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At least 19 records

Comparative evolution of the inverse problems (Introduction to an interdisciplinary study of the inverse problems)

The progressive realization of the consequences of nonuniqueness imply an evolution of both the methods and the centers of interest in inverse problems. This evolution is schematically described together with the various mathematical methods used. A comparative description is given of inverse methods in scientific research, with examples taken from mathematics, quantum and classical physics, seismology, transport theory, radiative transfer, electromagnetic scattering, electrocardiology, etc. It is hoped that this paper will pave the way for an interdisciplinary study of inverse problems.

Sabatier, P. C.↗

Mathematical Foundation for Quantum Computing of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Dielectric Media

Can quantum computers effectively simulate the propagation and scattering of electromagnetic waves in a classical plasma? This chapter introduces some of the basic concepts in mathematics and physics essential to answering that question. The numerical simulations of Maxwell equations for wave propagation in dielectrics are constrained by technological limitations of the present-day computers. In contrast, there has been ample fanfare around quantum computers and their potential to far exceed the performance of traditional computers. Whether the enhanced capabilities of a quantum computer can be put to use for simulating topics in classical physics is a source of intrigue and curiosity.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

From crystal color symmetry to quantum spacetime

More than one hundred years after the inception of relativistic physics, the concept of time remains incompletely understood. Relativity provides means to perform calculations of geometrical properties of spacetime, such as distances or curvature, and to interpret them in terms of physical observations, for instance as time dilation or gravitational effects. However, an intuitive understanding of spacetime is complicated, not so much because it is four-dimensional (which, after all, can be evaded by visualizing twodimensional cross sections) but mainly because its geometry does not obey Euclid’s axioms even in the absence of curvature. Through a well defined and clever transformation (RBS: renormalized blended spacetime), Venkatraman Gopalan (2021) has demonstrated how the hyperbolic geometry in Minkowski spacetime can be mapped to a circular Euclidean geometry. In particular, Lorentzian boosts become Euclidean rotations which enables new frontiers of exploration in color symmetry and magnetic crystals. His idea of general relativistic spacetime crystals and how to obtain them is both powerful and broad, although the notion of relativistic crystals and lattices in two dimensions has existed for a while (Janner & Ascher, 1969a,b). Finally, the breadth of this new work is underlined by the present opinion piece, written by two co-authors with distinct yet connected areas of expertise.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Hamiltonian simulation in the low-energy subspace

Abstract We study the problem of simulating the dynamics of spin systems when the initial state is supported on a subspace of low energy of a Hamiltonian H . This is a central problem in physics with vast applications in many-body systems and beyond, where the interesting physics takes place in the low-energy sector. We analyze error bounds induced by product formulas that approximate the evolution operator and show that these bounds depend on an effective low-energy norm of H . We find improvements over the best previous complexities of product formulas that apply to the general case, and these improvements are more significant for long evolution times that scale with the system size and/or small approximation errors. To obtain these improvements, we prove exponentially decaying upper bounds on the leakage to high-energy subspaces due to the product formula. Our results provide a path to a systematic study of Hamiltonian simulation at low energies, which will be required to push quantum simulation closer to reality.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum computing and preconditioners for hydrological linear systems

Modeling hydrological fracture networks is a hallmark challenge in computational earth sciences. Accurately predicting critical features of fracture systems, e.g. percolation, can require solving large linear systems far beyond current or future high performance capabilities. Quantum computers can theoretically bypass the memory and speed constraints faced by classical approaches, however several technical issues must first be addressed. Chief amongst these difficulties is that such systems are often ill-conditioned, i.e. small changes in the system can produce large changes in the solution, which can slow down the performance of linear solving algorithms. We test several existing quantum techniques to improve the condition number, but find they are insufficient. We then introduce the inverse Laplacian preconditioner, which improves the scaling of the condition number of the system from O(N) to O($\sqrt{N}$) and admits a quantum implementation. These results are a critical first step in developing a quantum solver for fracture systems, both advancing the state of hydrological modeling and providing a novel real-world application for quantum linear systems algorithms.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The actual content of quantum theoretical kinematics and mechanics

First, exact definitions are supplied for the terms: position, velocity, energy, etc. (of the electron, for instance), such that they are valid also in quantum mechanics. Canonically conjugated variables are determined simultaneously only with a characteristic uncertainty. This uncertainty is the intrinsic reason for the occurrence of statistical relations in quantum mechanics. Mathematical formulation is made possible by the Dirac-Jordan theory. Beginning from the basic principles thus obtained, macroscopic processes are understood from the viewpoint of quantum mechanics. Several imaginary experiments are discussed to elucidate the theory.

Heisenberg, W.↗

Error mitigation with Clifford quantum-circuit data

Achieving near-term quantum observables despite significant hardware noise. For this purpose, we propose a novel, scalable error-mitigation method that applies to gate-based quantum computers. The method generates training data { X i noisy , X i exact } via quantum circuits composed largely of Clifford gates, which can be efficiently simulated classically, where X i noisy and X i exact are noisy and noiseless observables respectively. Fitting a linear ansatz to this data then allows for the prediction of noise-free observables for arbitrary circuits. We analyze the performance of our method versus the number of qubits, circuit depth, and number of non-Clifford gates. Here, we obtain an order-of-magnitude error reduction for a ground-state energy problem on 16 qubits in an IBMQ quantum computer and on a 64-qubit noisy simulator.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Hamiltonian Simulation [Slides]

Given a (qubit) quantum system modeled by a Hamiltonian H, use a quantum computer to obtain time-evolved properties of the system. One way of solving this problem is by actually preparing the evolved quantum state (in some encoded fashion). The goal is to provide a sequence of elementary 1 and 2-qubit gates that would prepare such a state.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Variational Quantum Fidelity Estimation

Computing quantum state fidelity will be important to verify and characterize states prepared on a quantum computer. In this work, we propose novel lower and upper bounds for the fidelity F ( ρ , σ ) based on the ``truncated fidelity'' F ( ρ m , σ ) , which is evaluated for a state ρ m obtained by projecting ρ onto its m -largest eigenvalues. Our bounds can be refined, i.e., they tighten monotonically with m . To compute our bounds, we introduce a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, called Variational Quantum Fidelity Estimation, that involves three steps: (1) variationally diagonalize ρ , (2) compute matrix elements of σ in the eigenbasis of ρ , and (3) combine these matrix elements to compute our bounds. Our algorithm is aimed at the case where σ is arbitrary and ρ is low rank, which we call low-rank fidelity estimation, and we prove that no classical algorithm can efficiently solve this problem under reasonable assumptions. Finally, we demonstrate that our bounds can detect quantum phase transitions and are often tighter than previously known computable bounds for realistic situations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Information Scrambling and Loschmidt Echo

We demonstrate analytically and verify numerically that the out-of-time order correlator is given by the thermal average of Loschmidt echo signals. This provides a direct link between the out-of-time-order correlator—a recently suggested measure of information scrambling in quantum chaotic systems—and the Loschmidt echo, a well-appreciated familiar diagnostic that captures the dynamical aspect of chaotic behavior in the time domain, and is accessible to experimental studies.

0-dimensional systems↗

Security proof of practical quantum key distribution with detection-efficiency mismatch

Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols with threshold detectors are driving high-performance QKD demonstrations. The corresponding security proofs usually assume that all physical detectors have the same detection efficiency. However, the efficiencies of the detectors used in practice might show a mismatch depending on the manufacturing and setup of these detectors. A mismatch can also be induced as the different spatial-temporal modes of an incoming signal might couple differently to a detector. Here we develop a method that allows to provide security proofs without the usual assumption. Our method can take the detection-efficiency mismatch into account without having to restrict the attack strategy of the adversary. Especially, we do not rely on any photon-number cutoff of incoming signals such that our security proof is directly applicable to practical situations. We illustrate our method for a receiver that is designed for polarization encoding and is sensitive to a number of spatial-temporal modes. In our detector model, the absence of quantum interference between any pair of spatial-temporal modes is assumed. For a QKD protocol with this detector model, we can perform a security proof with characterized efficiency mismatch and without photon-number cutoff assumption. Our method also shows that in the absence of efficiency mismatch in our detector model, the key rate increases if the loss due to detection inefficiency is assumed to be outside of the adversary's control, as compared to the view where for a security proof this loss is attributed to the action of the adversary.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Barren Plateaus Preclude Learning Scramblers

Scrambling processes, which rapidly spread entanglement through many-body quantum systems, are difficult to investigate using standard techniques, but are relevant to quantum chaos and thermalization. In this Letter, we ask if quantum machine learning (QML) could be used to investigate such processes. In this study we prove a no-go theorem for learning an unknown scrambling process with QML, showing that it is highly probable for any variational Ansatz to have a barren plateau landscape, i.e., cost gradients that vanish exponentially in the system size. This implies that the required resources scale exponentially even when strategies to avoid such scaling (e.g., from Ansatz -based barren plateaus or no-free-lunch theorems) are employed. Furthermore, we numerically and analytically extend our results to approximate scramblers. Hence, our work places generic limits on the learnability of unitaries when lacking prior information.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum Analog Computing

Quantum analog computing is based upon similarity between mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and phenomena to be computed. It exploits a dynamical convergence of several competing phenomena to an attractor which can represent an externum of a function, an image, a solution to a system of ODE, or a stochastic process.

Quantum analog computing quantum mechanics attract↗