arXiv subjects

Bettina Heim

Publications and source records attributed to Bettina Heim.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

CUDA-Q Logical: Retargetable Compilation for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

Realizing fault-tolerant quantum computing requires mapping logical programs to heterogeneous quantum error correction (QEC) codes and diverse fault-tolerant execution models, scheduling physical resources, and coupling to real-time classical control and feedback. Specialized tools exist for each step but rely on manual composition and translation that discard assumptions and provenance, separating resource estimates from the compiler artifacts they describe, and making it difficult to validate correctness, compare architectures, or attribute costs to specific design choices. We present CUDA-Q Logical, an extensible compiler infrastructure for retargetable fault-tolerant compilation, analysis, and execution. Interoperable with CUDA-Q and other mainstream front-ends, CUDA-Q Logical progressively lowers target-independent logical programs through a constrained logical virtual machine, QEC microcode, physical gate schedules, and real-time control plans, with each layer preserving semantics and provenance, while verifying composition and resource constraints. By deriving every resource estimate directly from compiler artifacts, the framework unifies compilation and resource analysis, enabling successively refined estimates and principled cross-architecture comparison while permitting QEC codes, execution models, decoders, and hardware architectures to be introduced as modular extensions. Across workloads ranging from application-architecture studies to qLDPC surgery and detector-error-model composition, we show that schedule-derived estimates reconcile with established independent models. Crucially, this compiler-visible structure exposes cost drivers hidden by aggregate analytical formulas, carries QEC artifacts intact into simulation, and demonstrates a complete compilation pipeline for fault-tolerant quantum computing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Hybrid Classical-Quantum Supercomputing: A demonstration of a multi-user, multi-QPU and multi-GPU environment

Achieving a practical quantum advantage for near-term applications is widely expected to rely on hybrid classical-quantum algorithms. To deliver this practical advantage to users, high performance computing (HPC) centers need to provide a suitable software and hardware stack that supports algorithms of this type. In this paper, we describe the world's first implementation of a classical-quantum environment in an HPC center that allows multiple users to execute hybrid algorithms on multiple quantum processing units (QPUs) and GPUs. Our setup at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PCSS) aligns with current HPC norms: the computing hardware including QPUs is installed in an active data center room with standard facilities; there are no special considerations for networking, power, and cooling; we use Slurm for workload management as well as the NVIDIA CUDA-Q extension API for classical-quantum interactions. We demonstrate applications of this environment for hybrid classical-quantum machine learning and optimisation. The aim of this work is to provide the community with an experimental example for further research and development on how quantum computing can practically enhance and extend HPC capabilities.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Fault-Tolerant Operation and Materials Science with Neutral Atom Logical Qubits

We report on the fault-tolerant operation of logical qubits on a neutral atom quantum computer, with logical performance surpassing physical performance for multiple circuits including Bell states (12x error reduction), random circuits (15x), and a prototype Anderson Impurity Model ground state solver for materials science applications (up to 6x, non-fault-tolerantly). The logical qubits are implemented via the [[4, 2, 2]] code (C4). Our work constitutes the first complete realization of the benchmarking protocol proposed by Gottesman 2016 [1] demonstrating results consistent with fault-tolerance. In light of recent advances on applying concatenated C4/C6 detection codes to achieve error correction with high code rates and thresholds, our work can be regarded as a building block towards a practical scheme for fault tolerant quantum computation. Our demonstration of a materials science application with logical qubits particularly demonstrates the immediate value of these techniques on current experiments.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Advances in compilation for quantum hardware -- A demonstration of magic state distillation and repeat-until-success protocols

Fault-tolerant protocols enable large and precise quantum algorithms. Many such protocols rely on a feed-forward processing of data, enabled by a hybrid of quantum and classical logic. Representing the control structure of such programs can be a challenge. Here we explore two such fault-tolerant subroutines and analyze the performance of the subroutines using Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR) as their underlying intermediate representation. First, we look at QIR's ability to leverage the LLVM compiler toolchain to unroll the quantum iteration logic required to perform magic state distillation on the $[[5,1,3]]$ quantum error-correcting code as originally introduced by Bravyi and Kitaev [Phys. Rev. A 71, 022316 (2005)]. This allows us to not only realize the first implementation of a real-time magic state distillation protocol on quantum hardware, but also demonstrate QIR's ability to optimize complex program structures without degrading machine performance. Next, we investigate a different fault-tolerant protocol that was first introduced by Paetznick and Svore [arXiv:1311.1074 (2013)], that reduces the amount of non-Clifford gates needed for a particular algorithm. We look at four different implementations of this two-stage repeat-until-success algorithm to analyze the performance changes as the results of programming choices. We find the QIR offers a viable representation for a compiled high-level program that performs nearly as well as a hand-optimized version written directly in quantum assembly. Both of these results demonstrate QIR's ability to accurately and efficiently expand the complexity of fault-tolerant protocols that can be realized today on quantum hardware.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Advancing Hybrid Quantum-Classical Computation with Real-Time Execution

The use of mid-circuit measurement and qubit reset within quantum programs has been introduced recently and several applications demonstrated that perform conditional branching based on these measurements. In this work, we go a step further and describe a next-generation implementation of classical computation embedded within quantum programs that enables the real-time calculation and adjustment of program variables based on the mid-circuit state of measured qubits. A full-featured Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR) model is used to describe the quantum circuit including its embedded classical computation. This integrated approach eliminates the need to evaluate and store a potentially prohibitive volume of classical data within the quantum program in order to explore multiple solution paths. It enables a new type of quantum algorithm that requires fewer round-trips between an external classical driver program and the execution of the quantum program, significantly reducing computational latency, as much of the classical computation can be performed during the coherence time of quantum program execution. We review practical challenges to implementing this approach along with developments underway to address these challenges. An implementation of this novel and powerful quantum programming pattern, a random walk phase estimation algorithm, is demonstrated on a physical quantum computer with an analysis of its benefits and feasibility as compared to existing quantum computing methods.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Fading channel estimation for free-space continuous-variable secure quantum communication

We investigate estimation of fluctuating channels and its effect on security of continuous-variable quantum key distribution. We propose a novel estimation scheme which is based on the clusterization of the estimated transmittance data. We show that uncertainty about whether the transmittance is fixed or not results in a lower key rate. However, if the total number of measurements is large, one can obtain using our method a key rate similar to the non-fluctuating channel even for highly fluctuating channels. We also verify our theoretical assumptions using experimental data from an atmospheric quantum channel. Our method is therefore promising for secure quantum communication over strongly fluctuating turbulent atmospheric channels.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Efficient Quantum Walk Circuits for Metropolis-Hastings Algorithm

We present a detailed circuit implementation of Szegedy's quantization of the Metropolis-Hastings walk. This quantum walk is usually defined with respect to an oracle. We find that a direct implementation of this oracle requires costly arithmetic operations and thus reformulate the quantum walk in a way that circumvents the implementation of that specific oracle and which closely follows the classical Metropolis-Hastings walk. We also present heuristic quantum algorithms that use the quantum walk in the context of discrete optimization problems and numerically study their performances. Our numerical results indicate polynomial quantum speedups in heuristic settings.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Stabilization of transmittance fluctuations caused by beam wandering in continuous-variable quantum communication over free-space atmospheric channels

Transmittance fluctuations in turbulent atmospheric channels result in quadrature excess noise which limits applicability of continuous-variable quantum communication. Such fluctuations are commonly caused by beam wandering around the receiving aperture. We study the possibility to stabilize the fluctuations by expanding the beam, and test this channel stabilization in regard of continuous-variable entanglement sharing and quantum key distribution. We perform transmittance measurements of a real free-space atmospheric channel for different beam widths and show that the beam expansion reduces the fluctuations of the channel transmittance by the cost of an increased overall loss. We also theoretically study the possibility to share an entangled state or to establish secure quantum key distribution over the turbulent atmospheric channels with varying beam widths. We show the positive effect of channel stabilization by beam expansion on continuous-variable quantum communication as well as the necessity to optimize the method in order to maximize the secret key rate or the amount of shared entanglement. Being autonomous and not requiring adaptive control of the source and detectors based on characterization of beam wandering, the method of beam expansion can be also combined with other methods aiming at stabilizing the fluctuating free-space atmospheric channels.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Q#: Enabling scalable quantum computing and development with a high-level domain-specific language

Quantum computing exploits quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to realize a form of parallelism that is not available to traditional computing. It offers the potential of significant computational speed-ups in quantum chemistry, materials science, cryptography, and machine learning. The dominant approach to programming quantum computers is to provide an existing high-level language with libraries that allow for the expression of quantum programs. This approach can permit computations that are meaningless in a quantum context; prohibits succinct expression of interaction between classical and quantum logic; and does not provide important constructs that are required for quantum programming. We present Q#, a quantum-focused domain-specific language explicitly designed to correctly, clearly and completely express quantum algorithms. Q# provides a type system, a tightly constrained environment to safely interleave classical and quantum computations; specialized syntax, symbolic code manipulation to automatically generate correct transformations of quantum operations, and powerful functional constructs which aid composition.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Optimizing Schedules for Quantum Annealing

Classical and quantum annealing are two heuristic optimization methods that search for an optimal solution by slowly decreasing thermal or quantum fluctuations. Optimizing annealing schedules is important both for performance and fair comparisons between classical annealing, quantum annealing, and other algorithms. Here we present a heuristic approach for the optimization of annealing schedules for quantum annealing and apply it to 3D Ising spin glass problems. We find that if both classical and quantum annealing schedules are similarly optimized, classical annealing outperforms quantum annealing for these problems when considering the residual energy obtained in slow annealing. However, when performing many repetitions of fast annealing, simulated quantum annealing is seen to outperform classical annealing for our benchmark problems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Assessment of Quantum Annealing for the Construction of Satisfiability Filters

Satisfiability filters, introduced by S. A. Weaver et al. in 2014, are a new and promising type of filters to address set membership testing. In order to construct satisfiability filters, it is necessary to find disparate solutions to hard random $k$-SAT problems. This paper compares simulated annealing, simulated quantum annealing and walkSAT, an open-source SAT solver, in terms of their ability to find such solutions. The results indicate that solutions found by simulated quantum annealing are generally less disparate than solutions found by the other solvers and therefore less useful for the construction of satisfiability filters.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Designing Adiabatic Quantum Optimization: A Case Study for the Traveling Salesman Problem

With progress in quantum technology more sophisticated quantum annealing devices are becoming available. While they offer new possibilities for solving optimization problems, their true potential is still an open question. As the optimal design of adiabatic algorithms plays an important role in their assessment, we illustrate the aspects and challenges to consider when implementing optimization problems on quantum annealing hardware based on the example of the traveling salesman problem (TSP). We demonstrate that tunneling between local minima can be exponentially suppressed if the quantum dynamics are not carefully tailored to the problem. Furthermore we show that inequality constraints, in particular, present a major hurdle for the implementation on analog quantum annealers. We finally argue that programmable digital quantum annealers can overcome many of these obstacles and can - once large enough quantum computers exist - provide an interesting route to using quantum annealing on a large class of problems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

High-Dimensional Intra-City Quantum Cryptography with Structured Photons

Quantum key distribution (QKD) promises information-theoretically secure communication, and is already on the verge of commercialization. Thus far, different QKD protocols have been proposed theoretically and implemented experimentally [1, 2]. The next step will be to implement high-dimensional protocols in order to improve noise resistance and increase the data rate [3-7]. Hitherto, no experimental verification of high-dimensional QKD in the single-photon regime has been conducted outside of the laboratory. Here, we report the realization of such a single-photon QKD system in a turbulent free-space link of 0.3 km over the city of Ottawa, taking advantage of both the spin and orbital angular momentum photonic degrees of freedom. This combination of optical angular momenta allows us to create a 4-dimensional state [8]; wherein, using a high-dimensional BB84 protocol [3, 4], a quantum bit error rate of 11\% was attained with a corresponding secret key rate of 0.65 bits per sifted photon. While an error rate of 5\% with a secret key rate of 0.43 bits per sifted photon is achieved for the case of 2-dimensional structured photons. Even through moderate turbulence without active wavefront correction, it is possible to securely transmit information carried by structured photons, opening the way for intra-city high-dimensional quantum communications under realistic conditions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

Optimal Circuit-Level Decoding for Surface Codes

Surface codes exploit topological protection to increase error resilience in quantum computing devices and can in principle be implemented in existing hardware. They are one of the most promising candidates for active error correction, not least due to a polynomial-time decoding algorithm which admits one of the highest predicted error thresholds. We consider the dependence of this threshold on underlying assumptions including different noise models, and analyze the performance of a minimum weight perfect matching (MWPM) decoding compared to a mathematically optimal maximum likelihood (ML) decoding. Our ML algorithm tracks the success probabilities for all possible corrections over time and accounts for individual gate failure probabilities and error propagation due to the syndrome measurement circuit. We present the very first evidence for the true error threshold of an optimal circuit level decoder, allowing us to draw conclusions about what kind of improvements are possible over standard MWPM.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2016

Free-space quantum signatures using heterodyne detection

Digital signatures guarantee the authorship of electronic communications. Currently used "classical" signature schemes rely on unproven computational assumptions for security, while quantum signatures rely only on the laws of quantum mechanics. Previous quantum signature schemes have used unambiguous quantum measurements. Such measurements, however, sometimes give no result, reducing the efficiency of the protocol. Here, we instead use heterodyne detection, which always gives a result, although there is always some uncertainty. We experimentally demonstrate feasibility in a real environment by distributing signature states through a noisy 1.6km free-space channel. Our results show that continuous-variable heterodyne detection improves the signature rate for this type of scheme and therefore represents an interesting direction in the search for practical quantum signature schemes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Depolarized guided acoustic wave Brillouin scattering in hollow-core photonic crystal fibers

By performing quantum-noise-limited optical heterodyne detection, we observe polarization noise in light after propagation through a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF). We compare the noise spectrum to the one of a standard fiber and find an increase of noise even though the light is mainly transmitted in air in a hollow-core PCF. Combined with our simulation of the acoustic vibrational modes in the hollow-core PCF, we are offering an explanation for the polarization noise with a variation of guided acoustic wave Brillouin scattering (GAWBS). Here, instead of modulating the strain in the fiber core as in a solid core fiber, the acoustic vibrations in hollow-core PCF influence the effective refractive index by modulating the geometry of the photonic crystal structure. This induces polarization noise in the light guided by the photonic crystal structure.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2014

Quantum versus Classical Annealing of Ising Spin Glasses

The strongest evidence for superiority of quantum annealing on spin glass problems has come from comparing simulated quantum annealing using quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods to simulated classical annealing [G. Santoro et al., Science 295, 2427(2002)]. Motivated by experiments on programmable quantum annealing devices we revisit the question of when quantum speedup may be expected for Ising spin glass problems. We find that even though a better scaling compared to simulated classical annealing can be achieved for QMC simulations, this advantage is due to time discretization and measurements which are not possible on a physical quantum annealing device. QMC simulations in the physically relevant continuous time limit, on the other hand, do not show superiority. Our results imply that care has to be taken when using QMC simulations to assess quantum speedup potential and are consistent with recent arguments that no quantum speedup should be expected for two-dimensional spin glass problems.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2014

Distribution of squeezed states through an atmospheric channel

Continuous variable quantum states of light are used in quantum information protocols and quantum metrology and known to degrade with loss and added noise. We were able to show the distribution of bright polarization squeezed quantum states of light through an urban free-space channel of 1.6 km length. To measure the squeezed states in this extreme environment, we utilize polarization encoding and a post-selection protocol that is taking into account classical side information stemming from the distribution of transmission values. The successful distribution of continuous variable squeezed states is accentuated by a quantum state tomography, allowing for determining the purity of the state.

quant-ph↗