Decoupling systems into independently evolving components has a long history of simplifying seemingly complex systems. They enable a better understanding of the underlying dynamics and causal structures while providing more efficient means to simulate such processes on a computer. Here we outline a variational decoupling algorithm for decoupling unitary quantum dynamics-allowing us to decompose a given n-qubit unitary gate into multiple independently evolving sub-components. We apply this approach to quantum circuit synthesis-the task of discovering quantum circuit implementations of target unitary dynamics. Our numerical studies illustrate significant benefits, showing that variational decoupling enables us to synthesize general two- and four-qubit gates to fidelity that conventional variational circuits cannot reach.
Decoupling systems into independently evolving components has a long history of simplifying seemingly complex systems. They enable a better understanding of the underlying dynamics and causal structures while providing more efficient means to simulate such processes on a computer. Here we outline a variational decoupling algorithm for decoupling unitary quantum dynamics-allowing us to decompose a given n-qubit unitary gate into multiple independently evolving sub-components. We apply this approach to quantum circuit synthesis-the task of discovering quantum circuit implementations of target unitary dynamics. Our numerical studies illustrate significant benefits, showing that variational decoupling enables us to synthesize general two- and four-qubit gates to fidelity that conventional variational circuits cannot reach.
Abstract Despite rapid progress in the field, it is still challenging to discover new ways to leverage quantum computation: all quantum algorithms must be designed by hand, and quantum mechanics is notoriously counterintuitive. In this paper, we study how artificial intelligence, in the form of program synthesis, may help overcome some of these difficulties, by showing how a computer can incrementally learn concepts relevant to quantum circuit synthesis with experience, and reuse them in unseen tasks. In particular, we focus on the decomposition of unitary matrices into quantum circuits, and show how, starting from a set of elementary gates, we can automatically discover a library of useful new composite gates and use them to decompose increasingly complicated unitaries.
Quantum circuit synthesis is one of the major areas of current research in the field of quantum computing.Analogous to its Boolean counterpart, the task involves constructing arbitrary quantum gates using only those available within a small set of universal gates that can be realized physically.However, unlike the latter, there are an infinite number of single qubit quantum gates, all of which constitute the special unitary group SU(2).Realizing any given single qubit gate using a given universal gate family is a complex task.Although gates can be synthesized to arbitrary degree of precision as long as the set of finite strings of the gate family is a dense subset of SU(2), it is desirable to accomplish the highest level of precision using only the minimum number of universal gates within the string approximation.Almost all algorithms that have been proposed for this purpose are based on the Solovay-Kitaev algorithm.The crux of the Solovay-Kitaev algorithm is the use of a procedure to decompose a given quantum gate into a pair of group commutators with the pair being synthesized separately.The Solovay-Kitaev algorithm involves group commutator decomposition in a recursive manner, with a direct approximation of a gate into a string of universal gates being performed only at the last level, i.e. in the leaf nodes of the search tree representing the execution of the Solovay-Kitaev algorithm.The main contribution of this research is in integrating conventional optimization procedures within the Solovay-Kitaev algorithm.Two specific directions of research have been studied.Firstly, optimization is incorporated within the group commutator decomposition, so that a more optimal pair of group commutators are obtained.As the degree of precision of the synthesized gate is explicitly minimized by means of this optimization procedure, the enhanced algorithm allows for more accurate quantum gates to be synthesized than what the original Solovay-Kitaev algorithm achieves.Simulation results with random gates indicate that the obtained accuracy is an order of magnitude better than before.Two versions of the new algorithm are examined, with the optimization in the first version being invoked only at the bottom level of Solovay-Kitaev algorithm and when carried out across all levels of the search tree in the next.Extensive simulations show that the second version yields better results despite equivalent computation times.Theoretical analysis of the proposed algorithm is able to provide a more formal, quantitative explanation underlying the experimentally observed phenomena.The other direction of investigation of this research involves formulating the group commutator decomposition in the form of bi-criteria optimization.This phase of research relaxed the equality constraint in the previous approach and with relaxation, a bi-criteria optimization is proposed.This optimization algorithm is new and has been devised primarily when the objective needs to be relaxed in different stages.This bi-criteria approach is able to provide comparably accurate synthesis as the previous approach.
Quantum circuit synthesis is the process in which an arbitrary unitary operation is decomposed into a sequence of gates from a universal set, typically one which a quantum computer can implement both efficiently and fault-tolerantly. As physical implementations of quantum computers improve, the need is growing for tools that can effectively synthesize components of the circuits and algorithms they will run. Existing algorithms for exact, multi-qubit circuit synthesis scale exponentially in the number of qubits and circuit depth, leaving synthesis intractable for circuits on more than a handful of qubits. Even modest improvements in circuit synthesis procedures may lead to significant advances, pushing forward the boundaries of not only the size of solvable circuit synthesis problems, but also in what can be realized physically as a result of having more efficient circuits. We present a method for quantum circuit synthesis using deterministic walks. Also termed pseudorandom walks, these are walks in which once a starting point is chosen, its path is completely determined. We apply our method to construct a parallel framework for circuit synthesis, and implement one such version performing optimal T -count synthesis over the Clifford+ T gate set. We use our software to present examples where parallelization offers a significant speedup on the runtime, as well as directly confirm that the 4-qubit 1-bit full adder has optimal T -count 7 and T -depth 3.
Despite rapid progress in the field, it is still challenging to discover new ways to take advantage of quantum computation: all quantum algorithms need to be designed by hand, and quantum mechanics is notoriously counterintuitive. In this paper, we study how artificial intelligence, in the form of program synthesis, may help to overcome some of these difficulties, by showing how a computer can incrementally learn concepts relevant for quantum circuit synthesis with experience, and reuse them in unseen tasks. In particular, we focus on the decomposition of unitary matrices into quantum circuits, and we show how, starting from a set of elementary gates, we can automatically discover a library of new useful composite gates and use them to decompose more and more complicated unitaries.
Theoretically understanding and experimentally characterizing and modifying the underlying Hamiltonian of a quantum system is of utmost importance in achieving high-fidelity quantum gates for quantum computing. In this work, we explore the use of dynamical decoupling (DD) in characterizing and suppressing undesired two-qubit couplings as well as the underlying single-qubit decoherence, both significant hurdles to achieving precise quantum control and realizing quantum computing on many hardware prototypes. Through discrete search of DD sequences, we identify sequences that protect against decoherence and selectively target unwanted two-qubit interactions of general form. On a transmon-qubit-based superconducting quantum device, we identify separate white and 1/f noise components underlying the single-qubit decoherence and a static ZZ coupling between pairs of qubits. A family of syncopated DD sequences is found and their efficiency is demonstrated in two-qubit benchmarking experiments. The syncopated decoupling technique significantly boosts performance in a realistic algorithmic quantum circuit.
Implementing quantum operations in the form of natural Hamiltonian dynamics is desirable, since they almost require no external control or feedback. In this work, we propose a NISQ-friendly quantum-classical hybrid approach to designing a time-independent Hamiltonian that generates a given multi-qubit unitary. In particular, we execute a Variational Quantum Algorithm, whose ansatz is carefully chosen to be a sequence of appropriately parametrized unitaries describing at most two-qubit nearest neighbour interactions, dictating the target unitary. Subsequently, we apply our approach to simulate multi-qubit target gates, with and without stochastic noise. We demonstrate that our strategy allows us to implement a Toffoli gate with sufficiently high fidelity, as compared to the other similar techniques. Our approach is an example of the usage of quantum computing for the design of quantum computers.