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Randomness for quantum information processing

Rawad Mezher

Published Nov 15, 2019• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This thesis is focused on the generation and understanding of particular kinds of quantum randomness. Randomness is useful for many tasks in physics and information processing, from randomized benchmarking , to black hole physics , as well demonstrating a so-called quantum speedup , and many other applications. On the one hand we explore how to generate a particular form of random evolution known as a t-design. On the other we show how this can also give instances for quantum speedup - where classical computers cannot simulate the randomness efficiently. We also show that this is still possible in noisy realistic settings. More specifically, this thesis is centered around three main topics. The first of these being the generation of epsilon-approximate unitary t-designs. In this direction, we first show that non-adaptive, fixed measurements on a graph state composed of poly(n,t,log(1/epsilon)) qubits, and with a regular structure (that of a brickwork state) effectively give rise to a random unitary ensemble which is a epsilon-approximate t-design. This work is presented in Chapter 3. Before this work, it was known that non-adaptive fixed XY measurements on a graph state give rise to unitary t-designs , however the graph states used there were of complicated structure and were therefore not natural candidates for measurement based quantum computing (MBQC), and the circuits to make them were complicated. The novelty in our work is showing that t-designs can be generated by fixed, non-adaptive measurements on graph states whose underlying graphs are regular 2D lattices. These graph states are universal resources for MBQC. Therefore, our result allows the natural integration of unitary t-designs, which provide a notion of quantum pseudorandomness which is very useful in quantum algorithms, into quantum algorithms running in MBQC. Moreover, in the circuit picture this construction for t-designs may be viewed as a constant depth quantum circuit, albeit with a polynomial number of ancillas. We then provide new constructions of epsilon-approximate unitary t-designs both in the circuit model and in MBQC which are based on a relaxation of technical requirements in previous constructions. These constructions are found in Chapters 4 and 5.

DOI
10.70675/20d8dd52zead4z4afcz8e10z9e2c54fd7654

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This thesis is focused on the generation and understanding of particular kinds of quantum randomness. Randomness is useful for many tasks in physics and information processing, from randomized benchmarking , to black hole physics , as well demonstrating a so-called quantum speedup , and many other applications. On the one hand we explore how to generate a particular form of random evolution known as a t-design. On the other we show how this can also give instances for quantum speedup - where classical computers cannot simulate the randomness efficiently. We also show that this is still possible in noisy realistic settings. More specifically, this thesis is centered around three main topics. The first of these being the generation of epsilon-approximate unitary t-designs. In this direction, we first show that non-adaptive, fixed measurements on a graph state composed of poly(n,t,log(1/epsilon)) qubits, and with a regular structure (that of a brickwork state) effectively give rise to a random unitary ensemble which is a epsilon-approximate t-design. This work is presented in Chapter 3. Before this work, it was known that non-adaptive fixed XY measurements on a graph state give rise to unitary t-designs , however the graph states used there were of complicated structure and were therefore not natural candidates for measurement based quantum computing (MBQC), and the circuits to make them were complicated. The novelty in our work is showing that t-designs can be generated by fixed, non-adaptive measurements on graph states whose underlying graphs are regular 2D lattices. These graph states are universal resources for MBQC. Therefore, our result allows the natural integration of unitary t-designs, which provide a notion of quantum pseudorandomness which is very useful in quantum algorithms, into quantum algorithms running in MBQC. Moreover, in the circuit picture this construction for t-designs may be viewed as a constant depth quantum circuit, albeit with a polynomial number of ancillas. We then provide new constructions of epsilon-approximate unitary t-designs both in the circuit model and in MBQC which are based on a relaxation of technical requirements in previous constructions. These constructions are found in Chapters 4 and 5.
Entangled multipartite states are resources for universal quantum computation, but they can also give rise to ensembles of unitary transformations, a topic usually studied in the context of random quantum circuits. Using several graph state techniques, we show that these resources can "derandomize" circuit results by sampling the same kinds of ensembles quantum mechanically, analogously to a quantum random number generator. Furthermore, we find simple examples that give rise to new ensembles whose statistical moments exactly match those of the uniformly random distribution over all unitaries up to order t, while foregoing adaptive feedforward entirely. Such ensembles-known as t designs-often cannot be distinguished from the "truly" random ensemble, and so they find use in many applications that require this implied notion of pseudorandomness.
Measurement based (MB) quantum computation allows for universal quantum computing by measuring individual qubits prepared in entangled multipartite states, known as graph states. Unless corrected for, the randomness of the measurements leads to the generation of ensembles of random unitaries, where each random unitary is identified with a string of possible measurement results. We show that repeating an MB scheme an efficient number of times, on a simple graph state, with measurements at fixed angles and no feedforward corrections, produces a random unitary ensemble that is an $\ensuremath{\varepsilon}$-approximate ttt design on nnn qubits. Unlike previous constructions, the graph is regular and is also a universal resource for measurement based quantum computing, closely related to the brickwork state.
Epsilon-nets and approximate unitaryttt-designs are natural notions that capture properties of unitary operations relevant for numerous applications in quantum information and quantum computing. In this work we study quantitative connections between these two notions. Specifically, we prove that, forddddimensional Hilbert space, unitaries constituting$\delta −approximate-approximate−approximatet−expandersform-expanders form−expandersform\epsilon −netsfor-nets for−netsfort\simeq \frac {d^{5/2}}{ \epsilon }andandand\delta \simeq \left ({\frac { \epsilon ^{3/2}}{d}}\right)^{d^{2}}.Wealsoshowthatforarbitrary. We also show that for arbitrary.Wealsoshowthatforarbitraryt,,,\epsilon −netscanbeusedtoconstruct-nets can be used to construct−netscanbeusedtoconstruct\delta −approximateunitary-approximate unitary−approximateunitaryt−designsfor-designs for−designsfor\delta \simeq \epsilon t,wherethenotionofapproximationisbasedonthediamondnorm.Finally,weprovethatthedegreeofanexactunitary, where the notion of approximation is based on the diamond norm. Finally, we prove that the degree of an exact unitary,wherethenotionofapproximationisbasedonthediamondnorm.Finally,weprovethatthedegreeofanexactunitarytdesignnecessarytoobtainandesign necessary to obtain andesignnecessarytoobtainan\epsilon −netmustgrowatleastasfastas-net must grow at least as fast as−netmustgrowatleastasfastas\frac {1}{ \epsilon }(forfixeddimension)andnotslowerthan(for fixed dimension) and not slower than(forfixeddimension)andnotslowerthand^{2}(forfixed(for fixed(forfixed\epsilon ).Thisshowsnearoptimalityofourresultconnecting). This shows near optimality of our result connecting).Thisshowsnearoptimalityofourresultconnectingt−designsand-designs and−designsand\epsilon $-nets. We apply our findings in the context of quantum computing. First, we show that that approximate t-designs can be generated by shallow random circuits formed from a set of universal two-qudit gates in the parallel and sequential local architectures considered in (Brandão et al., 2016). Importantly, our gate sets need not to be symmetric (i.e., contains gates together with their inverses) or consist of gates with algebraic entries. Second, we consider compilation of quantum gates and prove a non-constructive Solovay-Kitaev theorem for general universal gate sets. Our main technical contribution is a new construction of efficient polynomial approximations to the Dirac delta in the space of quantum channels, which can be of independent interest.
Can simple processes appear highly complex? Gowers (Comb. Prob. Comp. '96) conjectured that repeatedly composing local random reversible operations can yield global permutations that are indistinguishable from random. In this work, we study the unitary quantum analog of this question, in an attempt to make new progress on this longstanding conjecture. Our first result shows that statistical moment matching in the form of unitary designs does not generically lead to pseudorandomness---even for the simplest quantum processes: for every fixed ttt, we give an efficiently samplable family {νn}n\{ν_n\}_n{νn​}n​ of distributions on one- and two-qubit gates such that, after T=Ot(n2log⁡2n)T=O_t(n^2\log^2 n)T=Ot​(n2log2n) independent steps, the resulting nnn-qubit ensemble is an approximate unitary ttt-design with negligible error exp⁡(−Ω(log⁡2n))\exp(-Ω(\log^2 n))exp(−Ω(log2n)), yet an efficient quantum algorithm distinguishes it from random using only Ot(log⁡2n)O_t(\log^2 n)Ot​(log2n) queries. This refutes the unitary analog of the Hoory--Magen--Myers--Rackoff conjecture (ICALP '04) for permutations. Our second result is a stronger separation between unitary designs and pseudorandom unitaries at polynomially bounded moments; our counterexample, however, requires highly structured ensembles, in contrast with the simple local walks from before. This suggests caution when using unitary designs to model information scrambling in black-hole physics, as even maximally scrambled systems can exhibit structure which is accessible to efficient experiments. Motivated by these findings, we then propose new conjectures for how pseudorandomness can plausibly emerge within simple quantum processes, such as random quantum circuits.
The applications of random quantum circuits range from quantum computing and quantum many-body systems to the physics of black holes. Many of these applications are related to the generation of quantum pseudorandomness: Random quantum circuits are known to approximate unitary t -designs. Unitary t -designs are probability distributions that mimic Haar randomness up to t th moments. In a seminal paper, Brandão, Harrow and Horodecki prove that random quantum circuits on qubits in a brickwork architecture of depth O(nt10.5) are approximate unitary t -designs. In this work, we revisit this argument, which lower bounds the spectral gap of moment operators for local random quantum circuits by Ω(n−1t−9.5) . We improve this lower bound to Ω(n−1t−4−o(1)) , where the o(1) term goes to 0 as t→∞ . A direct consequence of this scaling is that random quantum circuits generate approximate unitary t -designs in depth O(nt5+o(1)) . Our techniques involve Gao's quantum union bound and the unreasonable effectiveness of the Clifford group. As an auxiliary result, we prove fast convergence to the Haar measure for random Clifford unitaries interleaved with Haar random single qubit unitaries.
Randomness is both a useful way to model natural systems and a useful tool for engineered systems, e.g., in computation, communication, and control. Fully random transformations require exponential time for either classical or quantum systems, but in many cases pseudorandom operations can emulate certain properties of truly random ones. Indeed, in the classical realm there is by now a well-developed theory regarding such pseudorandom operations. However, the construction of such objects turns out to be much harder in the quantum case. Here, we show that random quantum unitary time evolutions ("circuits") are a powerful source of quantum pseudorandomness. This gives for the first time a polynomial-time construction of quantum unitary designs, which can replace fully random operations in most applications, and shows that generic quantum dynamics cannot be distinguished from truly random processes. We discuss applications of our result to quantum information science, cryptography, and understanding the self-equilibration of closed quantum dynamics.