arXiv subjects

Christian B. Mendl

Publications and source records attributed to Christian B. Mendl.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Integration of Quantum Accelerators with High Performance Computing -- A Review of Quantum Programming Tools

Quantum computing (QC) introduces a novel mode of computation with the possibility of greater computational power that remains to be exploited - presenting exciting opportunities for high performance computing (HPC) applications. However, recent advancements in the field have made clear that QC does not supplant conventional HPC, but can rather be incorporated into current heterogeneous HPC infrastructures as an additional accelerator, thereby enabling the optimal utilization of both paradigms. The desire for such integration significantly affects the development of software for quantum computers, which in turn influences the necessary software infrastructure. To date, previous review papers have investigated various quantum programming tools (QPTs) (such as languages, libraries, frameworks) in their ability to program, compile, and execute quantum circuits. However, the integration effort with classical HPC frameworks or systems has not been addressed. This study aims to characterize existing QPTs from an HPC perspective, investigating if existing QPTs have the potential to be efficiently integrated with classical computing models and determining where work is still required. This work structures a set of criteria into an analysis blueprint that enables HPC scientists to assess whether a QPT is suitable for the quantum-accelerated classical application at hand.

cs.ET↗

arXiv2023

Correlations in Disordered Solvable Tensor Network States

Solvable matrix product and projected entangled pair states evolved by dual and ternary-unitary quantum circuits have analytically accessible correlation functions. Here, we investigate the influence of disorder. Specifically, we compute the average behavior of a physically motivated two-point equal-time correlation function with respect to random disordered solvable tensor network states arising from the Haar measure on the unitary group. By employing the Weingarten calculus, we provide an exact analytical expression for the average of the $k$th moment of the correlation function. The complexity of the expression scales with $k!$ and is independent of the complexity of the underlying tensor network state. Our result implies that the correlation function vanishes on average, while its covariance is nonzero.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Benchmarking the Variational Quantum Eigensolver using different quantum hardware

The Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) is a promising quantum algorithm for applications in chemistry within the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era. The ability for a quantum computer to simulate electronic structures with high accuracy would have a profound impact on material and biochemical science with potential applications e.g., to the development of new drugs. However, considering the variety of quantum hardware architectures, it is still uncertain which hardware concept is most suited to execute the VQE for e.g., the simulation of molecules. Aspects to consider here are the required connectivity of the quantum circuit used, the size and the depth and thus the susceptibility to noise effects. Besides theoretical considerations, empirical studies using available quantum hardware may help to clarify the question of which hardware technology might be better suited for a certain given application and algorithm. Going one step into this direction, within this work, we present results using the VQE for the simulation of the hydrogen molecule, comparing superconducting and ion trap quantum computers. The experiments are carried out with a standardized setup of ansatz and optimizer, selected to reduce the amount of iterations required. The findings are analyzed considering different quantum processor types, calibration data as well as the depth and gate counts of the circuits required for the different hardware concepts after transpilation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Quantum-Assisted Solution Paths for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem

Many relevant problems in industrial settings result in NP-hard optimization problems, such as the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) or its reduced variant, the Travelling Salesperson Problem (TSP). Even with today's most powerful classical algorithms, the CVRP is challenging to solve classically. Quantum computing may offer a way to improve the time to solution, although the question remains open as to whether Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices can achieve a practical advantage compared to classical heuristics. The most prominent algorithms proposed to solve combinatorial optimization problems in the NISQ era are the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) and the more general Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE). However, implementing them in a way that reliably provides high-quality solutions is challenging, even for toy examples. In this work, we discuss decomposition and formulation aspects of the CVRP and propose an application-driven way to measure solution quality. Considering current hardware constraints, we reduce the CVRP to a clustering phase and a set of TSPs. For the TSP, we extensively test both QAOA and VQE and investigate the influence of various hyperparameters, such as the classical optimizer choice and strength of constraint penalization. Results of QAOA are generally of limited quality because the algorithm does not reach the energy threshold for feasible TSP solutions, even when considering various extensions such as recursive, warm-start and constraint-preserving mixer QAOA. On the other hand, the VQE reaches the energy threshold and shows a better performance. Our work outlines the obstacles to quantum-assisted solutions for real-world optimization problems and proposes perspectives on how to overcome them.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

A recursively partitioned approach to architecture-aware ZX Polynomial synthesis and optimization

The synthesis of quantum circuits from phase gadgets in the ZX-calculus facilitates quantum circuit optimization. Our work provides an alternative formulation for the architecture-aware synthesis algorithm of PauliOpt by replacing the stochastic approach of PauliOpt with a heuristic based search and utilizes a divide and conquer method to synthesize an optimized circuit from a ZX polynomial. We provide a comparison of our algorithm with PauliOpt and other state-of-the-art optimization libraries. While we note poorer performance for highly structured circuits, as in the QAOA formulation for Max-Cut, we demonstrate a significant advantage for randomized circuits, which highlights the advantages of utilizing an architecture-aware methodology.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Simulating quantum circuits using tree tensor networks

We develop and analyze a method for simulating quantum circuits on classical computers by representing quantum states as rooted tree tensor networks. Our algorithm first determines a suitable, fixed tree structure adapted to the expected entanglement generated by the quantum circuit. The gates are sequentially applied to the tree by absorbing single-qubit gates into leaf nodes, and splitting two-qubit gates via singular value decomposition and threading the resulting virtual bond through the tree. We theoretically analyze the applicability of the method as well as its computational cost and memory requirements, and identify advantageous scenarios in terms of required bond dimensions as compared to a matrix product state representation. The study is complemented by numerical experiments for different quantum circuit layouts up to 37 qubits.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Equilibrium Spacetime Correlations of the Toda Lattice on the Hydrodynamic Scale

We report on molecular dynamics simulations of spacetime correlations of the Toda lattice in thermal equilibrium. The correlations of stretch, momentum, and energy are computed numerically over a wide range of pressure and temperature. Our numerical results are compared with the predictions from linearized generalized hydrodynamics on the Euler scale. The system size is N=3000,4000 and time t =600, at which ballistic scaling is well confirmed. With no adjustable parameters, the numerically obtained scaling functions agree with the theory within a precision of less than 3.5%.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Reinforcement Learning for Solving a Stochastic Frozen Lake Environment and the Impact of Quantum Architecture Choices

Quantum reinforcement learning (QRL) models augment classical reinforcement learning schemes with quantum-enhanced kernels. Different proposals on how to construct such models empirically show a promising performance. In particular, these models might offer a reduced parameter count and shorter times to reach a solution than classical models. It is however presently unclear how these quantum-enhanced kernels as subroutines within a reinforcement learning pipeline need to be constructed to indeed result in an improved performance in comparison to classical models. In this work we exactly address this question. First, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical reinforcement learning model that solves a slippery stochastic frozen lake, an environment considerably more difficult than the deterministic frozen lake. Secondly, different quantum architectures are studied as options for this hybrid quantum-classical reinforcement learning model, all of them well-motivated by the literature. They all show very promising performances with respect to similar classical variants. We further characterize these choices by metrics that are relevant to benchmark the power of quantum circuits, such as the entanglement capability, the expressibility, and the information density of the circuits. However, we find that these typical metrics do not directly predict the performance of a QRL model.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Ternary unitary quantum lattice models and circuits in $2 + 1$ dimensions

We extend the concept of dual unitary quantum gates to quantum lattice models in $2 + 1$ dimensions, by introducing and studying ternary unitary four-particle gates, which are unitary in time and both spatial dimensions. When used as building blocks of lattice models with periodic boundary conditions in time and space (corresponding to infinite temperature states), dynamical correlation functions exhibit a light-ray structure. We also generalize solvable MPS to two spatial dimensions with cylindrical boundary conditions, by showing that the analogous solvable PEPS can be identified with matrix product unitaries. In the resulting tensor network for evaluating equal-time correlation functions, the bulk ternary unitary gates cancel out. We delineate and implement a numerical algorithm for computing such correlations by contracting the remaining tensors.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Process Tomography of Unitary Maps from Time-Delayed Measurements

Quantum process tomography conventionally uses a multitude of initial quantum states and then performs state tomography on the process output. Here we propose and study an alternative approach which requires only a single (or few) known initial states together with time-delayed measurements for reconstructing the unitary map and corresponding Hamiltonian of the time dynamics. The overarching mathematical framework and feasibility guarantee of our method is provided by the Takens embedding theorem. We explain in detail how the reconstruction of a single qubit Hamiltonian works in this setting, and provide numerical methods and experiments for general few-qubit and lattice systems with local interactions. In particular, the method allows to find the Hamiltonian of a two qubit system by observing only one of the qubits.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Towards AutoQML: A Cloud-Based Automated Circuit Architecture Search Framework

The learning process of classical machine learning algorithms is tuned by hyperparameters that need to be customized to best learn and generalize from an input dataset. In recent years, Quantum Machine Learning (QML) has been gaining traction as a possible application of quantum computing which may provide quantum advantage in the future. However, quantum versions of classical machine learning algorithms introduce a plethora of additional parameters and circuit variations that have their own intricacies in being tuned. In this work, we take the first steps towards Automated Quantum Machine Learning (AutoQML). We propose a concrete description of the problem, and then develop a classical-quantum hybrid cloud architecture that allows for parallelized hyperparameter exploration and model training. As an application use-case, we train a quantum Generative Adversarial neural Network (qGAN) to generate energy prices that follow a known historic data distribution. Such a QML model can be used for various applications in the energy economics sector.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Efficient quantum circuit simulation using a multi-qubit Bloch vector representation of density matrices

In the Bloch sphere picture, one finds the coefficients for expanding a single-qubit density operator in terms of the identity and Pauli matrices. A generalization to $n$ qubits via tensor products represents a density operator by a real vector of length $4^n$, conceptually similar to a statevector. Here, we study this approach for the purpose of quantum circuit simulation, including noise processes. The tensor structure leads to computationally efficient algorithms for applying circuit gates and performing few-qubit quantum operations. In view of variational circuit optimization, we study ``backpropagation'' through a quantum circuit and gradient computation based on this representation, and generalize our analysis to the Lindblad equation for modeling the (non-unitary) time evolution of a density operator.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Real time evolution with neural-network quantum states

A promising application of neural-network quantum states is to describe the time dynamics of many-body quantum systems. To realize this idea, we employ neural-network quantum states to approximate the implicit midpoint rule method, which preserves the symplectic form of Hamiltonian dynamics. We ensure that our complex-valued neural networks are holomorphic functions, and exploit this property to efficiently compute gradients. Application to the transverse-field Ising model on a one- and two-dimensional lattice exhibits an accuracy comparable to the stochastic configuration method proposed in [Carleo and Troyer, Science 355, 602-606 (2017)], but does not require computing the (pseudo-)inverse of a matrix.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2021

Hybrid Classical-Quantum Autoencoder for Anomaly Detection

We propose a Hybrid classical-quantum Autoencoder (HAE) model, which is a synergy of a classical autoencoder (AE) and a parametrized quantum circuit (PQC) that is inserted into its bottleneck. The PQC augments the latent space, on which a standard outlier detection method is applied to search for anomalous data points within a classical dataset. Using this model and applying it to both standard benchmarking datasets, and a specific use-case dataset which relates to predictive maintenance of gas power plants, we show that the addition of the PQC leads to a performance enhancement in terms of precision, recall, and F1 score. Furthermore, we probe different PQC Ansätze and analyse which PQC features make them effective for this task.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Quantum Algorithms for Solving Ordinary Differential Equations via Classical Integration Methods

Identifying computational tasks suitable for (future) quantum computers is an active field of research. Here we explore utilizing quantum computers for the purpose of solving differential equations. We consider two approaches: (i) basis encoding and fixed-point arithmetic on a digital quantum computer, and (ii) representing and solving high-order Runge-Kutta methods as optimization problems on quantum annealers. As realizations applied to two-dimensional linear ordinary differential equations, we devise and simulate corresponding digital quantum circuits, and implement and run a 6$^{\mathrm{th}}$ order Gauss-Legendre collocation method on a D-Wave 2000Q system, showing good agreement with the reference solution. We find that the quantum annealing approach exhibits the largest potential for high-order implicit integration methods. As promising future scenario, the digital arithmetic method could be employed as an "oracle" within quantum search algorithms for inverse problems.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

High-low pressure domain wall for the classical Toda lattice

We study the classical Toda lattice with domain wall initial conditions, for which left and right half lattice are in thermal equilibrium but with distinct parameters of pressure, mean velocity, and temperature. In the hydrodynamic regime the respective space-time profiles scale ballisticly. The particular case of interest is a jump from low to high pressure at uniform temperature and zero mean velocity. Thereby the scaling function for the average stretch (also free volume) is forced to change sign. By direct inspection, the hydrodynamic equations for the Toda lattice seem to be singular at zero stretch. In our contribution we report on numerical solutions and convincingly establish that nevertheless the self-similar solution exhibits smooth behavior.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2021

Coherent Terahertz Radiation from a Nonlinear Oscillator of Viscous Electrons

Compressible electron flow through a narrow cavity is theoretically unstable, and the oscillations occurring during the instability have been proposed as a method of generating Terahertz radiation. We numerically demonstrate that the endpoint of this instability is a nonlinear hydrodynamic oscillator, consisting of an alternating shock wave and rarefaction-like relaxation flowing back and forth in the device. This qualitative physics is robust to cavity inhomogeneity and changes in the equation of state of the fluid. We discuss the frequency and amplitude dependence of the emitted radiation on physical parameters (viscosity, momentum relaxation rate, and bias current) beyond linear response theory, providing clear predictions for future experiments.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Solving Differential Equations via Continuous-Variable Quantum Computers

We explore how a continuous-variable (CV) quantum computer could solve a classic differential equation, making use of its innate capability to represent real numbers in qumodes. Specifically, we construct variational CV quantum circuits [Killoran et al., Phys.~Rev.~Research 1, 033063 (2019)] to approximate the solution of one-dimensional ordinary differential equations (ODEs), with input encoding based on displacement gates and output via measurement averages. Our simulations and parameter optimization using the PennyLane / Strawberry Fields framework demonstrate good convergence for both linear and non-linear ODEs.

quant-ph↗