Hybrid Oscillator-Qubit Quantum Processors: Instruction Set Architectures, Abstract Machine Models, and Applications
Yuan Liu, Shraddha Singh, Kevin C. Smith, Eleanor Crane, John M. Martyn, Alec Eickbusch, Alexander Schuckert, Richard D. Li, Jasmine Sinanan-Singh, Micheline B. Soley, Takahiro Tsunoda, Isaac L. Chuang, Nathan Wiebe, S. M. Girvin
This tutorial offers a pedagogical guide to hybrid quantum processors that integrate discrete-variable (DV) qubits and continuous-variable (CV) oscillators. Aimed at computer scientists, engineers, and physicists, it provides an overview of the experimental, algorithmic, and architectural aspects of this novel and rapidly developing hardware model. Experimental realizations of this model include superconducting, trapped-ion, and neutral-atom platforms. By combining DV and CV components, hybrid oscillator-qubit processors enable a powerful new paradigm that offers complementary strengths for quantum control, error correction, computation, and simulation. Working toward the goal of a full-stack system connecting applications to CV-DV hardware, we define and formulate abstract machine models and instruction set architectures. These essential abstractions enable codesign of hardware and software, and resource estimation for exploring the potential of current and future hardware for computational and simulation tasks. Using these abstractions, we present both new and existing examples that illustrate the benefits of hybrid CV-DV processors relative to traditional DV-only hardware in computation as well as quantum simulation of physical models. Examples include algorithms for transferring states between DV and CV systems, performing the quantum Fourier transform, and simulation of lattice gauge theories. Relative to qubit-only hardware, the bosonic degrees of freedom natively available in hybrid architectures can substantially reduce the circuit complexity of simulations for physical models containing bosons. A key technique is the extension of quantum signal processing ideas to CV-DV systems. This work is intended to serve as a timely and comprehensive guide to this relatively unexplored yet promising approach to quantum computation and to provide a road map to guide future development.
This tutorial offers a pedagogical guide to hybrid quantum processors that integrate discrete-variable (DV) qubits and continuous-variable (CV) oscillators. Aimed at computer scientists, engineers, and physicists, it provides an overview of the experimental, algorithmic, and architectural aspects of this novel and rapidly developing hardware model. Experimental realizations of this model include superconducting, trapped-ion, and neutral-atom platforms. By combining DV and CV components, hybrid oscillator-qubit processors enable a powerful new paradigm that offers complementary strengths for quantum control, error correction, computation, and simulation. Working toward the goal of a full-stack system connecting applications to CV-DV hardware, we define and formulate abstract machine models and instruction set architectures. These essential abstractions enable codesign of hardware and software, and resource estimation for exploring the potential of current and future hardware for computational and simulation tasks. Using these abstractions, we present both new and existing examples that illustrate the benefits of hybrid CV-DV processors relative to traditional DV-only hardware in computation as well as quantum simulation of physical models. Examples include algorithms for transferring states between DV and CV systems, performing the quantum Fourier transform, and simulation of lattice gauge theories. Relative to qubit-only hardware, the bosonic degrees of freedom natively available in hybrid architectures can substantially reduce the circuit complexity of simulations for physical models containing bosons. A key technique is the extension of quantum signal processing ideas to CV-DV systems. This work is intended to serve as a timely and comprehensive guide to this relatively unexplored yet promising approach to quantum computation and to provide a road map to guide future development.
Hybrid continuous-variable (CV)-discrete-variable (DV) quantum systems present a promising direction for quantum computing by combining the high dimensional encoding capabilities of qumodes with the control offered by DV qubits on the coupled qumodes. There have been exciting recent progresses on hybrid CV-DV quantum computing, including variational algorithms, error correction, compiler-level optimizations for Hamiltonian simulation, etc. However, there is a lack of a standardized CV-DV benchmark suite for assessing various emerging hardware platforms and evaluating software optimizations on hybrid CV-DV circuits. In this work, we introduce a simulation and benchmarking framework for hybrid CV-DV circuits, implemented using Bosonic Qiskit-a tool specifically designed to model CV-DV systems, along with QuTip for functional correctness verification. We construct and characterize representative CV-DV benchmarks, including cat state generation, GKP state generation, CV-DV state transfers, hybrid quantum Fourier transform, variational quantum algorithms, Hamiltonian simulation, and Shor's algorithm. To assess circuit complexity and scalability, we define a feature map organized into two categories: general features (e.g., qubit/qumode count, gate counts) and CV-DV-specific features (e.g., Wigner negativity, energy, truncation cost). These metrics enable evaluation of both classical simulability and hardware resource requirements. Our results, including one benchmark on real hardware, demonstrate that hybrid CV-DV architectures are not only viable but well-suited for a range of computational tasks, from optimization to Hamiltonian simulation. This framework lays the groundwork for systematic evaluation and future development of hybrid quantum systems.
Signal processing stands as a pillar of classical computation and modern information technology, applicable to both analog and digital signals. Recently, advancements in quantum information science have suggested that quantum signal processing (QSP) can enable more powerful signal processing capabilities. However, the developments in QSP have primarily leverageddigitalquantum resources, such as discrete-variable (DV) systems like qubits, rather thananalogquantum resources, such as continuous-variable (CV) systems like quantum oscillators. Consequently, there remains a gap in understanding how signal processing can be performed on hybrid CV-DV quantum computers. Here we address this gap by developing a new paradigm of mixed analog-digital QSP. We demonstrate the utility of this paradigm by showcasing how it naturally enables analog-digital conversion of quantum signals— specifically, the transfer of states between DV and CV quantum systems. We then show that such quantum analog-digital conversion enables new implementations of quantum algorithms on CV-DV hardware. This is exemplified by realizing the quantum Fourier transform of a state encoded on qubits via the free-evolution of a quantum oscillator, albeit with a runtime exponential in the number of qubits due to information theoretic arguments. Collectively, this work marks a significant step forward in hybrid CV-DV quantum computation, providing a foundation for scalable analog-digital signal processing on quantum processors.
Hybridizing different degrees of freedom or physical platforms potentially offers various advantages in building scalable quantum architectures. Here, we introduce a fault-tolerant hybrid quantum computation by building on the advantages of both discrete-variable (DV) and continuous-variable (CV) systems. In particular, we define a CV-DV hybrid qubit with a bosonic cat code and a single photon, which is implementable in current photonic platforms. Due to the cat code encoded in the CV part, the predominant loss errors are readily correctable without multiqubit encoding, while the logical basis is inherently orthogonal due to the DV part. We design fault-tolerant architectures by concatenating hybrid qubits and an outer DV quantum error-correction code such as a topological code, exploring their potential merit in developing scalable quantum computation. We demonstrate by numerical simulations that our scheme is at least an order of magnitude more resource efficient compared to all previous proposals in photonic platforms, allowing us to achieve a record-high loss threshold among existing CV and hybrid approaches. We discuss the realization of our approach not only in all-photonic platforms but also in other hybrid platforms including superconducting and trapped-ion systems, which allows us to find various efficient routes toward fault-tolerant quantum computing. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We introduce a framework for simulating hybrid oscillator-qubit quantum processors on qubit-only systems through position encoding. By encoding continuous-variable position and momentum wave functions into qubit amplitudes, our method efficiently simulates all Gaussian and conditional Gaussian operations -- encompassing the phase-space instruction set (beam splitter, single-qubit rotation, conditional displacement) and extending to squeezing, conditional squeezing, conditional rotation, and conditional beam splitter -- using O(log2(Γ+log(1/ε))) qubit gates per hybrid gate, where Γ is the Fock-level bound and ε is the target precision. This polylogarithmic per-gate complexity represents an exponential improvement over Fock basis encoding approaches, which require exponential quantum or classical resources in the number of qubits per mode. We provide rigorous numerical characterization of quantum Fourier transform errors for Fock-bounded states, enabling precise resource estimation for practical implementations. This work establishes that hybrid oscillator-qubit algorithms can be implemented on qubit processors with polynomial overhead, providing new insights into the computational power trade-offs between discrete-variable and hybrid continuous-discrete-variable quantum computing.
The practical benefits of hybrid quantum information processing hardware that contains continuous-variable objects (bosonic modes such as mechanical or electromagnetic oscillators) in addition to traditional (discrete-variable) qubits have recently been demonstrated by experiments with bosonic codes that reach the break-even point for quantum error correction [1-5] and by efficient Gaussian boson sampling simulation of the Franck-Condon spectra of triatomic molecules [6] that is well beyond the capabilities of current qubit-only hardware. The goal of this Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) project is to develop an instruction set architecture (ISA) for hybrid qubit/bosonic mode systems that contains an inventory of the fundamental operations and measurements that are possible in such hardware. The corresponding abstract machine model (AMM) would also contain a description of the appropriate error models associated with the gates, measurements and time evolution of the hardware. This information has been implemented as an extension of Qiskit. Qiskit is an open-source software development toolkit (SDK) for simulating the quantum state of a quantum circuit on a system with Python 3.7+ and for running the same circuits on prototype hardware within the IBM Quantum Lab. We introduce the Bosonic Qiskit software to enable the simulation of hybrid qubit/bosonic systems using the existing Qiskit software development kit [7]. This implementation can be used for simulating new hybrid systems, verifying proposed physical systems, and modeling systems larger than can currently be constructed. We also cover tutorials and example use cases included within the software to study Jaynes-Cummings models, bosonic Hubbard models, plotting Wigner functions and animations, and calculating maximum likelihood estimations using Wigner functions.
This thesis develops a theoretical framework for hybrid continuous-variable (CV) and discrete-variable (DV) quantum systems, with emphasis on quantum control, state preparation, and error correction. A central contribution is non-abelian quantum signal processing (NA-QSP), a generalization of quantum signal processing to settings where control parameters are non-commuting operators. Within this framework, we introduce the Gaussian-Controlled-Rotation (GCR) protocol, which enables high-fidelity control of CV states using DV ancillae. This approach allows for deterministic preparation of squeezed, cat, and Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) states without numerical optimization. Two previously unpublished contributions are included: (i) Chapter 2.3 introduces the Gaussian hierarchy, a classification of CV operations analogous to the Clifford hierarchy, offering a new lens for understanding CV gate sets; (ii) Chapter 5 presents an analytical framework for correcting photon loss in finite-energy GKP codes, introducing the notion of probabilistic error correction, providing insight into recent GKP experiments surpassing break-even thresholds. Overall, this work lays the groundwork for scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computation in hybrid CV-DV architectures, with applications to logical gate synthesis, readout, and hybrid algorithm design using ancilla oscillators.