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Daniel Gottesman

Publications and source records attributed to Daniel Gottesman.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
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.

quant-ph↗
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.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2016

Diagonal gates in the Clifford hierarchy

The Clifford hierarchy is a set of gates that appears in the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation, but its precise structure remains elusive. We give a complete characterization of the diagonal gates in the Clifford hierarchy for prime-dimensional qudits. They turn out to be $p^{m}$-th roots of unity raised to polynomial functions of the basis state to which they are applied, and we determine which level of the Clifford hierarchy a given gate sits in based on $m$ and the degree of the polynomial.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2014

Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation with Constant Overhead

What is the minimum number of extra qubits needed to perform a large fault-tolerant quantum circuit? Working in a common model of fault-tolerance, I show that in the asymptotic limit of large circuits, the ratio of physical qubits to logical qubits can be a constant. The construction makes use of quantum low-density parity check codes, and the asymptotic overhead of the protocol is equal to that of the family of quantum error-correcting codes underlying the fault-tolerant protocol.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2013

The Resource Theory of Stabilizer Computation

Recent results on the non-universality of fault-tolerant gate sets underline the critical role of resource states, such as magic states, to power scalable, universal quantum computation. Here we develop a resource theory, analogous to the theory of entanglement, for resources for stabilizer codes. We introduce two quantitative measures - monotones - for the amount of non-stabilizer resource. As an application we give absolute bounds on the efficiency of magic state distillation. One of these monotones is the sum of the negative entries of the discrete Wigner representation of a quantum state, thereby resolving a long-standing open question of whether the degree of negativity in a quasi-probability representation is an operationally meaningful indicator of quantum behaviour.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2013

Quantum Refrigerator

We consider fault-tolerant quantum computation in the context where there are no fresh ancilla qubits available during the computation, and where the noise is due to a general quantum channel. We show that there are three classes of noisy channels: In the first, typified by the depolarizing channel, computation is only possible for a logarithmic time. In the second class, of which the dephasing channel is an example, computation is possible for polynomial time. The amplitude damping channel is an example of the third class, and for this class of channels, it is possible to compute for an exponential time in the number of qubits available.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2012

Longer-Baseline Telescopes Using Quantum Repeaters

We present an approach to building interferometric telescopes using ideas of quantum information. Current optical interferometers have limited baseline lengths, and thus limited resolution, because of noise and loss of signal due to the transmission of photons between the telescopes. The technology of quantum repeaters has the potential to eliminate this limit, allowing in principle interferometers with arbitrarily long baselines.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2010

The Quantum and Classical Complexity of Translationally Invariant Tiling and Hamiltonian Problems

We study the complexity of a class of problems involving satisfying constraints which remain the same under translations in one or more spatial directions. In this paper, we show hardness of a classical tiling problem on an N x N 2-dimensional grid and a quantum problem involving finding the ground state energy of a 1-dimensional quantum system of N particles. In both cases, the only input is N, provided in binary. We show that the classical problem is NEXP-complete and the quantum problem is QMA_EXP-complete. Thus, an algorithm for these problems which runs in time polynomial in N (exponential in the input size) would imply that EXP = NEXP or BQEXP = QMA_EXP, respectively. Although tiling in general is already known to be NEXP-complete, to our knowledge, all previous reductions require that either the set of tiles and their constraints or some varying boundary conditions be given as part of the input. In the problem considered here, these are fixed, constant-sized parameters of the problem. Instead, the problem instance is encoded solely in the size of the system.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2010

Entanglement vs. gap for one-dimensional spin systems

We study the relationship between entanglement and spectral gap for local Hamiltonians in one dimension. The area law for a one-dimensional system states that for the ground state, the entanglement of any interval is upper-bounded by a constant independent of the size of the interval. However, the possible dependence of the upper bound on the spectral gap Delta is not known, as the best known general upper bound is asymptotically much larger than the largest possible entropy of any model system previously constructed for small Delta. To help resolve this asymptotic behavior, we construct a family of one-dimensional local systems for which some intervals have entanglement entropy which is polynomial in 1/Delta, whereas previously studied systems, such as free fermion systems or systems described by conformal field theory, had the entropy of all intervals bounded by a constant times log(1/Delta).

quant-ph↗
arXiv2009

Spin Systems and Computational Complexity

I give a very brief non-technical introduction to the intersection of the fields of spin systems and computational complexity. The focus is on spin glasses and their relationship to NP-complete problems.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2009

Streaming universal distortion-free entanglement concentration

This paper presents a streaming (sequential) protocol for universal entanglement concentration at the Shannon bound. Alice and Bob begin with N identical (but unknown) two-qubit pure states, each containing E ebits of entanglement. They each run a reversible algorithm on their qubits, and end up with Y perfect EPR pairs, where Y = NE +- O(\sqrt N). Our protocol is streaming, so the N input systems are fed in one at a time, and perfect EPR pairs start popping out almost immediately. It matches the optimal block protocol exactly at each stage, so the average yield after n inputs is = nE - O(log n). So, somewhat surprisingly, there is no tradeoff between yield and lag -- our protocol optimizes both. In contrast, the optimal N-qubit block protocol achieves the same yield, but since no EPR pairs are produced until the entire input block is read, its lag is O(N). Finally, our algorithm runs in O(log N) space, so a lot of entanglement can be efficiently concentrated using a very small (e.g., current or near-future technology) quantum processor. Along the way, we find an optimal streaming protocol for extracting randomness from classical i.i.d. sources and a more space-efficient implementation of the Schur transform.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2009

An Introduction to Quantum Error Correction and Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation

Quantum states are very delicate, so it is likely some sort of quantum error correction will be necessary to build reliable quantum computers. The theory of quantum error-correcting codes has some close ties to and some striking differences from the theory of classical error-correcting codes. Many quantum codes can be described in terms of the stabilizer of the codewords. The stabilizer is a finite Abelian group, and allows a straightforward characterization of the error-correcting properties of the code. The stabilizer formalism for quantum codes also illustrates the relationships to classical coding theory, particularly classical codes over GF(4), the finite field with four elements. To build a quantum computer which behaves correctly in the presence of errors, we also need a theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation, instructing us how to perform quantum gates on qubits which are encoded in a quantum error-correcting code. The threshold theorem states that it is possible to create a quantum computer to perform an arbitrary quantum computation provided the error rate per physical gate or time step is below some constant threshold value.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2009

The power of quantum systems on a line

We study the computational strength of quantum particles (each of finite dimensionality) arranged on a line. First, we prove that it is possible to perform universal adiabatic quantum computation using a one-dimensional quantum system (with 9 states per particle). This might have practical implications for experimentalists interested in constructing an adiabatic quantum computer. Building on the same construction, but with some additional technical effort and 12 states per particle, we show that the problem of approximating the ground state energy of a system composed of a line of quantum particles is QMA-complete; QMA is a quantum analogue of NP. This is in striking contrast to the fact that the analogous classical problem, namely, one-dimensional MAX-2-SAT with nearest neighbor constraints, is in P. The proof of the QMA-completeness result requires an additional idea beyond the usual techniques in the area: Not all illegal configurations can be ruled out by local checks, so instead we rule out such illegal configurations because they would, in the future, evolve into a state which can be seen locally to be illegal. Our construction implies (assuming the quantum Church-Turing thesis and that quantum computers cannot efficiently solve QMA-complete problems) that there are one-dimensional systems which take an exponential time to relax to their ground states at any temperature, making them candidates for being one-dimensional spin glasses.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2008

Improved Simulation of Stabilizer Circuits

The Gottesman-Knill theorem says that a stabilizer circuit -- that is, a quantum circuit consisting solely of CNOT, Hadamard, and phase gates -- can be simulated efficiently on a classical computer. This paper improves that theorem in several directions. First, by removing the need for Gaussian elimination, we make the simulation algorithm much faster at the cost of a factor-2 increase in the number of bits needed to represent a state. We have implemented the improved algorithm in a freely-available program called CHP (CNOT-Hadamard-Phase), which can handle thousands of qubits easily. Second, we show that the problem of simulating stabilizer circuits is complete for the classical complexity class ParityL, which means that stabilizer circuits are probably not even universal for classical computation. Third, we give efficient algorithms for computing the inner product between two stabilizer states, putting any n-qubit stabilizer circuit into a "canonical form" that requires at most O(n^2/log n) gates, and other useful tasks. Fourth, we extend our simulation algorithm to circuits acting on mixed states, circuits containing a limited number of non-stabilizer gates, and circuits acting on general tensor-product initial states but containing only a limited number of measurements.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2008

Secure Multiparty Quantum Computation with (Only) a Strict Honest Majority

Secret sharing and multiparty computation (also called "secure function evaluation") are fundamental primitives in modern cryptography, allowing a group of mutually distrustful players to perform correct, distributed computations under the sole assumption that some number of them will follow the protocol honestly. This paper investigates how much trust is necessary -- that is, how many players must remain honest -- in order for distributed quantum computations to be possible. We present a verifiable quantum secret sharing (VQSS) protocol, and a general secure multiparty quantum computation (MPQC) protocol, which can tolerate any (n-1)/2 (rounded down) cheaters among n players. Previous protocols for these tasks tolerated (n-1)/4 (rounded down) and (n-1)/6 (rounded down) cheaters, respectively. The threshold we achieve is tight - even in the classical case, ``fair'' multiparty computation is not possible if any set of n/2 players can cheat. Our protocols rely on approximate quantum error-correcting codes, which can tolerate a larger fraction of errors than traditional, exact codes. We introduce new families of authentication schemes and approximate codes tailored to the needs of our protocols, as well as new state purification techniques along the lines of those used in fault-tolerant quantum circuits.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2007

Accuracy threshold for postselected quantum computation

We prove an accuracy threshold theorem for fault-tolerant quantum computation based on error detection and postselection. Our proof provides a rigorous foundation for the scheme suggested by Knill, in which preparation circuits for ancilla states are protected by a concatenated error-detecting code and the preparation is aborted if an error is detected. The proof applies to independent stochastic noise but (in contrast to proofs of the quantum accuracy threshold theorem based on concatenated error-correcting codes) not to strongly-correlated adversarial noise. Our rigorously established lower bound on the accuracy threshold, 1.04 \times 10^{-3}, is well below Knill's numerical estimates.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2005

Quantum Statistics with Classical Particles

Indistinguishability of particles is normally considered to be an inherently quantum property which cannot be possessed by a classical theory. However, Saunders has argued that this is incorrect, and that classically indistinguishable particles are possible. I make this suggestion concrete by describing a class of microscopic classical theories involving indistinguishable particles hopping stochastically on a graph, and show that it should be possible to experimentally create a physical system realizing a simple model by continuously observing atoms trapped in an optical lattice. The indistinguishable classical particles obey Bose-Einstein statistics, display the associated clustering phenomena, and in appropriate models, can even undergo Bose-Einstein condensation.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗