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arXiv · 2302.14582

ManQala: Game-Inspired Strategies for Quantum State Engineering

Onur Danaci·Wenlei Zhang·Robert Coleman·William Djakam·Michaela Amoo·Ryan T. Glasser·Brian T. Kirby·Moussa N'Gom·Thomas A. Searles
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Abstract

The ability to prepare systems in specific target states through quantum engineering is essential for realizing the new technologies promised by a second quantum revolution. Here, we recast the fundamental problem of state preparation in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces as ManQala, a quantum game inspired by the West African sowing game mancala. Motivated by optimal gameplay in solitaire mancala, where nested nearest-neighbor permutations and actions evolve the state of the game board to its target configuration, ManQala acts as a pre-processing approach for deterministically arranging particles in a quantum control problem. Once pre-processing with ManQala is complete, existing quantum control methods are applied, but now with a reduced search space. We find that ManQala-type strategies match, or outperform, competing approaches in terms of final state variance even in small-scale quantum state engineering problems where we expect the slightest advantage since the relative reduction in search space is the least. These results suggest that ManQala provides a rich platform for designing control protocols relevant to near-term intermediate-scale quantum technologies.

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Onur Danaci, Wenlei Zhang, Robert Coleman, William Djakam, Michaela Amoo, Ryan T. Glasser, Brian T. Kirby, Moussa N'Gom, Thomas A. Searles. 2023-02-28. ManQala: Game-Inspired Strategies for Quantum State Engineering. https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.14582

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