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arXiv:quant-ph/0303070 · Physical Review A

Practicality of time-optimal two-qubit Hamiltonian simulation

Henry L. Haselgrove, Michael A. Nielsen, Tobias J. Osborne

Published Oct 6, 2003• 10 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

What is the time-optimal way of using a set of control Hamiltonians to obtain a desired interaction? Vidal, Hammerer, and Cirac [Phys. Rev. Lett. $88,$ 237902 (2002)] have obtained a set of powerful results characterizing the time-optimal simulation of a two-qubit quantum gate using a fixed interaction Hamiltonian and fast local control over the individual qubits. How practically useful are these results? We prove that there are two-qubit Hamiltonians such that time-optimal simulation requires infinitely many steps of evolution, each infinitesimally small, and thus is physically impractical. A procedure is given to determine which two-qubit Hamiltonians have this property, and we show that almost all Hamiltonians do. Finally, we determine some bounds on the penalty that must be paid in the simulation time if the number of steps is fixed at a finite number, and show that the cost in simulation time is not too great.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.68.042303

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What is the time-optimal way of using a set of control Hamiltonians to obtain a desired interaction? Vidal, Hammerer, and Cirac [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88,88,88, 237902 (2002)] have obtained a set of powerful results characterizing the time-optimal simulation of a two-qubit quantum gate using a fixed interaction Hamiltonian and fast local control over the individual qubits. How practically useful are these results? We prove that there are two-qubit Hamiltonians such that time-optimal simulation requires infinitely many steps of evolution, each infinitesimally small, and thus is physically impractical. A procedure is given to determine which two-qubit Hamiltonians have this property, and we show that almost all Hamiltonians do. Finally, we determine some bounds on the penalty that must be paid in the simulation time if the number of steps is fixed at a finite number, and show that the cost in simulation time is not too great.
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In this paper, we study the optimal simulation of the three-qubit unitary using two-qubit gates. First, we completely characterize the two-qubit gate cost of simulating the Deutsch gate (controlled-controlled gate) by generalizing our result on the two-qubit cost of the Toffoli gate. The function of any Deutsch gate is simply a three-qubit controlled-unitary gate and can be intuitively explained as follows: The gate outputs the states of the two control qubits directly, and applies the given one-qubit unitary uuu on the target qubit only if both the states of the control qubits are $|1\ensuremath{\rangle}$. Previously, it was only known that five two-qubit gates are sufficient for implementing such a gate [Sleator and Weinfurter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 4087 (1995)]. We show that if the determinant of uuu is 1, four two-qubit gates are optimal. Otherwise, five two-qubit gates are required. For the Fredkin gate (the controlled-swap gate), we prove that five two-qubit gates are necessary and sufficient, which settles the open problem introduced in Smolin and DiVincenzo [Phys. Rev. A 53, 2855 (1996)].
An important result from the mid nineties shows that any unitary evolution may be realized as a sequence of controlled-not and one-qubit gates. This work surveys especially efficient circuits in this library, in the special case of evolutions on two-quantum bits. In particular, we show that to construct an arbitrary two-qubit state from |00>, one CNOT gate suffices. To simulate an arbitrary two-qubit operator up to relative phases, two CNOTs suffice. To simulate an arbitrary two-qubit operator up to global phase, three CNOTs suffice. In each case, we construct an explicit circuit and prove optimality in the generic case. We also contribute a procedure to determine the minimal number of CNOT gates necessary to simulate a given two-qubit operator up to global phase. We use this procedure to discuss timing a given Hamiltonian to simulate the CNOT and to determine an optimal circuit for the two-qubit Quantum Fourier Transform. Our constructive proofs amount to circuit synthesis algorithms and have been coded in C++.
We study the problem of simulating the time evolution of a lattice Hamiltonian, where the qubits are laid out on a lattice and the Hamiltonian only includes geometrically local interactions (i.e., a qubit may only interact with qubits in its vicinity). This class of Hamiltonians is very general and is believed to capture fundamental interactions of physics. Our algorithm simulates the time evolution of such a Hamiltonian on nnn qubits for time TTT up to error ϵ\epsilonϵ using O(nTpolylog(nT/ϵ)){\mathcal O}( nT {polylog} (nT/\epsilon))O(nTpolylog(nT/ϵ)) gates with depth O(Tpolylog(nT/ϵ)){\mathcal O}(T { polylog} (nT/\epsilon))O(Tpolylog(nT/ϵ)). Our algorithm is the first simulation algorithm that achieves gate cost quasilinear in nTnTnT and polylogarithmic in 1/ϵ1/\epsilon1/ϵ. Our algorithm also readily generalizes to time-dependent Hamiltonians and yields an algorithm with similar gate count for any piecewise slowly varying time-dependent bounded local Hamiltonian. We also prove a matching lower bound on the gate count of such a simulation, showing that any quantum algorithm that can simulate a piecewise constant bounded local Hamiltonian in one dimension to constant error requires Ω~(nT){\widetilde{\Omega}}(nT)Ω(nT) gates in the worst case. The lower bound holds even if we only require the output state to be correct on local measurements. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first nontrivial lower bound on the gate complexity of the simulation problem. Our algorithm is based on a decomposition of the time-evolution unitary into a product of small unitaries using Lieb--Robinson bounds. In the appendix, we prove a Lieb--Robinson bound tailored to Hamiltonians with small commutators between local terms, giving zero Lieb--Robinson velocity in the limit of commuting Hamiltonians. This improves the performance of our algorithm when the Hamiltonian is close to commuting.
Motivated by a bound derived in a recent work [C. Arenz, B. Russell, D. Burgarth and H. Rabitz, New J. Phys. 19 (2017) 103015], we apply optimal control theory to the dynamics of qubit systems, with the goal of investigating the lower bound of minimum gate times. In practice, we not only need to reach the desired unitary gates but we need to do so in a reasonable time (below the typical decoherence time). Therefore, we employ the recently introduced lower bound to estimate the minimum gate time and resort to numerical gate optimization in order to study the tightness of the obtained bound and our findings verify the relationship between the internal Hamiltonian and the minimum evolution time remarkably well. Finally, we discuss both challenges and ways forward for obtaining the same efficacy under realistic conditions.
We consider the simulation of the dynamics of one nonlocal Hamiltonian by another, allowing arbitrary local resources but no entanglement or classical communication. We characterize notions of simulation, and proceed to focus on deterministic simulation involving one copy of the system. More specifically, two otherwise isolated systems A and B interact by a nonlocal Hamiltonian $H\ensuremath{\ne}{H}_{A}{+H}_{B}.$ We consider the achievable space of Hamiltonians ${H}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ such that the evolution ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}{\mathrm{iH}}^{\ensuremath{'}}t}$ can be simulated by the interaction H interspersed with local operations. For any dimensions of A and B, and any nonlocal Hamiltonians H and ${H}^{\ensuremath{'}},$ there exists a scale factor s such that for all times t the evolution ${e}^{\ensuremath{-}{\mathrm{iH}}^{\ensuremath{'}}\mathrm{st}}$ can be simulated by H acting for time t interspersed with local operations. For two-qubit Hamiltonians H and ${H}^{\ensuremath{'}},$ we calculate the optimal s and give protocols achieving it. The optimal protocols do not require local ancillas, and can be understood geometrically in terms of a polyhedron defined by a partial order on the set of two-qubit Hamiltonians.