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Carlos A. Perez-Delgado

Publications and source records attributed to Carlos A. Perez-Delgado.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

Quantum Nonlocal Games on Graph Ensembles

Quantum entanglement is one of the most striking discoveries in all of science. This effect allows, for instance, two spatially separated agents to coordinate their actions, without communication, to an extent that is both counter-intuitive, and provably impossible by any other physical means. A recently discovered example is that of mobile agents (players) performing spatial coordination tasks such as rendezvous, where the agents aim to meet on a network without communication. Until now, demonstrations of this advantage have relied on highly idealized conditions: agents are assumed to have complete knowledge of the topography, and experiments have been restricted to simulations using data generated by qubits within a single quantum processor. Here we address both limitations by developing a theory for graph ensembles that capture topographical uncertainty and by experimentally demonstrating the advantage in rendezvous scenarios between physically separated ion-trap systems with access to remote entanglement. Moreover, we simulate a broader set of problems on superconducting hardware. Surprisingly, when players are given the ability to gather more local information the quantum advantage increases -- a feat impossible by classical means. Our findings establish a concrete route toward practical quantum advantages in motion coordination problems. More broadly, they point to a new way of using portable quantum devices to enhance collective decision-making in uncertain environments.

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Downtime Required for Bitcoin Quantum-Safety

Quantum devices capable of breaking the public-key cryptosystems that Bitcoin relies on to secure its transactions are expected with reasonable probability within a decade. Quantum attacks would put at risk the entire Bitcoin network, which has an estimated value of around 500 billion USD. To prevent this threat, a proactive approach is critical. The only known way to prevent any such attack is to upgrade the currently used public-key cryptosystems, namely ECDSA, with so-called post-quantum cryptosystems which have no known vulnerabilities to quantum attacks. In this paper, we analyse the technical cost of such an upgrade. We calculate a non-tight lower bound on the cumulative downtime required for the above transition to be 1827.96 hours, or 76.16 days. We also demonstrate that the transition needs to be fully completed before the availability of ECDSA-256 breaking quantum devices, in order to ensure Bitcoin's ongoing security. The conclusion is that the Bitcoin upgrade to quantum-safe protocols needs to be started as soon as possible in order to guarantee its ongoing operations.

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Q-COSMIC: Quantum Software Metrics Based on COSMIC (ISO/IEC19761)

Quantum engineering seeks to exploit quantum information to build, among others, computing, cybersecurity, and metrology technologies. Quantum Software Engineering (QSE) focuses on the information processing side of these technologies. Historically, quantum (software) engineering has focused on development in controlled research environments and 'in the small'. As the field progresses, we should expect to see more large-scale quantum systems to be deployed as 'real-world' products and services. An essential tool in (classical) software engineering and development has been software size metrics. Calculating/estimating the size of a piece of software, to be developed or pre-existing, is an essential step in its engineering. Quantum software will be no different. Here we introduce Q-COSMIC, a technique for measuring the functional size of quantum software, based on the well-regarded COSMIC standard (ISO/IEC19761) for classical software

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Quantum Advantage on Proof of Work

Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a fundamental underlying technology behind most major blockchain cryptocurrencies. It has been previously pointed out that quantum devices provide a computational advantage in performing PoW in the context of Bitcoin. Here we make the case that this quantum advantage extends not only to all existing PoW mechanisms, but to any possible PoW as well. This has strong consequences regarding both quantum-based attacks on the integrity of the entirety of the blockchain, as well as more legitimate uses of quantum computation for the purpose of mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. For the first case, we estimate when these quantum attacks will become feasible, for various cryptocurrencies, and discuss the impact of such attacks. For the latter, we derive a precise formula to calculate the economic incentive for switching to quantum-based cryptocurrency miners. Using this formula, we analyze several test scenarios, and conclude that investing in quantum hardware for cryptocurrency mining has the potential to pay off immensely.

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Vulnerability of Blockchain Technologies to Quantum Attacks

Quantum computation represents a threat to many cryptographic protocols in operation today. It has been estimated that by 2035, there will exist a quantum computer capable of breaking the vital cryptographic scheme RSA2048. Blockchain technologies rely on cryptographic protocols for many of their essential sub-routines. Some of these protocols, but not all, are open to quantum attacks. Here we analyze the major blockchain-based cryptocurrencies deployed today -- including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and ZCash, and determine their risk exposure to quantum attacks. We finish with a comparative analysis of the studied cryptocurrencies and their underlying blockchain technologies and their relative levels of vulnerability to quantum attacks.

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Towards a Quantum Software Modeling Language

We set down the principles behind a modeling language for quantum software. We present a minimal set of extensions to the well-known Unified Modeling Language (UML) that allows it to effectively model quantum software. These extensions are separate and independent of UML as a whole. As such they can be used to extend any other software modeling language, or as a basis for a completely new language. We argue that these extensions are both necessary and sufficient to model, abstractly, any piece of quantum software. Finally, we provide a small set of examples that showcase the effectiveness of the extension set.

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A measurement driven analog of adiabatic quantum computation for frustration-free Hamiltonians

The adiabatic quantum algorithm has drawn intense interest as a potential approach to accelerating optimization tasks using quantum computation. The algorithm is most naturally realised in systems which support Hamiltonian evolution, rather than discrete gates. We explore an alternative approach in which slowly varying measurements are used to mimic adiabatic evolution. We show that for certain Hamiltonians, which remain frustration-free all along the adiabatic path, the necessary measurements can be implemented through the measurement of random terms from the Hamiltonian. This offers a new, and potentially more viable, method of realising adiabatic evolution in gate-based quantum computer architectures.

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Limitations on information theoretically secure quantum homomorphic encryption

Homomorphic encryption is a form of encryption which allows computation to be carried out on the encrypted data without the need for decryption. The success of quantum approaches to related tasks in a delegated computation setting has raised the question of whether quantum mechanics may be used to achieve information theoretically secure fully homomorphic encryption. Here we show, via an information localisation argument, that deterministic fully homomorphic encryption necessarily incurs exponential overhead if perfect security is required.

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Optimal Blind Quantum Computation

Blind quantum computation allows a client with limited quantum capabilities to interact with a remote quantum computer to perform an arbitrary quantum computation, while keeping the description of that computation hidden from the remote quantum computer. While a number of protocols have been proposed in recent years, little is currently understood about the resources necessary to accomplish the task. Here we present general techniques for upper and lower bounding the quantum communication necessary to perform blind quantum computation, and use these techniques to establish a concrete bounds for common choices of the client's quantum capabilities. Our results show that the UBQC protocol of Broadbent, Fitzsimons and Kashefi [1], comes within a factor of 8/3 of optimal when the client is restricted to preparing single qubits. However, we describe a generalization of this protocol which requires exponentially less quantum communication when the client has a more sophisticated device.

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General optimality of the Heisenberg limit for quantum metrology

Quantum metrology promises improved sensitivity in parameter estimation over classical procedures. However, there is an extensive debate over the question how the sensitivity scales with the resources (such as the average photon number) and number of queries that are used in estimation procedures. Here, we reconcile the physical definition of the relevant resources used in parameter estimation with the information-theoretical scaling in terms of the query complexity of a quantum network. This leads to a completely general optimality proof of the Heisenberg limit for quantum metrology. We give an example how our proof resolves paradoxes that suggest sensitivities beyond the Heisenberg limit, and we show that the Heisenberg limit is an information-theoretic interpretation of the Margolus-Levitin bound, rather than Heisenberg's uncertainty relation.

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What is a quantum computer, and how do we build one?

The DiVincenzo criteria for implementing a quantum computer have been seminal in focussing both experimental and theoretical research in quantum information processing. These criteria were formulated specifically for the circuit model of quantum computing. However, several new models for quantum computing (paradigms) have been proposed that do not seem to fit the criteria well. The question is therefore what are the general criteria for implementing quantum computers. To this end, a formal operational definition of a quantum computer is introduced. It is then shown that according to this definition a device is a quantum computer if it obeys the following four criteria: Any quantum computer must (1) have a quantum memory; (2) facilitate a controlled quantum evolution of the quantum memory; (3) include a method for cooling the quantum memory; and (4) provide a readout mechanism for subsets of the quantum memory. The criteria are met when the device is scalable and operates fault-tolerantly. We discuss various existing quantum computing paradigms, and how they fit within this framework. Finally, we lay out a roadmap for selecting an avenue towards building a quantum computer. This is summarized in a decision tree intended to help experimentalists determine the most natural paradigm given a particular physical implementation.

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Cellular Automata as a Model of Physical Systems

Cellular Automata (CA), as they are presented in the literature, are abstract mathematical models of computation. In this pa- per we present an alternate approach: using the CA as a model or theory of physical systems and devices. While this approach abstracts away all details of the underlying physical system, it remains faithful to the fact that there is an underlying physical reality which it describes. This imposes certain restrictions on the types of computations a CA can physically carry out, and the resources it needs to do so. In this paper we explore these and other consequences of our reformalization.

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Local Unitary Quantum Cellular Automata

In this paper we present a quantization of Cellular Automata. Our formalism is based on a lattice of qudits, and an update rule consisting of local unitary operators that commute with their own lattice translations. One purpose of this model is to act as a theoretical model of quantum computation, similar to the quantum circuit model. It is also shown to be an appropriate abstraction for space-homogeneous quantum phenomena, such as quantum lattice gases, spin chains and others. Some results that show the benefits of basing the model on local unitary operators are shown: universality, strong connections to the circuit model, simple implementation on quantum hardware, and a wealth of applications.

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Single spin measurement using cellular automata techniques

We propose an approach for single spin measurement. Our method uses techniques from the theory of quantum cellular automata to correlate a large amount of ancillary spins to the one to be measured. It has the distinct advantage of being efficient, and to a certain extent fault-tolerant. Under ideal conditions, it requires the application of only order of cube root of N steps (each requiring a constant number of rf pulses) to create a system of N correlated spins. It is also fairly robust against pulse errors, imperfect initial polarization of the ancilla spin system, and does not rely on entanglement. We study the scalability of our scheme through numerical simulation.

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Models of Quantum Cellular Automata

In this paper we present a systematic view of Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA), a mathematical formalism of quantum computation. First we give a general mathematical framework with which to study QCA models. Then we present four different QCA models, and compare them. One model we discuss is the traditional QCA, similar to those introduced by Shumacher and Werner, Watrous, and Van Dam. We discuss also Margolus QCA, also discussed by Schumacher and Werner. We introduce two new models, Coloured QCA, and Continuous-Time QCA. We also compare our models with the established models. We give proofs of computational equivalence for several of these models. We show the strengths of each model, and provide examples of how our models can be useful to come up with algorithms, and implement them in real-world physical devices.

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