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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

A universal variational quantum eigensolver for non-Hermitian systems

Abstract Many quantum algorithms are developed to evaluate eigenvalues for Hermitian matrices. However, few practical approach exists for the eigenanalysis of non-Hermintian ones, such as arising from modern power systems. The main difficulty lies in the fact that, as the eigenvector matrix of a general matrix can be non-unitary, solving a general eigenvalue problem is inherently incompatible with existing unitary-gate-based quantum methods. To fill this gap, this paper introduces a Variational Quantum Universal Eigensolver (VQUE), which is deployable on noisy intermediate scale quantum computers. Our new contributions include: (1) The first universal variational quantum algorithm capable of evaluating the eigenvalues of non-Hermitian matrices—Inspired by Schur’s triangularization theory, VQUE unitarizes the eigenvalue problem to a procedure of searching unitary transformation matrices via quantum devices; (2) A Quantum Process Snapshot technique is devised to make VQUE maintain the potential quantum advantage inherited from the original variational quantum eigensolver—With additional $$O(log_{2}{N})$$ O ( l o g 2 N ) quantum gates, this method efficiently identifies whether a unitary operator is triangular with respect to a given basis; (3) Successful deployment and validation of VQUE on a real noisy quantum computer, which demonstrates the algorithm’s feasibility. We also undertake a comprehensive parametric study to validate VQUE’s scalability, generality, and performance in realistic applications.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2015

Benchmarking Adiabatic Quantum Optimization for Complex Network Analysis

We lay the foundation for a benchmarking methodology for assessing current and future quantum computers. We pose and begin addressing fundamental questions about how to fairly compare computational devices at vastly different stages of technological maturity. We critically evaluate and offer our own contributions to current quantum benchmarking efforts, in particular those involving adiabatic quantum computation and the Adiabatic Quantum Optimizers produced by D-Wave Systems, Inc. We find that the performance of D-Wave's Adiabatic Quantum Optimizers scales roughly on par with classical approaches for some hard combinatorial optimization problems; however, architectural limitations of D-Wave devices present a significant hurdle in evaluating real-world applications. In addition to identifying and isolating such limitations, we develop algorithmic tools for circumventing these limitations on future D-Wave devices, assuming they continue to grow and mature at an exponential rate for the next several years.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Benchmarking Quantum Processor Performance through Quantum Distance Metrics Over An Algorithm Suite

Quantum computing is poised to solve computational paradigms that classical computing could never feasibly reach. Tasks such as prime factorization to Quantum Chemistry are examples of classically difficult problems that have analogous algorithms that are sped up on quantum computers. To attain this computational advantage, we must first traverse the noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) era, in which quantum processors suffer from compounding noise factors that can lead to unreliable algorithm induction producing noisy results. We describe QASMBench, a suite of QASM-level (Quantum assembly language) benchmarks that challenge all realisable angles of quantum processor noise. We evaluate a large portion of these algorithms by performing density matrix tomography on 14 IBMQ Quantum devices.

Stein, Samuel A.↗
DOE OSTI2018

Silicon Qubits

There are two good reasons to attempt to build quantum bits (qubits) out of silicon. The first is the obvious foundation of classical microelectronics. Although silicon quantum computers would operate in a fundamentally different way from classical computers$-$for example, at cryogenic temperatures$-$still the level of development in material quality, crystal growth, and fabrication methodologies for silicon is unrivaled by any other material in the world. Leveraging even a small fraction of the worldwide investment in silicon for qubit development could potentially put silicon-based qubits far ahead of other solid-state alternatives. The second, less obvious reason for choosing silicon is the remarkably clean magnetic environment witnessed by spins in highly purified and isotopically enriched silicon material. Fortuitously, 95.3% of the naturally occurring isotopes of Si nuclei ( 28 Si and 30 Si) are spin-0. These nuclei therefore have a “closed shell” of nuclear moments, providing no external magnetic field whatsoever. Add to this the possibility of intrinsic silicon with part-per-billion chemical quality and the system is remarkably close to “vacuum” with respect to magnetic noise properties.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Programmable photonic integrated meshes for modular generation of optical entanglement links

Abstract Large-scale generation of quantum entanglement between individually controllable qubits is at the core of quantum computing, communications, and sensing. Modular architectures of remotely-connected quantum technologies have been proposed for a variety of physical qubits, with demonstrations reported in atomic and all-photonic systems. However, an open challenge in these architectures lies in constructing high-speed and high-fidelity reconfigurable photonic networks for optically-heralded entanglement among target qubits. Here we introduce a programmable photonic integrated circuit (PIC), realized in a piezo-actuated silicon nitride (SiN)-in-oxide CMOS-compatible process, that implements an N × N Mach–Zehnder mesh (MZM) capable of high-speed execution of linear optical transformations. The visible-spectrum photonic integrated mesh is programmed to generate optical connectivity on up to N = 8 inputs for a range of optically-heralded entanglement protocols. In particular, we experimentally demonstrated optical connections between 16 independent pairwise mode couplings through the MZM, with optical transformation fidelities averaging 0.991 ± 0.0063. The PIC’s reconfigurable optical connectivity suffices for the production of 8-qubit resource states as building blocks of larger topological cluster states for quantum computing. Our programmable PIC platform enables the fast and scalable optical switching technology necessary for network-based quantum information processors.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Towards Quantum Gravity in the Lab on Quantum Processors

The holographic principle and its realization in the AdS/CFT correspondence led to unexpected connections between general relativity and quantum information. This set the stage for studying aspects of quantum gravity models, which are otherwise difficult to access, in table-top quantum-computational experiments. Recent works have designed a special teleportation protocol that realizes a surprising communication phenomenon most naturally explained by the physics of a traversable wormhole. In this work, we have carried out quantum experiments based on this protocol on state-of-the-art quantum computers. The target quantum processing units (QPUs) included the Quantinuum's trapped-ion System Model H1-1 and five IBM superconducting QPUs of various architectures, with public and premium user access. We report the observed teleportation signals from these QPUs with the best one reaching 80% of theoretical predictions. We outline the experimental challenges we have faced in the course of implementation, as well as the new theoretical insights into quantum dynamics the work has led to. We also developed QGLab – an open-source end-to-end software solution that facilitates conducting the wormhole-inspired teleportation experiments on state-of-the-art and emergent generations of QPUs supported by the Q i s k i t and t k e t SDKs. We consider our study and deliverables as an early practical step towards the realization of more complex experiments for the indirect probing of quantum gravity in the lab.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2023

Nearly-frustration-free ground state preparation

Solving for quantum ground states is important for understanding the properties of quantum many-body systems, and quantum computers are potentially well-suited for solving for quantum ground states. Recent work [1] has presented a nearly optimal scheme that prepares ground states on a quantum computer for completely generic Hamiltonians, whose query complexity scales as δ − 1 , i.e. inversely with their normalized gap. Here we consider instead the ground state preparation problem restricted to a special subset of Hamiltonians, which includes those which we term "nearly-frustration-free": the class of Hamiltonians for which the ground state energy of their block-encoded and hence normalized Hamiltonian α − 1 H is within δ y of -1, where δ is the spectral gap of α − 1 H and 0 ≤ y ≤ 1 . For this subclass, we describe an algorithm whose dependence on the gap is asymptotically better, scaling as δ y / 2 − 1 , and show that this new dependence is optimal up to factors of log ⁡ δ . In addition, we give examples of physically motivated Hamiltonians which live in this subclass. Finally, we describe an extension of this method which allows the preparation of excited states both for generic Hamiltonians as well as, at a similar speedup as the ground state case, for those which are nearly frustration-free.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Partitioning Quantum Chemistry Simulations with Clifford Circuits

Current quantum computing hardware is restricted by the availability of only few, noisy qubits which limits the investigation of larger, more complex molecules in quantum chemistry calculations on quantum computers in the near term. Here, in this work, we investigate the limits of their classical and near-classical treatment while staying within the framework of quantum circuits and the variational quantum eigensolver. To this end, we consider naive and physically motivated, classically efficient product ansatz for the parametrized wavefunction adapting the separable-pair ansatz form. We combine it with post-treatment to account for interactions between subsystems originating from this ansatz. The classical treatment is given by another quantum circuit that has support between the enforced subsystems and is folded into the Hamiltonian. To avoid an exponential increase in the number of Hamiltonian terms, the entangling operations are constructed from purely Clifford or near-Clifford circuits. While Clifford circuits can be simulated efficiently classically, they are not universal. In order to account for missing expressibility, near-Clifford circuits with only few, selected non-Clifford gates are employed. The exact circuit structure to achieve this objective is molecule-dependent and is constructed using simulated annealing and genetic algorithms. We demonstrate our approach on a set of molecules of interest and investigate the extent of our methodology’s reach.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2022

1 / ω electric-field noise in surface ion traps from correlated adsorbate dynamics

Ion traps are promising architectures for implementing quantum computers, but they suffer from excessive “anomalous” ion motional heating that limit their overall coherence and practicality for scalable quantum computing. The exact microscopic origins of anomalous heating remain an open question, but experiments point to adsorbates on trap electrodes as one likely source. Many different models of anomalous heating have been proposed, but these models have yet to pinpoint the atomistic origin of the experimentally observed 1/ω electric-field noise scaling seen in ion traps at frequencies between 0.1–10 MHz. In this work, we show that a model based on previously proposed surface-induced dipole fluctuations on adsorbates, but which also incorporates interparticle interaction dynamics through molecular dynamics simulations of up to multiple monolayers of adsorbates, gives rise to 1/ω frequency scaling at the MHz frequencies typically employed in ion traps. Overall, these results demonstrate that moderate-to-high densities of adsorbates can give rise to a set of activated motions that produce the 1/ω noise observed in ion traps and that collective adsorbate motions produce the observed noise spectra that a noninteracting model does not capture.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Limitations of Fault-Tolerant Quantum Linear System Solvers for Quantum Power Flow

Quantum computers hold promise for solving problems intractable for classical computers, especially those with high time or space complexity. Practical quantum advantage can be said to exist for such problems when the end-to-end time for solving such a problem using a classical algorithm exceeds that required by a quantum algorithm. Reducing the power flow (PF) problem into a linear system of equations allows for the formulation of quantum PF (QPF) algorithms, which are based on solving methods for quantum linear systems such as the Harrow-Hassidim-Lloyd (HHL) algorithm. Speedup from using QPF algorithms is often claimed to be exponential when compared to classical PF solved by state-of-the-art algorithms. Here, we investigate the potential for practical quantum advantage in solving QPF compared to classical methods on gate-based quantum computers. Notably, this paper does not present a new QPF solving algorithm but scrutinizes the end-to-end complexity of the QPF approach, providing a nuanced evaluation of the purported quantum speedup in this problem. Our analysis establishes a best-case bound for the HHL-based quantum power flow complexity, conclusively demonstrating that the HHL-based method has higher runtime complexity compared to the classical algorithm for solving the direct current power flow (DCPF) and fast decoupled load flow (FDLF) problem. Notably, our analysis and conclusions can be extended to any quantum linear system solver with rigorous performance guarantees, based on the known complexity lower bounds for this problem. Additionally, we establish that for potential practical quantum advantage (PQA) to exist it is necessary to consider DCPF-type problems with a very narrow range of condition number values and readout requirements.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Vacancies in graphene: an application of adiabatic quantum optimization

Quantum annealers have grown in complexity to the point that quantum computations involving a few thousand qubits are now possible. In this paper, with the intentions to show the feasibility of quantum annealing to tackle problems of physical relevance, we used a simple model, compatible with the capability of current quantum annealers, to study the relative stability of graphene vacancy defects. By mapping the crucial interactions that dominate carbon-vacancy interchange onto a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem, our approach exploits the ground state as well as the excited states found by the quantum annealer to extract all the possible arrangements of multiple defects on the graphene sheet together with their relative formation energies. Furthermore, this approach reproduces known results and provides a stepping stone towards applications of quantum annealing to problems of physical–chemical interest.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Spectral control of nonclassical light pulses using an integrated thin-film lithium niobate modulator

Abstract Manipulating the frequency and bandwidth of nonclassical light is essential for implementing frequency-encoded/multiplexed quantum computation, communication, and networking protocols, and for bridging spectral mismatch among various quantum systems. However, quantum spectral control requires a strong nonlinearity mediated by light, microwave, or acoustics, which is challenging to realize with high efficiency, low noise, and on an integrated chip. Here, we demonstrate both frequency shifting and bandwidth compression of heralded single-photon pulses using an integrated thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) phase modulator. We achieve record-high electro-optic frequency shearing of telecom single photons over terahertz range (±641 GHz or ±5.2 nm), enabling high visibility quantum interference between frequency-nondegenerate photon pairs. We further operate the modulator as a time lens and demonstrate over eighteen-fold (6.55 nm to 0.35 nm) bandwidth compression of single photons. Our results showcase the viability and promise of on-chip quantum spectral control for scalable photonic quantum information processing.

Optics↗
DOE OSTI2019

Quantum Realism

In this issue, we review quantum computing: what has been accomplished and what is its future. We introduce a collection of opinions about the realistic challenges facing the future of quantum computing.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Optimized Quantum Program Execution Ordering to Mitigate Errors in Simulations of Quantum Systems

Simulating the time evolution of a physical system at quantum mechanical levels of detail - known as Hamiltonian Simulation (HS) - is an important and interesting problem across physics and chemistry. For this task, algorithms that run on quantum computers are known to be exponentially faster than classical algorithms; in fact, this application motivated Feynman to propose the construction of quantum computers. Nonetheless, there are challenges in reaching this performance potential. Prior work has focused on compiling circuits (quantum programs) for HS with the goal of maximizing either accuracy or gate cancellation. Our work proposes a compilation strategy that simultaneously advances both goals. At a high level, we use classical optimizations such as graph coloring and travelling salesperson to order the execution of quantum programs. Specifically, we group together mutually commuting terms in the Hamiltonian (a matrix characterizing the quantum mechanical system) to improve the accuracy of the simulation. We then rearrange the terms within each group to maximize gate cancellation in the final quantum circuit. Furthermore, these optimizations work together to improve HS performance and result in an average 40% reduction in circuit depth. This work advances the frontier of HS which in turn can advance physical and chemical modeling in both basic and applied sciences.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Enabling Pulse-level Programming, Compilation, and Execution in XACC

Noisy gate-model quantum processing units (QPUs) are currently available from vendors over the cloud, and digital quantum programming approaches exist to run low-depth circuits on physical hardware. These digital representations are ultimately lowered to pulse-level instructions by vendor quantum control systems to affect unitary evolution representative of the submitted digital circuit. Vendors are beginning to open this pulse-level control system to the public via specified interfaces. Robust programming methodologies, software frameworks, and backend simulation technologies for this analog model of quantum computation will prove critical to advancing pulse-level control research and development. Prototypical use cases for this include error mitigation, optimal pulse control, and physics-inspired pulse construction. Here we present an extension to the XACC quantum-classical software framework that enables pulse-level programming for superconducting, gate-model quantum computers, and a novel, general, and extensible pulse-level simulation backend for XACC that scales on classical compute clusters via MPI. Our work enables custom backend Hamiltonian definitions and gate-level compilation to available pulses with a focus on performance and scalability. We end with a demonstration of this capability, and show how to use XACC for pertinent pulse-level programming tasks.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Efficient Scalable Tomography of Many-Qubit Quantum Processors

Quantum computing has the potential to realize powerful and revolutionary applications. A quantum computer can, in theory, solve certain problems exponentially faster than its classical counterparts. The current state of the art devices, however, are too small and noisy to practically realize this goal. An important tool for the advancement of quantum hardware, called model-based characterization, seeks to learn what types of noise are exhibited in a quantum processor. This technique, however, is notoriously difficult to scale up to even modest numbers of qubit, and has been limited to just 2 qubits until now. In this report, we present a novel method for performing model-based characterization, or tomography, on a many-qubit quantum processor. We consider up to 10 qubits, but the technique is expected to scale to even larger systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Adaptive Circuit Learning for Quantum Metrology

Quantum sensing is an important application of emerging quantum technologies. We explore whether a hybrid system of quantum sensors and quantum circuits can surpass the classical limit of sensing. In particular, we use optimization techniques to search for encoder and decoder circuits that scalably improve sensitivity under given application and noise characteristics. Furthermore, our approach uses a variational algorithm that can learn a quantum sensing circuit based on platform-specific control capacity, noise, and signal distribution. The quantum circuit is composed of an encoder which prepares the optimal sensing state and a decoder which gives an output distribution containing information of the signal. We optimize the full circuit to maximize the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). Furthermore, this learning algorithm can be run on real hardware scalably by using the "parameter-shift" rule which enables gradient evaluation on noisy quantum circuits, avoiding the exponential cost of quantum system simulation. We demonstrate up to 13.12x SNR improvement over existing fixed protocol (GHZ), and 3.19x Classical Fisher Information (CFI) improvement over the classical limit on 15 qubits using IBM quantum computer. More notably, our algorithm overcomes the decreasing performance of existing entanglement-based protocols with increased system sizes.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Interactive cryptographic proofs of quantumness using mid-circuit measurements

The ability to perform measurements in the middle of a quantum circuit is a powerful resource. It underlies a wide range of applications, from remote state preparation to quantum error correction. Here we apply mid-circuit measurements for a particular task: demonstrating quantum computational advantage. The goal of such a demonstration is for a quantum device to perform a computational task that is infeasible for a classical device with comparable resources. In contrast to existing demonstrations, the distinguishing feature of our approach is that the classical verification process is efficient, both in asymptotic complexity and in practice. Furthermore, the classical hardness of performing the task is based upon well-established cryptographic assumptions. Protocols with these features are known as cryptographic proofs of quantumness. Using a trapped-ion quantum computer, we perform mid-circuit measurements by spatially isolating portions of the ion chain via shuttling. This enables us to implement two interactive cryptographic proofs of quantumness, which when suitably scaled to larger systems, promise the efficient verification of quantum computational advantage. In conclusion, our methods can be applied to a range of interactive quantum protocols.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗