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Unitary Decomposition: Implemented in the OpenQL programming language for quantum computation

Anneriet Krol

Published Jan 1, 2019• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Unitary Decomposition is an algorithm for translating a unitary matrix into many small unitary matrices, which correspond to a circuit that can be executed on a quantum computer. It is implemented in the quantum programming framework of the QCA-group at TU Delft: OpenQL, a library for Python and C++. Unitary Decomposition is a necessary part in Quantum Associative Memory, an algorithm used in Quantum Genome Sequencing. The implementation is faster than other known implementations, and generates $3*2^{n-1}*(2^n-1)$ rotation gates for an n-qubit input gate. This is not the least-known nor the theoretical minimum amount, and there are some optimizations that can still be done to make it closer to these numbers.

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Unitary Decomposition is an algorithm for translating a unitary matrix into many small unitary matrices, which correspond to a circuit that can be executed on a quantum computer. It is implemented in the quantum programming framework of the QCA-group at TU Delft: OpenQL, a library for Python and C++. Unitary Decomposition is a necessary part in Quantum Associative Memory, an algorithm used in Quantum Genome Sequencing. The implementation is faster than other known implementations, and generates 3∗2n−1∗(2n−1)3*2^{n-1}*(2^n-1)3∗2n−1∗(2n−1) rotation gates for an n-qubit input gate. This is not the least-known nor the theoretical minimum amount, and there are some optimizations that can still be done to make it closer to these numbers.
Unitary decomposition is a widely used method to map quantum algorithms to an arbitrary set of quantum gates. Efficient implementation of this decomposition allows for the translation of bigger unitary gates into elementary quantum operations, which is key to executing these algorithms on existing quantum computers. The decomposition can be used as an aggressive optimization method for the whole circuit, as well as to test part of an algorithm on a quantum accelerator. For the selection and implementation of the decomposition algorithm, perfect qubits are assumed. We base our decomposition technique on Quantum Shannon Decomposition, which generates O(344n) controlled-not gates for an n-qubit input gate. In addition, we implement optimizations to take advantage of the potential underlying structure in the input or intermediate matrices, as well as to minimize the execution time of the decomposition. Comparing our implementation to Qubiter and the UniversalQCompiler (UQC), we show that our implementation generates circuits that are much shorter than those of Qubiter and not much longer than the UQC. At the same time, it is also up to 10 times as fast as Qubiter and about 500 times as fast as the UQC.
With the potential of quantum algorithms to solve intractable classical problems, quantum computing is rapidly evolving, and more algorithms are being developed and optimized. Expressing these quantum algorithms using a high-level language and making them executable on a quantum processor while abstracting away hardware details is a challenging task. First, a quantum programming language should provide an intuitive programming interface to describe those algorithms. Then a compiler has to transform the program into a quantum circuit, optimize it, and map it to the target quantum processor respecting the hardware constraints such as the supported quantum operations, the qubit connectivity, and the control electronics limitations. In this article, we propose a quantum programming framework named OpenQL, which includes a high-level quantum programming language and its associated quantum compiler. We present the programming interface of OpenQL, we describe the different layers of the compiler and how we can provide portability over different qubit technologies. Our experiments show that OpenQL allows the execution of the same high-level algorithm on two different qubit technologies, namely superconducting qubits and Si-Spin qubits. Besides the executable code, OpenQL also produces an intermediate quantum assembly code, which is technology independent and can be simulated using the QX simulator.
To process a problem with a Quantum Processing Unit (QPU), it must be transformed into a sequence of quantum operators, or gates. These operators are either packed into a query (i.e. quantum algorithm primitive) that encodes the problem, or used to construct the cost function for Variationnal Quantum Algorithm (VQA). Typical queries are the problem Hamiltonian Simulation (HS) and the problem Block-Encoding (BEing). To construct the circuits associated with the quantum description, the problem must be mapped as a Linear Combination of Hamiltonian (LCH) or a Linear Combination of nitaries (LCU) matrices. All the summed Hamiltonian matrices or unitary matrices must have a known decomposition in basic gates. The complexity of this query should be incorporated into the quantum algorithm's query complexity, thereby limiting the processing possibilities of QPU for many problems. In this work, we propose Hamiltonian matrices used to map the problem of interest, and that behave like a single qubit when expressed in the appropriate basis. It leads to a framework, the Special Tripotent Hamiltonian (STH) Framework, able to implement most of the typical problems considered for quantum computing. These methods address many problems implemented on QPUs, ranging from second-quantization chemistry operators to graphs associated with Partial Differential Equations (PDE), sparse matrices, and higher-order optimization problems. This work underlines interesting properties associated with the STH basic gate decomposition. These include the ability to switch between LCH and LCU, map non-Hermitian problems, and construct the quantum circuit queries required for quantum computing. We also provide a list of STH that are used for the matrix decomposition of many structured matrices. These structured matrices are associated with graph adjacency matrices that can be combined to implement structured matrices.
Constructing appropriate unitary matrix operators for new quantum algorithms and finding the minimum cost gate sequences for the implementation of these unitary operators is of fundamental importance in the field of quantum information and quantum computation. Evolution of quantum circuits faces two major challenges: complex and huge search space and the high costs of simulating quantum circuits on classical computers. Here, we use the group leaders optimization algorithm to decompose a given unitary matrix into a proper-minimum cost quantum gate sequence. We test the method on the known decompositions of Toffoli gate, the amplification step of the Grover search algorithm, the quantum Fourier transform, and the sender part of the quantum teleportation. Using this procedure, we present the circuit designs for the simulation of the unitary propagators of the Hamiltonians for the hydrogen and the water molecules. The approach is general and can be applied to generate the sequence of quantum gates for larger molecular systems.
Currently, computing paradigm is ruled by the laws of classical physics and will continue till the dimensions of transistors reaches the size of atomic particles. Quantum computing (QC) is a new technology that employs laws of quantum mechanics to address issues such as irreversibility and power dissipation that are outside the scope of conventional computing models. QC offers a powerful stage for solving complex and compound problems like searching and number factoring. A critical task in utilizing quantum physics in many application fields is circuit design using reversible quantum gates. Unitary decomposition is a popular scheme for mapping quantum algorithms to any set of elementary quantum operations. Using decomposition techniques enables transformation of unitary matrices into fundamental quantum gates, which is critical for running algorithms on prevailing quantum computers. Any 3x3 reversible quantum gate can be decomposed into single-qubit rotation gates and two qubit CNOT gates. This paper is the first to present quantum implementations of FRSG1 and JTF1 gates into CNOT gates and single qubit U3 gates with different optimization levels on a platform provided by IBM. These gates are important in a variety of practical applications like Stochastic computing and parity generation circuits. In FRSG1 the implementation count of single qubit gates decreases by 56% and the count of two qubit gates by 15% after optimization, whereas in JTF1 gate the single qubit gate count reduces by 71% and the number of two qubit gates reduces by 41%.
An algorithm is proposed to convert arbitrary unitary matrix to a sequence of XXX gates and fully controlled Ry,RzR_y, R_zRy​,Rz​ and R1R_1R1​ gates. This algorithm is used to generate Q# implementation for arbitrary unitary matrix. Some optimizations are considered and complexity of the result is analyzed.