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arXiv:2104.12027 · New Journal of Physics

Signal-based classical emulation of a universal quantum computer

Brian R. La Cour, Granville E. Ott

Published May 13, 2015• 32 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this paper we present a novel approach to emulating a universal quantum computer with a classical system, one that uses a signal of bounded duration and amplitude to represent an arbitrary quantum state. The signal may be of any modality (e.g., acoustic, electromagnetic, etc), but we focus our discussion here on electronic signals. Unitary gate operations are performed using analog electronic circuit devices, such as four-quadrant multipliers, operational amplifiers, and analog filters, although non-unitary operations may be performed as well. In this manner, the Hilbert space structure of the quantum state, as well as a universal set of gate operations, may be fully emulated classically. The required bandwidth scales exponentially with the number of qubits, however, thereby limiting the scalability of the approach, but the intrinsic parallelism, ease of construction, and classical robustness to decoherence may nevertheless lead to capabilities and efficiencies rivaling that of current high performance computers.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/17/5/053017

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In this paper we present a novel approach to emulating a universal quantum computer with a classical system, one that uses a signal of bounded duration and amplitude to represent an arbitrary quantum state. The signal may be of any modality (e.g., acoustic, electromagnetic, etc), but we focus our discussion here on electronic signals. Unitary gate operations are performed using analog electronic circuit devices, such as four-quadrant multipliers, operational amplifiers, and analog filters, although non-unitary operations may be performed as well. In this manner, the Hilbert space structure of the quantum state, as well as a universal set of gate operations, may be fully emulated classically. The required bandwidth scales exponentially with the number of qubits, however, thereby limiting the scalability of the approach, but the intrinsic parallelism, ease of construction, and classical robustness to decoherence may nevertheless lead to capabilities and efficiencies rivaling that of current high performance computers.
This paper describes a novel approach to emulate a universal quantum computer with a wholly classical system, one that uses a signal of bounded duration and amplitude to represent an arbitrary quantum state. The signal may be of any modality (e.g. acoustic, electromagnetic, etc.) but this paper will focus on electronic signals. Individual qubits are represented by in-phase and quadrature sinusoidal signals, while unitary gate operations are performed using simple analog electronic circuit devices. In this manner, the Hilbert space structure of a multi-qubit quantum state, as well as a universal set of gate operations, may be fully emulated classically. Results from a programmable prototype system are presented and discussed.
We construct a completely analog framework that emulates universal quantum gates and quantum algorithms. It is based on electronic circuits made of operational amplifiers, resistors and capacitors. In these circuits, input and output lines represent the computational basis states (CBSs) and thus 2n2^n2n lines are required to represent nnn qubits. An operation of the circuits is based on classical evolution and interference of complex amplitudes associated with each CBS. The framework can emulate entangled states and is free from decoherence, measurements are classical and do not collapse states. Similar to physical quantum computers, emulated quantum algorithms can be constructed as a sequence of the gates belonging to a universal set (phase shift, Hadamard, controlled-NOT), as a unitary matrix and as combinations of the two. Circuits representing the universal gates have been made and tested. We also have made a matrix-based emulator of a 3-qubit Grover search algorithm. We tested it by searching for one and two particular states with one and two iterations and found that its outputs accurately match predicted values. We anticipate that the emulators can work as sub-components of physical quantum computers. On their own, the emulators can be used for operations that require a few qubits or operations that can be split into independent (and perhaps weakly entangled) blocks of qubits.
Quantum computers provide a fundamentally new computing paradigm that promises to revolutionize our ability to solve broad classes of problems. Surprisingly, the basic mathematical structures of gate-based quantum computing, such as unitary operations on a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, are not unique to quantum systems but may be found in certain classical systems as well. Previously, it has been shown that one can represent an arbitrary multi-qubit quantum state in terms of classical analog signals using nested quadrature amplitude modulated signals. Furthermore, using digitally controlled analog electronics one may manipulate these signals to perform quantum gate operations and thereby execute quantum algorithms. The computational capacity of a single signal is, however, limited by the required bandwidth, which scales exponentially with the number of qubits when represented using frequency-based encoding. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a method to extend this approach to multiple parallel signals. Doing so allows a larger quantum state to be emulated with the same gate time required for processing frequency-encoded signals. In the proposed representation, each doubling of the number of signals corresponds to an additional qubit in the spatial domain. Single quit gate operations are similarly extended so as to operate on qubits represented using either frequency-based or spatial encoding schemes. Furthermore, we describe a method to perform gate operations between pairs of qubits represented using frequency or spatial encoding or between frequency-based and spatially encoded qubits. Finally, we describe how this approach may be extended to represent qubits in the time domain as well.
Between the digital and quantum paradigms lies the emerging field of quantum-inspired analog computing, in which classical waves emulate quantum circuits. We introduce wavebits -- classical wave analogs of qubits whose amplitudes are carried by physical oscillatory signals -- and show that any nonseparable N-qubit state can be encoded in 2N narrowband signals that remain locally separable at every instant; the nonseparable correlations are recovered at readout by time-averaged demodulation over auxiliary carrier frequencies, the nonseparability channels. We prove that any two-qubit gate unravels into the time-averaged tensor product of two local time-varying operators, and that arbitrary circuits are emulated with a base-frequency count scaling linearly in the number of entangling two-qubit gates, independent of qubit number for a fixed gate count. The exponential cost of the 2^N-dimensional state reappears at readout and in the averaging time of circuits with many two-qubit gates, not in circuit execution, as quantified by an analytic error bound that doubles as a hardware design rule. A mixed-signal prototype emulates Bell state generation, controlled-NOT gates, phase kickback, and Bloch-sphere rotations at fidelities above 0.99, and numerical benchmarks against exact statevectors validate the scheme for up to six qubits. The architecture is directly implementable in acoustic, photonic, and mixed-signal platforms.
ABSTRACT Universal quantum computation that consists of producing arbitrary input states and executing universal unitary gates is an important goal for the future information field. However, realizing a device that performs practical universal quantum computation is tricky. This is because it requires a scalable qubit system with long coherence time and good controls, which is harsh for most current platforms. Here, we provide a novel scheme to emulate the universal quantum computer by designing a classical circuit network. In the circuit network, we encode information using correlated electrical signals. The information processing elements that correspond to the universal quantum gate set are designed and embedded into the circuit network, which gives the classical circuit networks processing functions similar to that of universal quantum computation. Taking the analogy of two‐qubit processor as an example, we experimentally verify that our proposal works well. Because classical circuit networks possess good scalability and stability, the present scheme is expected to avoid some problems faced by the quantum schemes. Thus, our findings are advantageous for information processing in the era of big data.
Quantum computers can outperform classical computers in certain tasks. However, there are still many challenges to the current quantum computers such as decoherence and fault tolerance, and other drawbacks such as portability and accessibility. In this study, we circumvent these issues by realizing an analog quantum emulation device (AQED) where each qubit state is represented by a unique analog signal. It is possible to do this because previously it was shown that Hermitian operations on a Hilbert space are not unique to quantum systems and can also be applied to a basis of complex signals that form a Hilbert space. Orthogonality of the complex signal basis can be maintained by separating the signals into the frequency domain or the spatial domain. We study both these approaches and present a comparison. We finally realize the entire device on a UMC 180nm processing node and demonstrate the computational advantage of an AQED by emulating Grover's search algorithm (GSA) and Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT). We also present the equivalent quantum volume achieved by this device.