Simulating large quantum systems is the ultimate goal of quantum computing. Variational quantum simulation (VQS) gives us a tool to achieve the goal in near-term devices by distributing the computation load to both classical and quantum computers. However, as the size of the quantum system becomes large, the execution of VQS becomes more and more challenging. One of the most severe challenges is the drastic increase in the number of measurements; for example, the number of measurements tends to increase by the fourth power of the number of qubits in a quantum simulation with a chemical Hamiltonian. This work aims to dramatically decrease the number of measurements in VQS by recently proposed shadow-based strategies such as classical shadow and derandomization. Even though previous literature shows that shadow-based strategies successfully optimize measurements in the variational quantum optimization (VQO), how to apply them to VQS was unclear due to the gap between VQO and VQS in measuring observables. In this paper, we bridge the gap by changing the way of measuring observables in VQS and propose an algorithm to optimize measurements in VQS by shadow-based strategies. Our theoretical analysis not only reveals the advantage of using our algorithm in VQS but theoretically supports using shadow-based strategies in VQO, whose advantage has only been given numerically. Additionally, our numerical experiment shows the validity of using our algorithm with a quantum chemical system.
Simulating large quantum systems is the ultimate goal of quantum computing. Variational quantum simulation (VQS) gives us a tool to achieve the goal in near-term devices by distributing the computation load to both classical and quantum computers. However, as the size of the quantum system becomes large, the execution of VQS becomes more and more challenging. One of the most severe challenges is the drastic increase in the number of measurements; for example, the number of measurements tends to increase by the fourth power of the number of qubits in a quantum simulation with a chemical Hamiltonian. This work aims to dramatically decrease the number of measurements in VQS by recently proposed shadow-based strategies such as classical shadow and derandomization. Even though previous literature shows that shadow-based strategies successfully optimize measurements in the variational quantum optimization (VQO), how to apply them to VQS was unclear due to the gap between VQO and VQS in measuring observables. In this paper, we bridge the gap by changing the way of measuring observables in VQS and propose an algorithm to optimize measurements in VQS by shadow-based strategies. Our theoretical analysis not only reveals the advantage of using our algorithm in VQS but theoretically supports using shadow-based strategies in VQO, whose advantage has only been given numerically. Additionally, our numerical experiment shows the validity of using our algorithm with a quantum chemical system.
A crucial subroutine for various quantum computing and communication algorithms is to efficiently extract different classical properties of quantum states. In a notable recent theoretical work by Huang, Kueng, and Preskill [Nat. Phys. 16, 1050 (2020)NPAHAX1745-247310.1038/s41567-020-0932-7], a thrifty scheme showed how to project the quantum state into classical shadows and simultaneously predict M different functions of a state with only O(log_{2}M) measurements, independent of the system size and saturating the information-theoretical limit. Here, we experimentally explore the feasibility of the scheme in the realistic scenario with a finite number of measurements and noisy operations. We prepare a four-qubit GHZ state and show how to estimate expectation values of multiple observables and Hamiltonians. We compare the measurement strategies with uniform, biased, and derandomized classical shadows to conventional ones that sequentially measure each state function exploiting either importance sampling or observable grouping. We next demonstrate the estimation of nonlinear functions using classical shadows and analyze the entanglement of the prepared quantum state. Our experiment verifies the efficacy of exploiting (derandomized) classical shadows and sheds light on efficient quantum computing with noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware.
Accurate estimation of observables in quantum systems is a central challenge in quantum information science, yet practical implementations are fundamentally constrained by the limited number of measurement shots. In this work we explore a variation of the classical shadows protocol in which the measurements are kept local while allowing the resulting classical shadows themselves to be correlated. By constructing locally optimal shadows, we obtain unbiased estimators that are competitive with state-of-the-art methods in terms of measurement overhead, while requiring only single-qubit measurements and allowing for the estimation of any observable in pure post-processing, reducing estimation errors by orders of magnitude over standard classical shadows. We validate our approach through numerical experiments on molecular Hamiltonians with up to 40 qubits consistently observing significant reductions in estimation errors, including for estimations of multiple chemically relevant observables simultaneously.
Quantum computing has become a potential way to solve complex problems that conventional computers can’t handle, especially those involving strongly correlated quantum systems. Classical simulation of these systems becomes exponentially more challenging as the number of interacting particles rises, resulting in significant computational and memory limitations. As a result, classical computational approaches are unable to handle many significant physical and chemical systems, including molecular structures, biological molecules, and quantum materials. Quantum computers operate using the same quantum mechanical principles as these systems. Consequently, they provide a natural framework for exploring large Hilbert spaces and capturing complex quantum correlations. This thesis begins by discussing the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics that are applicable to computation, such as qubits, superposition, and entanglement. The construction of quantum circuits is discussed after a discussion of basic quantum gates and their matrix representations. These ideas are the foundation of quantum algorithms and offer the essential framework for comprehending the modeling and manipulation of complicated quantum states using quantum hardware. Building on this foundation, the thesis focuses on Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs), which offer a feasible hybrid quantum-classical approach to optimizing near-term quantum devices. In VQAs, a parameterized quantum circuit is used to approximate the ground-state energy of the quantum system. A classical optimizer then iteratively updates the variational parameters to minimize a cost function, usually the expectation value of the system’s Hamiltonian. A thorough analysis of the function of gradient-based optimization is conducted, encompassing the parameter-shift rule that is employed to calculate precise energy derivatives. The discussion is expanded to include major applications such as the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm and developing approaches to quantum machine learning, emphasizing the importance of efficient and accurate gradient evaluation. A major challenge in the real-world application of VQAs is the high resource cost of gradient estimation using conventional direct measurement techniques. These techniques require repeated projective measurements and several executions of parameter-shifted quantum circuits, which lead to significant measurement overhead and deeper circuits. Quantum Non-Demolition Measurement (QNDM) is examined in this thesis as a potential framework for gradient evaluation to get around this limitation. Based on recent theoretical advances, QNDM introduces an ancillary detector qubit that coherently stores gradient information within its phase. Derivatives can then be estimated indirectly through detector measurements. This allows gradient information to be extracted without destroying the quantum state and with a greatly reduced number of measurements. The efficiency of QNDM is evaluated by extending the study to systems with bigger Hamiltonians and greater molecular complexity, as well as by comparing it in detail with direct measurement techniques utilizing benchmark molecular systems like LiH, Li2, and H2. Although both methods successfully converge to the ground-state energy, as shown by numerical results, QNDM consistently uses fewer quantum resources in terms of logical gate operations, measurement shots, and circuit executions. Additionally, as system size grows, QNDM’s resource advantage becomes more noticeable, suggesting that it has favorable scalability for bigger molecular systems. This thesis concludes that, while both direct measurement and quantum non-demolition measurement approaches allow for precise variational optimization, QNDM gives a significant decrease in quantum resources. These results establish QNDM as an effective and scalable method for developing quantum simulations of realistic physical and chemical systems and for executing variational quantum algorithms on near-term quantum hardware.
Shadow tomography has appeared as a powerful tool for estimating observables on quantum computers from a small number of samples. We show that shadow-tomography-inspired ideas can offer similarly improved sample scaling for estimating observables on tensor network states on classical computers after proper adaptation. We develop strategies for both spin (bosonic) and fermionic systems, tailored to the contraction requirements of tensor networks, and generate scaling improvements of factors of O(N) to O(N3) (where N is system size), depending on the specific task and system type. For the important and difficult task of evaluating the expectation value of long-range interacting Hamiltonians, we achieve the optimal O(1) overall scaling (up to logarithmic factors) for an arbitrarily fixed relative Monte Carlo error in both spin and fermionic systems. Additionally, we show that shadow estimators offer more stable gradients of observables in variational optimization tasks than standard Monte Carlo estimators. We demonstrate practical advantage by simulating systems with long-range interactions, including the 2D long-range Heisenberg model and an ab-initio quantum chemistry Hamiltonian.
Improving the performance of quantum algorithms is a fundamental task to achieve quantum advantage. In many cases, extracting information from quantum systems poses an important challenge for practical implementations of real-world quantum computers, given the high resource cost of performing state tomography. In this scenario, randomized measurements have emerged as a promising tool. In particular, the classical shadow protocol allows one to retrieve expected values of low-weight Pauli observables by performing only local measurements. In this paper, we present an implementation of the recently introduced feedback-based algorithm for quantum optimization using the Ket quantum programming platform to solve the MaxCut optimization problem. We employ classical shadows for the feedback routine of parameter estimation and compare this approach with the direct estimation of observables. Our results show that depending on the graph geometry of the MaxCut problem, the number of measurements required to estimate expected values of observables with classical shadows can be up to 16 times lower than with direct-observable estimation. Furthermore, by analyzing complete graphs, we numerically confirm logarithmic growth in the required number of measurements relative to the number of observables, reinforcing that classical shadows can be a useful tool for estimating low-locality Pauli observables in quantum algorithms.
Accurately estimating expectation values of quantum observables with as few measurements as possible is crucial to many quantum computing applications. We introduce a framework that covers many of existing measurement strategies and introduce heuristics that can be used to enhance randomized schemes, including those based on Pauli grouping with inverse probability weighting and variants of the classical shadow algorithm. We show how to maximize information gain from such schemes, while carefully optimizing the distribution of possible measurements, and show that simple grouping algorithms can get close to, and in some cases exceed, state-of-the-art accuracy for unbiased estimation of expectation values on a standard quantum chemistry benchmark. We show how these randomized methods may be compared to more recent measurement schemes, such as shadow grouping, derandomized shadow, and overlapped grouping measurement, we show how the same strategies can be used to augment these schemes, and we demonstrate that we can reduce measurement costs by up to a factor of two by allowing Clifford measurement circuits for otherwise Clifford-less methods.