arXiv subjects

Daniel Gottesman

Publications and source records attributed to Daniel Gottesman.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Eliminating photon transport in long-baseline optical interferometry using quantum memories

In this paper, we describe the fundamental operating mechanisms of optical interferometry using quantum memory and entanglement. We show how these remove the optical delay line bottleneck. Quantum memory is not without its own set of challenges, some of which include very small bandwidths as well as limitations in storage time. We examine the influence of timing artifacts on memory photon capture probability and interferometric complex visibility. We highlight keystone areas of technology that require further development and are essential to realizing these opportunities, as well as ongoing work to overcome these challenges.

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arXiv2026

No-Go Theorem on Fault Tolerant Gadgets for Multiple Logical Qubits

Identifying stabilizer codes that admit fault-tolerant implementations of the full logical Clifford group would significantly advance fault-tolerant quantum computation. Motivated by this goal, we study several classes of fault-tolerant gadget constructions consisting of Clifford gates acting on the physical qubits, including transversal gadgets, code automorphisms, and fold-transversal gadgets. While stabilizer codes encoding a single logical qubit, most notably the [[7,1,3]] Steane code, are known to admit transversal implementations of the full logical Clifford group, no analogous examples are known for codes encoding multiple logical qubits. In this work, we prove a no-go theorem establishing that no stabilizer code admits a fully transversal implementation of the Clifford group on more than one logical qubit. We further strengthen this result by showing that fold-transversal implementations of the full logical Clifford group are impossible for stabilizer codes encoding more than two logical qubits. More generally, we introduce the notion of k-fold transversal gadgets and prove that implementing the full Clifford group on k logical qubits requires at least k-fold transversal gadgets at the physical level. In addition, we analyze code-automorphism based constructions and demonstrate that they also fail to realize the full Clifford group on multiple logical qubits for any stabilizer code. Together, these results place fundamental constraints on fault-tolerant Clifford gadget design and show that stabilizer codes supporting the full logical Clifford group on multiple logical qubits via these architectures do not exist. Since the Clifford group is a core component of universal gate sets, our findings imply that quantum computing with codes encoding multiple logical qubits within a single code block necessarily entails more complex constructions for fault tolerance.

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arXiv2025

Bounds on Eventually Universal Quantum Gate Sets

Say a collection of $n$-qu$d$it gates $\Gamma$ is eventually universal if and only if there exists $N_0 \geq n$ such that for all $N \geq N_0$, one can approximate any $N$-qu$d$it unitary to arbitrary precision by a circuit over $\Gamma$. In this work, we improve the best known upper bound on the smallest $N_0$ with the above property. Our new bound is roughly $d^4n$, where $d$ is the local dimension (the `$d$' in qu$d$it), whereas the previous bound was roughly $d^8n$. For qubits ($d = 2$), our result implies that if an $n$-qubit gate set is eventually universal, then it will exhibit universality when acting on a $16n$ qubit system, as opposed to the previous bound of a $256n$ qubit system. In other words, if adding just $15n$ ancillary qubits to a quantum system (as opposed to the previous bound of $255 n$ ancillary qubits) does not boost a gate set to universality, then no number of ancillary qubits ever will. Our proof relies on the invariants of finite linear groups as well as a classification result for all finite groups that are unitary $2$-designs.

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arXiv2025

Measuring gravitational lensing time delays with quantum information processing

The gravitational fields of astrophysical bodies bend the light around them, creating multiple paths along which light from a distant source can arrive at Earth. Measuring the difference in photon arrival time along these different paths provides a means of determining the mass of the lensing system, which is otherwise difficult to constrain. This is particularly challenging in the case of microlensing, where the images produced by lensing cannot be individually resolved; existing proposals for detecting time delays in microlensed systems are significantly constrained due to the need for large photon flux and the loss of signal coherence when the angular diameter of the light source becomes too large. In this work, we propose a novel approach to measuring astrophysical time delays. Our method uses exponentially fewer photons than previous schemes, enabling observations that would otherwise be impossible. Our approach, which combines a quantum-inspired algorithm and quantum information processing technologies, saturates a provable lower bound on the number of photons required to find the time delay. Our scheme has multiple applications: we explore its use both in calibrating optical interferometric telescopes and in making direct mass measurements of ongoing microlensing events. To demonstrate the latter, we present a fiducial example of microlensed stellar flares sources in the Galactic Bulge. Though the number of photons produced by such events is small, we show that our photon-efficient scheme opens the possibility of directly measuring microlensing time delays using existing and near-future ground-based telescopes.

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arXiv2025

The rotation-invariant Hamiltonian problem is QMA$_{\rm EXP}$-complete

In this work, we study a variant of the local Hamiltonian problem where we restrict to Hamiltonians that live on a lattice and are invariant under translations and rotations of the lattice. In the one-dimensional case this problem is known to be QMA$_{\rm EXP}$-complete. On the other hand, if we fix the lattice length then in the high-dimensional limit the ground state becomes unentangled due to arguments from mean-field theory. We take steps towards understanding this complexity spectrum by studying a problem that is intermediate between these two extremes. Namely, we consider the regime where the lattice dimension is arbitrary but fixed and the lattice length is scaled. We prove that this rotation-invariant Hamiltonian problem is QMA$_{\rm EXP}$-complete answering an open question of [Gottesman, Irani 2013]. This characterizes a broad parameter range in which these rotation-invariant Hamiltonians have high computational complexity.

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arXiv2025

Fault tolerant Operations in Majorana-based Quantum Codes: Gates, Measurements and High Rate Constructions

Majorana-based quantum computation in nanowires and neutral atoms has gained prominence as a promising platform to encode qubits and protect them against noise. In order to run computations reliably on such devices, a fully fault-tolerant scheme is needed for state preparation, gates, and measurements. However, current fault-tolerant schemes have either been limited to specific code families or have not been developed fully. In this work, we develop a general framework for fault-tolerant computation with logical degrees encoded into Majorana hardware. We emphasize the division between even and odd Majorana codes and how it manifests when constructing fault tolerant gadgets for these families. We provide transversal constructions and supplement them with measurements to obtain several examples of fault tolerant Clifford gadgets. For the case of odd codes, we give a novel construction for gadgets using quantum reference frames, that allows to implement operations that are forbidden due to parity superselection. We also provide a fault-tolerant measurement scheme for Majorana codes inspired by Steane error correction, enabling state preparation, measurement of logical operations and error correction. We also point out a construction for odd Majorana codes with transversal T gates. Finally, we construct a high rate quantum LDPC Majorana code with logical qubits. Our work shows that all necessary elements of fault-tolerant quantum computation can be consistently implemented in fermionic hardware such as Majorana nanowires and fermionic neutral atoms.

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arXiv2025

Adaptive Syndrome Extraction

Device error rates on current quantum computers have improved enough to where demonstrations of error correction below break-even are now possible. Still, the circuits required for quantum error correction introduce significant overhead and sometimes inject more errors than they correct. In this work, we introduce adaptive syndrome extraction as a scheme to improve code performance and reduce the quantum error correction cycle time by measuring only the stabilizer generators that are likely to provide useful syndrome information. We provide a concrete example of the scheme through the [[4,2,2]] code concatenated with a hypergraph product code and a syndrome extraction cycle that uses quantum error detection to modify the syndrome extraction circuits in real time. Compared to non-concatenated codes and non-adaptive syndrome extraction, we find that the adaptive scheme achieves over an order of magnitude lower logical error rates while requiring fewer CNOT gates and physical qubits. Furthermore, we show how to achieve fault-tolerant universal logical computation with [[4,2,2]]-concatenated hypergraph product codes.

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arXiv2024

Low-depth quantum symmetrization

Quantum symmetrization is the task of transforming a non-strictly increasing list of $n$ integers into an equal superposition of all permutations of the list (or more generally, performing this operation coherently on a superposition of such lists). This task plays a key role in initial state preparation for first-quantized simulations. Motivated by an application to fermionic systems, various algorithms have been proposed to solve a weaker version of symmetrization in which the input list is strictly increasing, but the general symmetrization problem with repetitions in the input list has not been well studied. We present the first efficient quantum algorithms for the general symmetrization problem. If $m$ is the greatest possible value of the input list, our first algorithm symmetrizes any single classical input list using $\tilde{O}(\log n)$ depth and $O(n\log n + \log m)$ ancilla qubits, and our second algorithm symmetrizes an arbitrary superposition of input lists using $\tilde{O}(\log^3 n)$ depth and $O(n\log n)$ ancilla qubits. Our algorithms enable efficient simulation of bosonic quantum systems in first quantization and can prepare (superpositions of) Dicke states of any Hamming weight in $\tilde{O}(\log n)$ depth (respectively, $\tilde{O}(\log^3 n)$ depth) using $O(n\log n)$ ancilla qubits. We also propose an $\tilde{O}(\log^3 n)$-depth quantum algorithm to transform second-quantized states to first-quantized states. Using this algorithm, QFT-based quantum telescope arrays can image brighter photon sources, extending quantum interferometric imaging systems to a new regime.

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arXiv2024

A Criterion for Post-Selected Quantum Advantage

Assuming the polynomial hierarchy is infinite, we prove a sufficient condition for determining if uniform and polynomial size quantum circuits over a non-universal gate set are not efficiently classically simulable in the weak multiplicative sense. Our criterion exploits the fact that subgroups of $\mathrm{SL}(2;\mathbb{C})$ are essentially either discrete or dense in $\mathrm{SL}(2;\mathbb{C})$. Using our criterion, we give a new proof that both instantaneous quantum polynomial (IQP) circuits and conjugated Clifford circuits (CCCs) afford a quantum advantage. We also prove that both commuting CCCs and CCCs over various fragments of the Clifford group afford a quantum advantage, which settles two questions of Bouland, Fitzsimons, and Koh. Our results imply that circuits over just $(U^\dagger \otimes U^\dagger) \mathrm{CZ} (U \otimes U)$ afford a quantum advantage for almost all $U \in \mathrm{U}(2)$.

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arXiv2024

Toward a 2D Local Implementation of Quantum LDPC Codes

Geometric locality is an important theoretical and practical factor for quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes which affects code performance and ease of physical realization. For device architectures restricted to 2D local gates, naively implementing the high-rate codes suitable for low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computing incurs prohibitive overhead. In this work, we present an error correction protocol built on a bilayer architecture that aims to reduce operational overheads when restricted to 2D local gates by measuring some generators less frequently than others. We investigate the family of bivariate bicycle qLDPC codes and show that they are well suited for a parallel syndrome measurement scheme using fast routing with local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Through circuit-level simulations, we find that in some parameter regimes bivariate bicycle codes implemented with this protocol have logical error rates comparable to the surface code while using fewer physical qubits.

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arXiv2024

Error Correction in Dynamical Codes

We ask what is the general framework for a quantum error correcting code that is defined by a sequence of measurements. Recently, there has been much interest in Floquet codes and space-time codes. In this work, we define and study the distance of a dynamical code. This is a subtle concept and difficult to determine: At any given time, the system will be in a subspace which forms a quantum error-correcting code with a given distance, but the full error correction capability of that code may not be available due to the schedule of measurements associated with the code. We address this challenge by developing an algorithm that tracks information we have learned about the error syndromes through the protocol and put that together to determine the distance of a dynamical code, in a non-fault-tolerant context. We use the tools developed for the algorithm to analyze the initialization and masking properties of a generic Floquet code. Further, we look at properties of dynamical codes under the constraint of geometric locality with a view to understand whether the fundamental limitations on logical gates and code parameters imposed by geometric locality for traditional codes can be surpassed in the dynamical paradigm. We find that codes with a limited number of long range connectivity will not allow non-Clifford gates to be implemented with finite depth circuits in the 2D setting.

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arXiv2024

Encoding Majorana codes

To implement a quantum error correction protocol, we first need a scheme to prepare our state in the correct subspace of the code, and this can be done using a unitary encoding circuit. Majorana codes are special since any gates that transform such codes must preserve fermionic parity. In this paper, we present an algorithm that uses the stabilizer matrix to compute unitary encoding circuits for Majorana codes. We present two approaches, both of which use a version of Gaussian elimination with row operations replaced with elementary fermionic Clifford operations. One approach uses an additional ancilla mode and works for all Majorana stabilizer codes, while the second approach does not use ancilla but does not work if the total parity is inside the stabilizer group.

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arXiv2023

Complexity and order in approximate quantum error-correcting codes

We establish rigorous connections between quantum circuit complexity and approximate quantum error correction (AQEC) capability, two properties of fundamental importance to the physics and practical use of quantum many-body systems, covering systems with both all-to-all connectivity and geometric scenarios like lattice systems in finite spatial dimensions. To this end, we introduce a type of code parameter that we call subsystem variance, which is closely related to the optimal AQEC precision. Our key finding is that, for a code encoding $k$ logical qubits in $n$ physical qubits, if the subsystem variance is below an $O(k/n)$ threshold, then any state in the code subspace must obey certain circuit complexity lower bounds, which identify nontrivial "phases" of codes. Based on our results, we propose $O(k/n)$ as a boundary between subspaces that should and should not count as AQEC codes. This theory of AQEC provides a versatile framework for understanding quantum complexity and order in many-body quantum systems, generating new insights for wide-ranging physical scenarios, in particular topological order and critical quantum systems which are of outstanding importance in many-body and high energy physics. We observe from various different perspectives that roughly $O(1/n)$ represents a common, physically significant "scaling threshold" of subsystem variance for features associated with nontrivial quantum order.

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arXiv2023

Partial Syndrome Measurement for Hypergraph Product Codes

Hypergraph product codes are a promising avenue to achieving fault-tolerant quantum computation with constant overhead. When embedding these and other constant-rate qLDPC codes into 2D, a significant number of nonlocal connections are required, posing difficulties for some quantum computing architectures. In this work, we introduce a fault-tolerance scheme that aims to alleviate the effects of implementing this nonlocality by measuring generators acting on spatially distant qubits less frequently than those which do not. We investigate the performance of a simplified version of this scheme, where the measured generators are randomly selected. When applied to hypergraph product codes and a modified small-set-flip decoding algorithm, we prove that for a sufficiently high percentage of generators being measured, a threshold still exists. We also find numerical evidence that the logical error rate is exponentially suppressed even when a large constant fraction of generators are not measured.

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arXiv2022

Opportunities and Challenges in Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation

I will give an overview of what I see as some of the most important future directions in the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation. In particular, I will give a brief summary of the major problems that need to be solved in fault tolerance based on low-density parity check codes and in hardware-specific fault tolerance. I will then conclude with a discussion of a possible new paradigm for designing fault-tolerant protocols based on a space-time picture of quantum circuits.

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arXiv2019

Maximally Sensitive Sets of States

Coherent errors in a quantum system can, in principle, build up much more rapidly than incoherent errors, accumulating as the square of the number of qubits in the system rather than linearly. I show that only channels dominated by a unitary rotation can display such behavior. A maximally sensitive set of states is a set such that if a channel is capable of quadratic error scaling, then it is present for at least one sequence of states in the set. I show that the GHZ states in the X, Y, and Z bases form a maximally sensitive set of states, allowing a straightforward test to identify coherent errors in a system. This allows us to identify coherent errors in gates and measurements to within a constant fraction of the maximum possible sensitivity to such errors. A related protocol with simpler circuits but less sensitivity can also be used to test for coherent errors in state preparation or if the noise in a particular circuit is accumulating coherently or not.

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arXiv2017

Fibre bundle framework for unitary quantum fault tolerance

We introduce a differential geometric framework for describing families of quantum error-correcting codes and for understanding quantum fault tolerance. This work unifies the notion of topological fault tolerance with fault tolerance in other kinds of quantum error-correcting codes. In particular, we use fibre bundles with a natural flat projective connection to study the transformation of codewords under unitary fault-tolerant evolutions. We show that the fault-tolerant logical operations are given by the monodromy group for either of two bundles, both of which have flat projective connections. As concrete realizations of the general framework, we construct the bundles explicitly for two examples of fault-tolerant families of operations, the qudit transversal gates and the string operators in the toric code.

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arXiv2016

Quantum fault tolerance in small experiments

I discuss a variety of issues relating to near-future experiments demonstrating fault-tolerant quantum computation. I describe a family of fault-tolerant quantum circuits that can be performed with 5 qubits arranged on a ring with nearest-neighbor interactions. I also present a criterion whereby we can say that an experiment has succeeded in demonstrating fault tolerance. Finally, I discuss the possibility of using future fault-tolerant experiments to answer important questions about the interaction of fault-tolerant protocols with real experimental errors.

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