arXiv subjects

Cody Jones

Publications and source records attributed to Cody Jones.

36 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

LILLIPUT: A Lightweight Low-Latency Lookup-Table Based Decoder for Near-term Quantum Error Correction

The error rates of quantum devices are orders of magnitude higher than what is needed to run most quantum applications. To close this gap, Quantum Error Correction (QEC) encodes logical qubits and distributes information using several physical qubits. By periodically executing a syndrome extraction circuit on the logical qubits, information about errors (called syndrome) is extracted while running programs. A decoder uses these syndromes to identify and correct errors in real time, which is required to use feedback implemented in quantum algorithms. Unfortunately, software decoders are slow and hardware decoders are fast but less accurate. Thus, almost all QEC studies so far have relied on offline decoding. To enable real-time decoding in near-term QEC, we propose LILLIPUT-- a Lightweight Low Latency Look-Up Table decoder. LILLIPUT consists of two parts-- First, it translates syndromes into error detection events that index into a Look-Up Table (LUT) whose entry provides the error information in real-time. Second, it programs the LUTs with error assignments for all possible error events by running a software decoder offline. LILLIPUT tolerates an error on any operation in the quantum hardware, including gates and measurement, and the number of tolerated errors grows with the size of the code. It needs <7% logic on off-the-shelf FPGAs that allows it to be easily integrated alongside the control and readout circuits in existing systems. LILLIPUT incurs a latency of few nanoseconds and enables real-time decoding. We also propose Compressed LUTs (CLUTs) to reduce the memory needed by LILLIPUT. By exploiting the fact that not all error events are equally likely and only storing data for the most probable error events, CLUTs reduce the memory needed by up-to 107x (from 148 MB to 1.38 MB) without degrading accuracy.

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arXiv2021

Observation of Time-Crystalline Eigenstate Order on a Quantum Processor

Quantum many-body systems display rich phase structure in their low-temperature equilibrium states. However, much of nature is not in thermal equilibrium. Remarkably, it was recently predicted that out-of-equilibrium systems can exhibit novel dynamical phases that may otherwise be forbidden by equilibrium thermodynamics, a paradigmatic example being the discrete time crystal (DTC). Concretely, dynamical phases can be defined in periodically driven many-body localized systems via the concept of eigenstate order. In eigenstate-ordered phases, the entire many-body spectrum exhibits quantum correlations and long-range order, with characteristic signatures in late-time dynamics from all initial states. It is, however, challenging to experimentally distinguish such stable phases from transient phenomena, wherein few select states can mask typical behavior. Here we implement a continuous family of tunable CPHASE gates on an array of superconducting qubits to experimentally observe an eigenstate-ordered DTC. We demonstrate the characteristic spatiotemporal response of a DTC for generic initial states. Our work employs a time-reversal protocol that discriminates external decoherence from intrinsic thermalization, and leverages quantum typicality to circumvent the exponential cost of densely sampling the eigenspectrum. In addition, we locate the phase transition out of the DTC with an experimental finite-size analysis. These results establish a scalable approach to study non-equilibrium phases of matter on current quantum processors.

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arXiv2021

Exponential suppression of bit or phase flip errors with repetitive error correction

Realizing the potential of quantum computing will require achieving sufficiently low logical error rates. Many applications call for error rates in the $10^{-15}$ regime, but state-of-the-art quantum platforms typically have physical error rates near $10^{-3}$. Quantum error correction (QEC) promises to bridge this divide by distributing quantum logical information across many physical qubits so that errors can be detected and corrected. Logical errors are then exponentially suppressed as the number of physical qubits grows, provided that the physical error rates are below a certain threshold. QEC also requires that the errors are local and that performance is maintained over many rounds of error correction, two major outstanding experimental challenges. Here, we implement 1D repetition codes embedded in a 2D grid of superconducting qubits which demonstrate exponential suppression of bit or phase-flip errors, reducing logical error per round by more than $100\times$ when increasing the number of qubits from 5 to 21. Crucially, this error suppression is stable over 50 rounds of error correction. We also introduce a method for analyzing error correlations with high precision, and characterize the locality of errors in a device performing QEC for the first time. Finally, we perform error detection using a small 2D surface code logical qubit on the same device, and show that the results from both 1D and 2D codes agree with numerical simulations using a simple depolarizing error model. These findings demonstrate that superconducting qubits are on a viable path towards fault tolerant quantum computing.

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arXiv2021

Quantum Approximate Optimization of Non-Planar Graph Problems on a Planar Superconducting Processor

We demonstrate the application of the Google Sycamore superconducting qubit quantum processor to combinatorial optimization problems with the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). Like past QAOA experiments, we study performance for problems defined on the (planar) connectivity graph of our hardware; however, we also apply the QAOA to the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model and MaxCut, both high dimensional graph problems for which the QAOA requires significant compilation. Experimental scans of the QAOA energy landscape show good agreement with theory across even the largest instances studied (23 qubits) and we are able to perform variational optimization successfully. For problems defined on our hardware graph we obtain an approximation ratio that is independent of problem size and observe, for the first time, that performance increases with circuit depth. For problems requiring compilation, performance decreases with problem size but still provides an advantage over random guessing for circuits involving several thousand gates. This behavior highlights the challenge of using near-term quantum computers to optimize problems on graphs differing from hardware connectivity. As these graphs are more representative of real world instances, our results advocate for more emphasis on such problems in the developing tradition of using the QAOA as a holistic, device-level benchmark of quantum processors.

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arXiv2021

Information Scrambling in Computationally Complex Quantum Circuits

Interaction in quantum systems can spread initially localized quantum information into the many degrees of freedom of the entire system. Understanding this process, known as quantum scrambling, is the key to resolving various conundrums in physics. Here, by measuring the time-dependent evolution and fluctuation of out-of-time-order correlators, we experimentally investigate the dynamics of quantum scrambling on a 53-qubit quantum processor. We engineer quantum circuits that distinguish the two mechanisms associated with quantum scrambling, operator spreading and operator entanglement, and experimentally observe their respective signatures. We show that while operator spreading is captured by an efficient classical model, operator entanglement requires exponentially scaled computational resources to simulate. These results open the path to studying complex and practically relevant physical observables with near-term quantum processors.

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arXiv2020

Observation of separated dynamics of charge and spin in the Fermi-Hubbard model

Strongly correlated quantum systems give rise to many exotic physical phenomena, including high-temperature superconductivity. Simulating these systems on quantum computers may avoid the prohibitively high computational cost incurred in classical approaches. However, systematic errors and decoherence effects presented in current quantum devices make it difficult to achieve this. Here, we simulate the dynamics of the one-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model using 16 qubits on a digital superconducting quantum processor. We observe separations in the spreading velocities of charge and spin densities in the highly excited regime, a regime that is beyond the conventional quasiparticle picture. To minimize systematic errors, we introduce an accurate gate calibration procedure that is fast enough to capture temporal drifts of the gate parameters. We also employ a sequence of error-mitigation techniques to reduce decoherence effects and residual systematic errors. These procedures allow us to simulate the time evolution of the model faithfully despite having over 600 two-qubit gates in our circuits. Our experiment charts a path to practical quantum simulation of strongly correlated phenomena using available quantum devices.

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arXiv2020

Hartree-Fock on a superconducting qubit quantum computer

As the search continues for useful applications of noisy intermediate scale quantum devices, variational simulations of fermionic systems remain one of the most promising directions. Here, we perform a series of quantum simulations of chemistry the largest of which involved a dozen qubits, 78 two-qubit gates, and 114 one-qubit gates. We model the binding energy of ${\rm H}_6$, ${\rm H}_8$, ${\rm H}_{10}$ and ${\rm H}_{12}$ chains as well as the isomerization of diazene. We also demonstrate error-mitigation strategies based on $N$-representability which dramatically improve the effective fidelity of our experiments. Our parameterized ansatz circuits realize the Givens rotation approach to non-interacting fermion evolution, which we variationally optimize to prepare the Hartree-Fock wavefunction. This ubiquitous algorithmic primitive corresponds to a rotation of the orbital basis and is required by many proposals for correlated simulations of molecules and Hubbard models. Because non-interacting fermion evolutions are classically tractable to simulate, yet still generate highly entangled states over the computational basis, we use these experiments to benchmark the performance of our hardware while establishing a foundation for scaling up more complex correlated quantum simulations of chemistry.

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arXiv2017

Gauge-invariant Adiabatic Two-Qubit Gates for Exchange-Only Qubits

We extend recent work on a leakage-protected, adiabatic entangling gate for exchange-only spin qubits [Doherty and Wardrop, PRL 111, 050503 (2013)] by adapting to a setting where single spins are not assumed to be polarized on preparation. Previous gate constructions do not function correctly when "gauge spins" are uninitialized, because the entangling gate has different, non-trivial action in different gauge subspaces. Our construction inherits many of the desirable features of the previous work while addressing the gauge-dependent behavior. Using numerical simulation, we show that the resulting gate implements the same logical operation in both gauge subspaces to first order in perturbation theory, and second-order terms introduce an error that decreases quadratically in the duration of the gate. We add $1/f$ charge noise to voltages modulating exchange in this model, which introduces errors that increase with gate time, to show that there is an optimal gate duration for a given set of device parameters.

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arXiv2017

A logical qubit in a linear array of semiconductor quantum dots

We design and analyze a logical qubit composed of a linear array of electron spins in semiconductor quantum dots. To avoid the difficulty of fully controlling a two-dimensional array of dots, we adapt spin control and error correction to a one-dimensional line of silicon quantum dots. Control speed and efficiency are maintained via a scheme in which electron spin states are controlled globally using broadband microwave pulses for magnetic resonance while two-qubit gates are provided by local electrical control of the exchange interaction between neighboring dots. Error correction with two-, three-, and four-qubit codes is adapted to a linear chain of qubits with nearest-neighbor gates. We estimate an error correction threshold of 1e-4. Furthermore, we describe a sequence of experiments to validate the methods on near-term devices starting from four coupled dots.

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arXiv2015

Gauge color codes in two dimensions

We present a family of quantum error-correcting codes that support a universal set of transversal logic gates using only local operations on a two-dimensional array of physical qubits. The construction is a subsystem version of color codes where gauge fixing through local measurements dynamically determines which gates are transversal. Although the operations are local, the underlying code is not topological in structure, which is how the construction circumvents no-go constraints imposed by the Bravyi-König and Pastawski-Yoshida theorems. We provide strong evidence that the encoding has no error threshold in the conventional sense, though it is still possible to have logical gates with error probability much lower than that of physical gates.

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arXiv2015

Optically Loaded Semiconductor Quantum Memory Register

We propose and analyze an optically loaded quantum memory exploiting capacitive coupling between self-assembled quantum dot molecules and electrically gated quantum dot molecules. The self-assembled dots are used for spin-photon entanglement, which is transferred to the gated dots for long-term storage or processing via a teleportation process heralded by single-photon detection. We illustrate a device architecture enabling this interaction and we outline its operation and fabrication. We provide self-consistent Poisson-Schroedinger simulations to establish the design viability and refine the design, and to estimate the physical coupling parameters and their sensitivities to dot placement. The device we propose generates heralded copies of an entangled state between a photonic qubit and a solid-state qubit with a rapid reset time upon failure. The resulting fast rate of entanglement generation is of high utility for heralded quantum networking scenarios involving lossy optical channels.

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arXiv2015

Design and Analysis of Communication Protocols for Quantum Repeater Networks

We analyze how the performance of a quantum-repeater network depends on the protocol employed to distribute entanglement, and we find that the choice of repeater-to-repeater link protocol has a profound impact on communication rate as a function of hardware parameters. We develop numerical simulations of quantum networks using different protocols, where the repeater hardware is modeled in terms of key performance parameters, such as photon generation rate and collection efficiency. These parameters are motivated by recent experimental demonstrations in quantum dots, trapped ions, and nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. We find that a quantum-dot repeater with the newest protocol ("MidpointSource") delivers the highest communication rate when there is low probability of establishing entanglement per transmission, and in some cases the rate is orders of magnitude higher than other schemes. Our simulation tools can be used to evaluate communication protocols as part of designing a large-scale quantum network.

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arXiv2013

A high-speed optical link to entangle quantum dots

A long-distance quantum network for distributing entangled states would support novel information applications, such as unconditionally secure cryptography and distributed quantum computing. Realizing such a network requires hardware that can reliably and efficiently establish entanglement over long distances, despite challenges like loss and transmission delay. We propose a new scheme for distributing entanglement that increases communication rates one to two orders of magnitude over existing protocols. The method is less sensitive to overall system loss because it transmits many signals within one round-trip-time window and efficiently discriminates lost-photon events. While the scheme applies to many types of matter qubits, we analyze a specific implementation with optical quantum dots, showing that the method uses practical hardware consistent with recent experiments.

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arXiv2013

Multilevel distillation of magic states for quantum computing

We develop a procedure for distilling magic states used in universal quantum computing that requires substantially fewer initial resources than prior schemes. Our distillation circuit is based on a family of concatenated quantum codes that possess a transversal Hadamard operation, enabling each of these codes to distill the eigenstate of the Hadamard operator. A crucial result of this design is that low-fidelity magic states can be consumed to purify other high-fidelity magic states to even higher fidelity, which we call "multilevel distillation." When distilling in the asymptotic regime of infidelity $ε\rightarrow 0$ for each input magic state, the number of input magic states consumed on average to yield an output state with infidelity $O(ε^{2^r})$ approaches $2^r+1$, which comes close to saturating the conjectured bound in [Phys. Rev. A 86, 052329]. We show numerically that there exist multilevel protocols such that the average number of magic states consumed to distill from error rate $ε_{\mathrm{in}} = 0.01$ to $ε_{\mathrm{out}}$ in the range $10^{-5}$ to $10^{-40}$ is about $14\log_{10}(1/ε_{\mathrm{out}}) - 40$; the efficiency of multilevel distillation dominates all other reported protocols when distilling Hadamard magic states from initial infidelity 0.01 to any final infidelity below $10^{-7}$. These methods are an important advance for magic-state distillation circuits in high-performance quantum computing, and they provide insight into the limitations of nearly resource-optimal quantum error correction.

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arXiv2013

Composite Toffoli gate with two-round error detection

We introduce a fault-tolerant construction to implement a composite quantum operation of four overlapping Toffoli gates. The same construction can produce two independent Toffoli gates. This result lowers resource overheads in designs for quantum computers by more than an order of magnitude. The procedure uses Clifford operations and 64 copies of the non-Clifford gate $T = \exp[i π(I - σ^z) /8]$. Quantum codes detect errors in the circuit. When the dominant source of error is $T$-gate failure with probability $p$, then the composite Toffoli circuit has postselected failure rate of $3072p^4$ to lowest order.

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arXiv2013

Distillation protocols for Fourier states in quantum computing

Fourier states are multi-qubit registers that facilitate phase rotations in fault-tolerant quantum computing. We propose distillation protocols for constructing the fundamental, $n$-qubit Fourier state with error $O(2^{-n})$ at a cost of $O(n \log n)$ Toffoli gates and Clifford gates, or any arbitrary Fourier state using $O(n^2)$ gates. We analyze these protocols with methods from digital signal processing. These results suggest that phase kickback, which uses Fourier states, could be the current lowest-overhead method for generating arbitrary phase rotations.

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arXiv2013

Surface code implementation of block code state distillation

State distillation is the process of taking a number of imperfect copies of a particular quantum state and producing fewer better copies. Until recently, the lowest overhead method of distilling states |A>=(|0>+e^{iπ/4}|1>)/\sqrt{2} produced a single improved |A> state given 15 input copies. New block code state distillation methods can produce k improved |A> states given 3k+8 input copies, potentially significantly reducing the overhead associated with state distillation. We construct an explicit surface code implementation of block code state distillation and quantitatively compare the overhead of this approach to the old. We find that, using the best available techniques, for parameters of practical interest, block code state distillation does not always lead to lower overhead, and, when it does, the overhead reduction is typically less than a factor of three.

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arXiv2012

Novel constructions for the fault-tolerant Toffoli gate

We present two new constructions for the Toffoli gate which substantially reduce resource costs in fault-tolerant quantum computing. The first contribution is a Toffoli gate requiring Clifford operations plus only four $T = \exp(iπσ^z/8)$ gates, whereas conventional circuits require seven $T$ gates. An extension of this result is that adding $n$ control inputs to a controlled gate requires $4n$ $T$ gates, whereas the best prior result was $8n$. The second contribution is a quantum circuit for the Toffoli gate which can detect a single $σ^z$ error occurring with probability $p$ in any one of eight $T$ gates required to produce the Toffoli. By post-selecting circuits that did not detect an error, the posterior error probability is suppressed to lowest order from $4p$ (or $7p$, without the first contribution) to $28p^2$ for this enhanced construction. In fault-tolerant quantum computing, this construction can reduce the overhead for producing logical Toffoli gates by an order of magnitude.

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