can implement the same overall quantum computation. Since every additional quantum gate takes time and introduces noise into the system, it is important to find the smallest possible quantum circuit that implements a given computation, especially for near-term quantum devices that can execute only a limited number of quantum gates before noise renders the computation useless. An important building block for many quantum circuit optimization techniques is pattern matching: given a large and small quantum circuit, we would like to find all maximal matches of the small circuit, called a pattern , in the large circuit, considering pairwise commutation of quantum gates. In this work, we present the first classical algorithm for pattern matching that provably finds all maximal matches and is efficient enough to be practical for circuit sizes typical for near-term devices. We demonstrate numerically 1 that combining our algorithm with known pattern-matching-based circuit optimization techniques reduces the gate count of a random quantum circuit by ∼ 30% and can further improve practically relevant quantum circuits that were already optimized with state-of-the-art techniques.
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There is no unique way to encode a quantum algorithm into a quantum circuit. With limited qubit counts, connectivities, and coherence times, circuit optimization is essential to make the best use of quantum devices produced over a next decade. We introduce two separate ideas for circuit optimization and combine them in a multi-tiered quantum circuit optimization protocol called AQCEL. The first ingredient is a technique to recognize repeated patterns of quantum gates, opening up the possibility of future hardware optimization. The second ingredient is an approach to reduce circuit complexity by identifying zero- or low-amplitude computational basis states and redundant gates. As a demonstration, AQCEL is deployed on an iterative and effcient quantum algorithm designed to model final state radiation in high energy physics. For this algorithm, our optimization scheme brings a significant reduction in the gate count without losing any accuracy compared to the original circuit. Additionally, we have investigated whether this can be demonstrated on a quantum computer using polynomial resources. Our technique is generic and can be useful for a wide variety of quantum algorithms.
Every quantum algorithm is represented by set of quantum circuits. Any optimization scheme for a quantum algorithm and quantum computation is very important especially in the arena of quantum computation with limited number of qubit resources. Major obstacle to this goal is the large number of elemental quantum gates to build even small quantum circuits. Here, we propose and demonstrate a general technique that significantly reduces the number of elemental gates to build quantum circuits. This is impactful for the design of quantum circuits, and we show below this could reduce the number of gates by 60% and 46% for the four- and five-qubit Toffoli gates, two key quantum circuits, respectively, as compared with simplest known decomposition. Reduced circuit complexity often goes hand-in-hand with higher efficiency and bandwidth. The quantum circuit optimization technique proposed in this work would provide a significant step forward in the optimization of quantum circuits and quantum algorithms, and has the potential for wider application in quantum computation.
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Quantum circuit optimization - the process of transforming a quantum circuit into an equivalent one with reduced time and space requirements - is crucial for maximizing the utility of current and near-future quantum devices. While most automated optimization techniques focus on transforming circuits into equivalent ones that implement the same unitary, we show that substantial new opportunities for resource reduction can be achieved by (1) allowing approximate local transformations and (2) employing mixed quantum channels to approximate pure circuits. Our novel automated protocol for approximate circuit rewriting is a refined evolution of automated optimization techniques based on the ZX-calculus, where we add a greedy strategy that selectively replaces ZX-diagrams with small phase angles with stochastic mixtures of the identity and carefully chosen over-rotations, which are designed to reduce the overall gate count in expectation while staying within a strict error budget. This approach yields modest two-qubit gate count reduction in random quantum circuits, and achieves a substantial reduction in structured circuits such as the quantum Fourier transform. Fundamentally, our protocol converts experimental noise due to gate applications into deliberately engineered random noise, outperforming many other approximation methods on average. These results highlight the potential of mixed-channel approximations to enhance future quantum circuit performance, suggesting new directions for resource-aware automated quantum compilation beyond pure unitary channels.
The realization of quantum algorithms relies on specific quantum compilations according to the underlying quantum processors. However, there are various ways to physically implement qubits in different physical devices and manipulate those qubits. These differences lead to different communication methods and connection topologies, with each vendor implementing its own set of primitive gates. Therefore, quantum circuits have to be rewritten or transformed in order to be transplanted from one platform to another. We propose a pattern matching-based framework for rewriting quantum circuits, called QRewriting. It takes advantage of a new representation of quantum circuits using symbol sequences. Unlike the traditional way of using directed acyclic graphs, the new representation allows us to easily identify the patterns that appear non-consecutively but reducible. Then, we convert the problem of pattern matching into that of finding distinct subsequences and propose a polynomial-time dynamic programming-based pattern matching and replacement algorithm. We develop a rule library for basic optimizations and use it to rewrite the Arithmetic and Toffoli benchmarks from the GIBMG_{IBM}GIBM​ gate set to the GSurG_{Sur}GSur​ gate set. Compared with the existing tool PaF, QRewriting obtains an improvement of reducing depths (resp. gate counts) by 29\% (resp. 14\%).