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arXiv:quant-ph/0702203 · Bulletin of the American Physical Society

Purple bacteria and quantum Fourier transform

Samir Lipovaca

Published Feb 22, 2007• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The LH-II of purple bacteria Rhodospirillum (Rs.) molischianum and Rhodopseudomonas (Rps.) acidophila adopts a highly symmetrical ring shape, with a radius of about 7 nm. In the case of Rps. acidophila the ring has a ninefold symmetry axis, and in LH-II from Rs. molischianum the ring has an eightfold symmetry axis. These rings are found to exibit two bands of excitons. A simplified mathematical description of the exciton states is given in Hu, X. & Schulten, K. (1997) Physics Today 50, 28-34. Using this description, we will show, by suitable labeling of the lowest energy (Qy) excited states of individual BChls, that the resulting exciton states are the quantum Fourier transform of the BChls excited states. For Rs. molischianum ring exciton states will be modeled as the four qubit quantum Fourier transform and the explicit circuit will be derived. Exciton states for Rps. acidophila ring cannot be modeled with an integer number of qubits. Both quantum Fourier transforms are instances of the hidden subgroup problem and this opens up a possibility that both purple bacteria implement an efficient quantum circuit for light harvesting.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0702203

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The LH-II of purple bacteria Rhodospirillum (Rs.) molischianum and Rhodopseudomonas (Rps.) acidophila adopts a highly symmetrical ring shape, with a radius of about 7 nm. In the case of Rps. acidophila the ring has a ninefold symmetry axis, and in LH-II from Rs. molischianum the ring has an eightfold symmetry axis. These rings are found to exibit two bands of excitons. A simplified mathematical description of the exciton states is given in Hu, X. & Schulten, K. (1997) Physics Today 50, 28-34. Using this description, we will show, by suitable labeling of the lowest energy (Qy) excited states of individual BChls, that the resulting exciton states are the quantum Fourier transform of the BChls excited states. For Rs. molischianum ring exciton states will be modeled as the four qubit quantum Fourier transform and the explicit circuit will be derived. Exciton states for Rps. acidophila ring cannot be modeled with an integer number of qubits. Both quantum Fourier transforms are instances of the hidden subgroup problem and this opens up a possibility that both purple bacteria implement an efficient quantum circuit for light harvesting.
Quantum Fourier transformations are an essential component of many quantum algorithms, from prime factoring to quantum simulation. While the standard abelian QFT is well-studied, important variants corresponding to \emph{nonabelian} groups of interest have seen less development. In particular, fast nonabelian Fourier transformations are important components for both quantum simulations of field theories as well as approaches to the nonabelian hidden subgroup problem. In this work, we present fast quantum Fourier transformations for a number of nonabelian groups of interest for high energy physics, BT\mathbb{BT}BT, BO\mathbb{BO}BO, Δ(27)Δ(27)Δ(27), Δ(54)Δ(54)Δ(54), and Σ(36×3)Σ(36\times3)Σ(36×3). For each group, we derive explicit quantum circuits and estimate resource scaling for fault-tolerant implementations. Our work shows that the development of a fast Fourier transformation can substantively reduce simulation costs by up to three orders of magnitude for the finite groups that we have investigated.
Quantum Fourier transformations are an essential component of many quantum algorithms, from prime factoring to quantum simulation. While the standard Abelian QFrT is well studied, important variants corresponding to non-Abelian groups of interest have seen less development. In particular, fast non-Abelian Fourier transformations are important components for both quantum simulations of field theories as well as approaches to the non-Abelian hidden subgroup problem. In this work, we present fast quantum Fourier transformations for a number of non-Abelian groups of interest for high energy physics, BT\mathbb{B}\mathbb{T}BT, BO\mathbb{B}\mathbb{O}BO, $6\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}(27)$, $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}(54)$, and $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}(36\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}3)$. For each group, we derive explicit quantum circuits and estimate resource scaling for fault-tolerant implementations. Our work shows that the development of a fast Fourier transformation can substantively reduce simulation costs by an up to three orders of magnitude for the finite groups that we have investigated.
The quantum Fourier transform (QFT) has emerged as the primary tool in quantum algorithms which achieve exponential advantage over classical computation and lies at the heart of the solution to the abelian hidden subgroup problem, of which Shor's celebrated factoring and discrete log algorithms are a special case. We begin by addressing various computational issues surrounding the QFT and give improved parallel circuits for both the QFT over a power of 2 and the QFT over an arbitrary cyclic group. These circuits are based on new insight into the relationship between the discrete Fourier transform over different cyclic groups. We then exploit this insight to extend the class of hidden subgroup problems with efficient quantum solutions. First we relax the condition that the underlying hidden subgroup function be distinct on distinct cosets of the subgroup in question and show that this relaxation can be solved whenever G is a finitely-generated abelian group. We then extend this reasoning to the hidden cyclic subgroup problem over the reals, showing how to efficiently generate the bits of the period of any sufficiently piecewise-continuous function on R. Finally, we show that this problem of period-finding over R, viewed as an oracle promise problem, is strictly harder than its integral counterpart. In particular, period-finding over R lies outside the complexity class MA, a class which contains period-finding over the integers.
The search for practical problems that can be solved exponentially faster on a quantum computer is one of the primary goals in research into algorithms for quantum computers. It has long been known that such speedups are only possible for highly structured problems. We consider two problems with algebraic structure: (1) the hidden subgroup problem, where we have an unknown subgroup, a function that is constant on cosets of the subgroup, and the task is to find the unknown subgroup; (2) the hidden shift problem, where we have an unknown element of a group, a function that has been shifted by that group element, and the task is to find the unknown group element. We show that the Fourier transform is intimately connected to both these problems. This is because the Fourier transform respects group symmetries. For the hidden subgroup problem, we introduce the idea of using information theoretic techniques to design quantum algorithms. This consists of first finding an optimal set of measurements for distinguishing between different subgroups, followed by attempts to implement this set of measurements. We show that the standard algorithm for the abelian hidden subgroup problem is optimal. For the nonabelian hidden subgroup problem, the optimal measurements respect the Fourier transform in that they can be implemented by first performing a Fourier transform on each coset state, measuring the name of the irreducible representation for each state, followed by a joint measurement over the resulting lower dimensional space. This shows that the “strong standard method” cannot be used to implement the optimal set of measurements. For some instances of the hidden shift problem, we give a quantum algorithms that are exponentially faster than the best known classical algorithm. The algorithms make use of the Fourier transform in a way that may be interpreted as solving a deconvolution problem. As evidence of hardness, we give a reduction from algebraically homomorphic cryptosystems to the shifted Legendre symbol problem. This is an example of a problem which admits an exponential quantum speedup yet is not an instance of the abelian hidden subgroup problem.
Bastidas et al. (2025) highlighted the importance of exploiting group symmetries to reduce computational overhead and unify simulation methods across both condensed matter physics and ab initio quantum chemistry. I discuss the discrete character transform, which is the group Fourier transform restricted to Z(C[G])Z(\mathbb{C}[G])Z(C[G]), the center of the group algebra, where class functions form a commutative convolution algebra and irreducible characters are its spectral basis. The normalized character table of a non-abelian group can be obtained through a restriction operator, which means an efficient quantum character transform for any finite group with an efficient quantum Fourier transform. I give complementary quantum algorithms for class convolution based on direct class-sum block encoding and spectral implementation in the character basis, explaining their applications to symmetry-adapted many-body dynamics, molecular and spectroscopic symmetry analysis, and quantum walks, as well as characterizing the central information used in hidden-subgroup problems, including its limitations for graph isomorphism.
This paper creates and analyses a new quantum algorithm called the Amplified Quantum Fourier Transform (Amplified-QFT) for solving the following problem: The Local Period Problem: Let L = {0,1...N-1} be a set of N labels and let A be a subset of M labels of period P, i.e. a subset of the form A = {j : j = s + rP; r = 0,1...M-1} where P {0,1} which is 1 on A and 0 elsewhere, find the local period P. A separate algorithm finds the offset s. The first part of the paper defines the Amplified-QFT algorithm. The second part of the paper summarizes the main results and compares the Amplified-QFT algorithm against the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) and Quantum Hidden Subgroup (QHS) algorithms when solving the local period problem. It is shown that the Amplified-QFT is, on average, quadratically faster than both the QFT and QHS algorithms. The third part of the paper provides the detailed proofs of the main results, describes the method of recovering P from an observation y and describes the method for recovering the offset s.