To a large extent, the power of a quantum computer comes from the possibility of operating on a number of quantum memories simultaneously. For example, if there are n linearly independent quantum states in each of N quantum memories, then the number of linearly independent quantum states is n^N when they are taken together. This exponential increase is the basis of the present interest in quantum computing. In the context of quantum mechanics as described by the Schrodinger equation (which is a partial differential equation), the most explicit model of the quantum memory is one with two linearly independent quantum states described in terms of the Fermi pseudo-potential at one point. In this model, operations on the quantum memory are accomplished through scattering with both symmetrical and anti-symmetrical incident waves. As a first step toward operating on more than one quantum memory, this model is generalized in two directions. (1) With the Fermi pseudo-potential at one point retained, three linearly independent quantum states are used for the quantum memory. This model of the quantum memory requires three external connections. (2) With a more general potential, operations on the quantum memory with two states are accomplished through scattering with either symmetrical or anti-symmetrical incident waves. This second generalization is important because it is not practical to keep the number of external connections equal to the number of linearly independent quantum states.
To a large extent, the power of a quantum computer comes from the possibility of operating on a number of quantum memories simultaneously. For example, if there are n linearly independent quantum states in each of N quantum memories, then the number of linearly independent quantum states is n^N when they are taken together. This exponential increase is the basis of the present interest in quantum computing. In the context of quantum mechanics as described by the Schrodinger equation (which is a partial differential equation), the most explicit model of the quantum memory is one with two linearly independent quantum states described in terms of the Fermi pseudo-potential at one point. In this model, operations on the quantum memory are accomplished through scattering with both symmetrical and anti-symmetrical incident waves. As a first step toward operating on more than one quantum memory, this model is generalized in two directions. (1) With the Fermi pseudo-potential at one point retained, three linearly independent quantum states are used for the quantum memory. This model of the quantum memory requires three external connections. (2) With a more general potential, operations on the quantum memory with two states are accomplished through scattering with either symmetrical or anti-symmetrical incident waves. This second generalization is important because it is not practical to keep the number of external connections equal to the number of linearly independent quantum states.
An essential component of any quantum computer is the quantum memory, the content of which is a pure quantum state. A program to study the quantum memory is initiated here, where the spatial variables are of central importance. The presence of the spatial variables makes it possible to apply the powerful and well-developed theory of scattering: The fundamental operations of writing on, reading and resetting the quantum memory are all performed through scattering from the memory. The requirement that the quantum memory must remain in a pure state after scattering implies that the scattering is of a special type, and only certain incident waves are admissible. Models based on the coupled-channel Schrodinger equation for potential scattering are formulated, where there is indeed the required large collection of admissible incident waves. On the basis of these models, certain types of decoherence are unavoidable. Such decoherence and the necessity of using the relativistic Schrodinger equation are discussed. One of the implications of quantum memory is the possible lack of security for the quantum key distribution in quantum cryptography.
As we have seen, even a single qubit is a surprisingly interesting object. However, the real power of quantum information processing begins with systems of two or more qubits. Before studying these in detail we need to expand our notation a little. Consider a system of two qubits, labeled a and b , each of which has two basis states, |0⧽ and |1⧽. The whole system then has four basis states, which can be written as |0 a 0 b ⧽, |0 a 1 b ⧽, |1 a 0 b ⧽ and |1 a 1 b ⧽, and can be found in any general superposition of these states, so that it occupies a four-dimensional Hilbert space. In the same way, a system of three qubits inhabits an eight-dimensional Hilbert space, and so on. This exponential increase in the size of the Hilbert space with a linear increase in the number of qubits underlies the power of quantum computers. Direct products The size of the Hilbert spaces involved can also be a huge problem, however, making it difficult to describe states of systems with many qubits. A partial solution is to note that some states can be described in a simpler way, using the concept of direct products . These states, in which the individual qubits can in principle be discussed separately, make up a tiny minority of the states accessible to a multi-qubit system, but include many important states, most notably the basis states. States of this kind are said to be separable , and states which are not separable are said to be entangled . Entangled states are much more interesting than separable ones, but it is wise to begin with the simpler case.
Quantum computing involves performing computations using devices that are governed by the rules of quantum mechanics170 rather than classical Newtonian physics. The effect of such a difference runs deep. First, and definitely unconventional, a quantum device’s state need not be a single value at a time, but can simultaneously hold an infinite number of possible state values. Next, much like the magnets of the Ising computing model (Chapter E11), if initialized properly, two or more quantum devices may exhibit quantum entanglement where a quantum state of any one device cannot be described independently of the others in the group. Manipulating one device results in changes to the state of the others. Together this means that a “quantum memory” can simultaneously contain an enormous number of different possible values and that applying a single operation to the group is like applying the operation to the ensemble of all states maintained in the system, simultaneously. If this becomes practical then the crystal ball analogy for NP problems (Section 7.5.4) becomes practical in polynomial time, and thus we would have achieved what is called today quantum supremacy.
The theory of interaction at one point is developed for the one-dimensional Schrödinger equation. In analog with the three-dimensional case, the resulting interaction is referred to as the Fermi pseudo-potential. The dominant feature of this one-dimensional problem comes from the fact that the real line becomes disconnected when one point is removed. The general interaction at one point is found to be the sum of three terms, the well-known delta-function potential and two Fermi pseudo-potentials, one odd under space reflection and the other even. The odd one gives the proper interpretation for the δ′(x) potential, while the even one is unexpected and more interesting. Among the many applications of these Fermi pseudo-potentials, the simplest one is described. It consists of a superposition of the delta-function potential and the even pseudo-potential applied to two-channel scattering. This simplest application leads to a model of the quantum memory, an essential component of any quantum computer.
Classical numerical techniques for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) become computationally expensive as the dimension of the discretized differential operator increases. For PDEs giving rise to Sturm--Liouville problems, tensor network (TN) methods can be highly productive: an operator of dimension N×N can be represented as a matrix product operator (MPO) using only n=log2(N) qubits, enabling computation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors via imaginary time evolution (ITE). However, this remains computationally challenging. First, most methods for generating MPOs of large operators without explicit tensor-product structure require prohibitively large memory. Second, the number of Trotterization steps for convergence in conventional ITE increases rapidly with n. We present techniques to mitigate both challenges for certain sparse, structured differential operators. To address the first, we construct the MPO by expanding the operator in the Pauli-string basis, enabled by an analytical expression for the Pauli basis coefficients that reduces the memory requirement from O(2n+1) to O(2n). To address the second, we propose a multistage state-refinement heuristic that accelerates ITE convergence, reducing convergence time by up to two orders of magnitude. Using this TN framework, we compute the first 32 eigenstates of a Laplacian of dimension exceeding 106 with fidelity above 0.95 using a 20-qubit MPO. We further validate the method on the 2D anharmonic oscillator and investigate disordered systems, where increasing random potential strength degrades accuracy and limits the approach.
Quantum is an emerging technology with constant research efforts in its various fields. One of the distinct advantage with the quantum technology is the use of qubits which gives inherent parallelism and security. However, at the same time qubits poses unique challenges due to their quantum properties. Quantum computation can further be enhanced with the use of quantum memory. In this paper we propose a technique to access stored quantum state multiple times or by multiple users at same instance.