An Open System Approach to Quantum Computers

Shi-Jie Wei, Gui‐Lu Long

Practical quantum systems are open systems due to interactions with their environment. Understanding the evolution of open systems dynamics is important for quantum noise processes , designing quantum error correcting codes, and performing simulations of open quantum systems. Here we proposed an efficient quantum algorithm for simulating the evolution of an open quantum system on a duality quantum computer. In contrast to unitary evolution in a usual quantum computer, the evolution operator in a duality quantum computer is a linear combination of unitary operators. In this duality algorithm, the time evolution of open quantum system is realized by using Kraus operators which is naturally realized in duality quantum computing. Compared to the Lloyd's quantum algorithm [Science.273, 1073(1996)] , the dependence on the dimension of the open quantum system in our algorithm is decreased. Moreover, our algorithm uses a truncated Taylor series of the evolution operators, exponentially improving the performance on the precision compared with existing quantum simulation algorithms with unitary evolution operations.

V. G. Plekhanov

Norihiro Kakuko, Shun Gokita, Naoyuki Masumoto +10 more

Since the late 2010s, quantum computers have become commercially available, and the number of services that users can run remotely via cloud servers is increasing. In Japan, several domestic superconducting quantum computing systems, including our own, began operation in 2023. However, the design of quantum computing systems, especially in the most critical areas near quantum computers, remains largely undisclosed, creating a significant barrier to entry into the quantum computing field. If this situation continues, progress toward standardization, which is essential for guiding quantum computer development, will stall, and it will be difficult to develop a practical quantum computing system that can perform calculations on a supercomputer scale. To address this issue, we propose Open Quantum Toolchain for OPerators and USers (OQTOPUS), a full-stack quantum computing system developed from research with real quantum computers. OQTOPUS is one of the world's largest open-source software projects, covering operational software from cloud-based execution environment construction to system operation. Furthermore, to perform quantum computing effectively and efficiently, it implements key features, such as transpilers, multi-programming, and error mitigation, in an area as close as possible to a quantum computer, an area that system vendors rarely disclose. Finally, this study presents experimental results of applying OQTOPUS to a real quantum computer. OQTOPUS is publicly available on GitHub and will notably lower the barrier to entry into the quantum computing field, contributing to the formation of a quantum computing developer community through open discussion.

Lindsay Bassman Oftelie, Michele Campisi

Abstract We report on the experimental measurement of the work statistics of a genuinely open quantum system using a quantum computer. Such measurement has remained elusive thus far due to the inherent difficulty in measuring the total energy change of a system-bath compound (which is the work) in the open quantum system scenario. We overcome this difficulty by applying the interferometric scheme, originally conceived for closed systems, to the open system case and implement it on a superconducting quantum computer, taking advantage of the relatively high levels of noise on current quantum hardware to realize an open quantum system. We demonstrate that the method can be used as a diagnostic tool to probe physical properties of the system-bath compound, such as its temperature and specific transition frequencies in its spectrum. Our experiments corroborate that the interferometric scheme is a promising tool to achieve the long-sought experimental validation of the Jarzynski equality for arbitrary open quantum systems.

Charles R. Giardina