arXiv subjects

Markus Heinrich

Publications and source records attributed to Markus Heinrich.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Anticoncentration and State Design of Doped Real Clifford Circuits and Tensor Networks

We investigate the statistical properties of orthogonal, or real, Clifford circuits doped with magic and imaginary resources. By developing the Weingarten calculus for the real Clifford group, we derive the exact overlap distribution of real stabilizer states, identifying a new universality class: the orthogonal Clifford Porter-Thomas distribution. We prove that local real architectures recover this global statistic in logarithmic depth. Furthermore, we uncover a sharp hierarchy in resource requirements: while retrieving Haar statistics necessitates a polylogarithmic amount of magic states, recovering the full unitary Clifford statistics requires only a single phase gate.

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arXiv2025

Anti-concentration is (almost) all you need

Until very recently, it was generally believed that the (approximate) 2-design property is strictly stronger than anticoncentration of random quantum circuits, mainly because it was shown that the latter anticoncentrate in logarithmic depth, while the former generally need linear depth circuits. This belief was disproven by recent results which show that so-called relative-error approximate unitary designs can, in fact, be generated in logarithmic depth, implying anticoncentration. Their result does however not apply to ordinary local random circuits, a gap which we close in this letter, at least for 2-designs. More precisely, we show that anticoncentration of local random quantum circuits already implies that they form relative-error approximate state 2-designs, making them equivalent properties for these ensembles. Our result holds more generally for any random circuit which is invariant under local (single-qubit) unitaries, independent of the architecture.

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arXiv2025

Symmetry-Accelerated Classical Simulation of Clifford-Dominated Circuits

Classical simulation of quantum circuits plays a crucial role in validating quantum hardware and delineating the boundaries of quantum advantage. Among the most effective simulation techniques are those based on the stabilizer extent, which quantifies the overhead of representing non-Clifford operations as linear combinations of Clifford unitaries. However, finding optimal decompositions rapidly becomes intractable as it constitutes a superexponentially large optimization problem. In this work, we exploit symmetries in the computation of the stabilizer extent, proving that for real, diagonal, and real-diagonal unitaries, the optimization can be restricted to the corresponding subgroups of the Clifford group without loss of optimality. This ``strong symmetry reduction'' drastically reduces computational cost, enabling optimal decompositions of unitaries on up to seven qubits using a standard laptop -- far beyond previous two-qubit limits. Additionally, we employ a ``weak symmetry reduction'' method that leverages additional invariances to shrink the search space further. Applying these results, we demonstrate exponential runtime improvements in classical simulations of quantum Fourier transform circuits and measurement-based quantum computations on the Union Jack lattice, as well as new insights into the nonstabilizer properties of multicontrolled phase gates and unitaries generating hypergraph states. Our findings establish symmetry exploitation as a powerful route to scale classical simulation techniques and deepen the resource-theoretic understanding of quantum advantage.

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arXiv2025

Free Independence and Unitary Design from Random Matrix Product Unitaries

Unitary randomness underpins both fundamental tasks in quantum information and the modern theory of quantum chaos. On one side, a central concept is that of approximate unitary designs: circuits that look random according to small moments and for forward-in-time protocols. In a distinct setting, out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), intensely studied as a measure of information scrambling, have recently been shown to probe freeness between Heisenberg operators, the noncommutative generalization of statistical independence. Bridging these two concepts, we study the emergence of freeness in a random matrix product unitary ensemble. We prove that, with only polynomial bond dimension, these unitaries reproduce Haar values of higher-order OTOCs for local, finite-trace observables, while traceless observables instead require exponential resources. Indeed, local observables are precisely those predicted to thermalize in chaotic many-body systems according to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Moreover, adding to previous literature, we show how random matrix product unitaries constitute approximate designs: we exactly compute the frame potential of the ensemble, showing convergence to the Haar value with polynomial deviations and so indicating that global observables are freely independent on-average. Our results highlight the need to refine previous notions of unitary design in the context of operator dynamics, guiding us towards protocols for quantum advantage and shedding light on the emergent complexity of chaotic many-body systems.

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arXiv2025

Will it glue? On short-depth designs beyond the unitary group

We study the formation of short-depth designs beyond the unitary group. We provide a range of results on several groups of broad interest in quantum information science: the Clifford group, the orthogonal group, the unitary symplectic groups, and the matchgate group. For all of these groups, we prove that analogues of unitary designs cannot be generated by any circuit ensemble with light-cones that are smaller than the system size. This implies linear lower bounds on the circuit depth in one-dimensional systems. For the Clifford and orthogonal group, we moreover show that a broad class of circuits cannot generate designs in sub-linear depth on any circuit architecture. We show this by exploiting observables in the higher-order commutants of each group, which allow one to distinguish any short-depth circuit from truly random. While these no-go results rule out short-depth unitary designs, we prove that slightly weaker forms of randomness -- including additive-error state designs and anti-concentration in sampling distributions -- nevertheless emerge at logarithmic depths in many cases. Our results reveal that the onset of randomness in shallow quantum circuits is a widespread yet subtle phenomenon, dependent on the interplay between the group itself and the context of its application.

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arXiv2024

General, efficient, and robust Hamiltonian engineering

Implementing the time evolution under a desired target Hamiltonian is critical for various applications in quantum science. Due to the exponential increase in the number of parameters with system size and experimental imperfections, this task can be challenging in quantum many-body settings. We introduce an efficient and robust scheme to engineer arbitrary local many-body Hamiltonians. To this end, our scheme applies single-qubit $\pi$ or $\pi/2$ pulses to an always-on system Hamiltonian, which we assume to be native to a given platform. These sequences are constructed by efficiently solving a linear program (LP) which minimizes the total evolution time. In this way, we can engineer target Hamiltonians that are only limited by the locality of the interactions in the system Hamiltonian. Based on average Hamiltonian theory and using robust composite pulses, we make our schemes robust against errors, including finite pulse time errors and various control errors. To demonstrate the performance of our scheme, we provide numerical simulations. In particular, we solve the Hamiltonian engineering problem on a laptop for arbitrary two-local Hamiltonians on a 2D square lattice with $196$ qubits in only $60$ seconds. Moreover, we simulate the engineering of general Heisenberg Hamiltonians from Ising Hamiltonians using imperfect single-qubit pulses for smaller system sizes and achieve a fidelity exceeding $99.9\%$, which is orders of magnitude better than non-robust implementations.

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arXiv2024

Bosonic randomized benchmarking with passive transformations

Randomized benchmarking (RB) is the most commonly employed protocol for the characterization of unitary operations in quantum circuits due to its reasonable experimental requirements and robustness against state preparation and measurement (SPAM) errors. So far, the protocol has been limited to discrete or fermionic systems, whereas extensions to bosonic systems have been unclear for a long time due to challenges arising from the underlying infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. In this work, we close the gap for bosonic systems and develop an RB protocol to benchmark passive Gaussian transformations on any particle number subspace, which we call bosonic passive RB. The protocol is based on the recently developed filtered RB framework and is designed to isolate the multitude of exponential decays arising for passive bosonic transformations. We give explicit formulas and a Julia implementation for the necessary post-processing of the experimental data. We also analyze the sampling complexity of bosonic passive RB by deriving analytical expressions for the variance. They show a mild scaling with the number of modes, suggesting that passive bosonic RB is experimentally feasible for a moderate number of modes. We focus on experimental settings involving Fock states and particle number resolving measurements, but also discuss Gaussian settings, deriving first results for heterodyne measurements.

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arXiv2024

Time-optimal multi-qubit gates: Complexity, efficient heuristic and gate-time bounds

Multi-qubit entangling interactions arise naturally in several quantum computing platforms and promise advantages over traditional two-qubit gates. In particular, a fixed multi-qubit Ising-type interaction together with single-qubit X-gates can be used to synthesize global ZZ-gates (GZZ gates). In this work, we first show that the synthesis of such quantum gates that are time-optimal is NP-hard. Second, we provide explicit constructions of special time-optimal multi-qubit gates. They have constant gate times and can be implemented with linearly many X-gate layers. Third, we develop a heuristic algorithm with polynomial runtime for synthesizing fast multi-qubit gates. Fourth, we derive lower and upper bounds on the optimal GZZ gate-time. Based on explicit constructions of GZZ gates and numerical studies, we conjecture that any GZZ gate can be executed in a time O(n) for n qubits. Our heuristic synthesis algorithm leads to GZZ gate-times with a similar scaling, which is optimal in this sense. We expect that our efficient synthesis of fast multi-qubit gates allows for faster and, hence, also more error-robust execution of quantum algorithms.

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arXiv2023

Stability of classical shadows under gate-dependent noise

Expectation values of observables are routinely estimated using so-called classical shadows$\unicode{x2014}$the outcomes of randomized bases measurements on a repeatedly prepared quantum state. In order to trust the accuracy of shadow estimation in practice, it is crucial to understand the behavior of the estimators under realistic noise. In this work, we prove that any shadow estimation protocol involving Clifford unitaries is stable under gate-dependent noise for observables with bounded stabilizer norm$\unicode{x2014}$originally introduced in the context of simulating Clifford circuits. In contrast, we demonstrate with concrete examples that estimation of `magic` observables can lead to highly misleading results in the presence of miscalibration errors and a worst case bias scaling exponentially in the system size. We further find that so-called robust shadows, aiming at mitigating noise, can introduce a large bias in the presence of gate-dependent noise compared to unmitigated classical shadows. Nevertheless, we guarantee the functioning of robust shadows for a more general noise setting than in previous works. On a technical level, we identify average noise channels that affect shadow estimators and allow for a more fine-grained control of noise-induced biases.

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arXiv2023

Closed-form analytic expressions for shadow estimation with brickwork circuits

Properties of quantum systems can be estimated using classical shadows, which implement measurements based on random ensembles of unitaries. Originally derived for global Clifford unitaries and products of single-qubit Clifford gates, practical implementations are limited to the latter scheme for moderate numbers of qubits. Beyond local gates, the accurate implementation of very short random circuits with two-local gates is still experimentally feasible and, therefore, interesting for implementing measurements in near-term applications. In this work, we derive closed-form analytical expressions for shadow estimation using brickwork circuits with two layers of parallel two-local Haar-random (or Clifford) unitaries. Besides the construction of the classical shadow, our results give rise to sample-complexity guarantees for estimating Pauli observables. We then compare the performance of shadow estimation with brickwork circuits to the established approach using local Clifford unitaries and find improved sample complexity in the estimation of observables supported on sufficiently many qubits.

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arXiv2023

Risk Assessment Graphs: Utilizing Attack Graphs for Risk Assessment

Risk assessment plays a crucial role in ensuring the security and resilience of modern computer systems. Existing methods for conducting risk assessments often suffer from tedious and time-consuming processes, making it challenging to maintain a comprehensive overview of potential security issues. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that leverages attack graphs to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of risk assessment. Attack graphs visually represent the various attack paths that adversaries can exploit within a system, enabling a systematic exploration of potential vulnerabilities. By extending attack graphs with capabilities to include countermeasures and consequences, they can be leveraged to constitute the complete risk assessment process. Our method offers a more streamlined and comprehensive analysis of system vulnerabilities, where system changes, or environment changes can easily be adapted and the issues exposing the highest risk can easily be identified. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through a case study, as well as the applicability by combining existing risk assessment standards with our method. Our work aims to bridge the gap between risk assessment practices and evolving threat landscapes, offering an improved methodology for managing and mitigating risks in modern computer systems.

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arXiv2023

Randomized benchmarking with random quantum circuits

In its many variants, randomized benchmarking (RB) is a broadly used technique for assessing the quality of gate implementations on quantum computers. A detailed theoretical understanding and general guarantees exist for the functioning and interpretation of RB protocols if the gates under scrutiny are drawn uniformly at random from a compact group. In contrast, many practically attractive and scalable RB protocols implement random quantum circuits with local gates randomly drawn from some gate-set. Despite their abundance in practice, for those non-uniform RB protocols, general guarantees for gates from arbitrary compact groups under experimentally plausible assumptions are missing. In this work, we derive such guarantees for a large class of RB protocols for random circuits that we refer to as filtered RB. Prominent examples include linear cross-entropy benchmarking, character benchmarking, Pauli-noise tomography and variants of simultaneous RB. Building upon recent results for random circuits, we show that many relevant filtered RB schemes can be realized with random quantum circuits in linear depth, and we provide explicit small constants for common instances. We further derive general sample complexity bounds for filtered RB. We show filtered RB to be sample-efficient for several relevant groups, including protocols addressing higher-order cross-talk. Our theory for non-uniform filtered RB is, in principle, flexible enough to design new protocols for non-universal and analog quantum simulators.

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arXiv2023

Efficient unitary designs with a system-size independent number of non-Clifford gates

Many quantum information protocols require the implementation of random unitaries. Because it takes exponential resources to produce Haar-random unitaries drawn from the full $n$-qubit group, one often resorts to $t$-designs. Unitary $t$-designs mimic the Haar-measure up to $t$-th moments. It is known that Clifford operations can implement at most $3$-designs. In this work, we quantify the non-Clifford resources required to break this barrier. We find that it suffices to inject $O(t^{4}\log^{2}(t)\log(1/\varepsilon))$ many non-Clifford gates into a polynomial-depth random Clifford circuit to obtain an $\varepsilon$-approximate $t$-design. Strikingly, the number of non-Clifford gates required is independent of the system size -- asymptotically, the density of non-Clifford gates is allowed to tend to zero. We also derive novel bounds on the convergence time of random Clifford circuits to the $t$-th moment of the uniform distribution on the Clifford group. Our proofs exploit a recently developed variant of Schur-Weyl duality for the Clifford group, as well as bounds on restricted spectral gaps of averaging operators.

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arXiv2023

Synthesis of and compilation with time-optimal multi-qubit gates

We develop a method to synthesize a class of entangling multi-qubit gates for a quantum computing platform with fixed Ising-type interaction with all-to-all connectivity. The only requirement on the flexibility of the interaction is that it can be switched on and off for individual qubits. Our method yields a time-optimal implementation of the multi-qubit gates. We numerically demonstrate that the total multi-qubit gate time scales approximately linear in the number of qubits. Using this gate synthesis as a subroutine, we provide compilation strategies for important use cases: (i) we show that any Clifford circuit on $n$ qubits can be implemented using at most $2n$ multi-qubit gates without requiring ancilla qubits, (ii) we decompose the quantum Fourier transform in a similar fashion, (iii) we compile a simulation of molecular dynamics, and (iv) we propose a method for the compilation of diagonal unitaries with time-optimal multi-qubit gates, as a step towards general unitaries. As motivation, we provide a detailed discussion on a microwave controlled ion trap architecture with magnetic gradient induced coupling (MAGIC) for the generation of the Ising-type interactions.

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arXiv2020

The axiomatic and the operational approaches to resource theories of magic do not coincide

Stabiliser operations occupy a prominent role in fault-tolerant quantum computing. They are defined operationally: by the use of Clifford gates, Pauli measurements and classical control. These operations can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer, a result which is known as the Gottesman-Knill theorem. However, an additional supply of magic states is enough to promote them to a universal, fault-tolerant model for quantum computing. To quantify the needed resources in terms of magic states, a resource theory of magic has been developed. Stabiliser operations (SO) are considered free within this theory, however they are not the most general class of free operations. From an axiomatic point of view, these are the completely stabiliser-preserving (CSP) channels, defined as those that preserve the convex hull of stabiliser states. It has been an open problem to decide whether these two definitions lead to the same class of operations. In this work, we answer this question in the negative, by constructing an explicit counter-example. This indicates that recently proposed stabiliser-based simulation techniques of CSP maps are strictly more powerful than Gottesman-Knill-like methods. The result is analogous to a well-known fact in entanglement theory, namely that there is a gap between the operationally defined class of local operations and classical communication (LOCC) and the axiomatically defined class of separable channels.

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arXiv2020

A Security Architecture for Railway Signalling

We present the proposed security architecture Deutsche Bahn plans to deploy to protect its trackside safety-critical signalling system against cyber-attacks. We first present the existing reference interlocking system that is built using standard components. Next, we present a taxonomy to help model the attack vectors relevant for the railway environment. Building upon this, we present the proposed "compartmentalized" defence concept for securing the upcoming signalling systems.

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arXiv2020

Rule-based Anomaly Detection for Railway Signalling Networks

We propose a rule-based anomaly detection system for railway signalling that mitigates attacks by a Dolev-Yao attacker who is able to inject control commands and to perform semantic attacks. The system as well mitigates the effects of a compromised signal box that an attacker uses to issue licit but mistimed control messages. We consider an attacker that could cause train derailments and collisions, if our countermeasure is not employed. We apply safety principles of railway operation to a distributed anomaly detection system that inspects incoming commands on the signals and points. The proposed anomaly detection system detects all attacks of our model without producing false positives, while it requires only a small amount of overhead in terms of network communication and latency compared to normal train operation.

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arXiv2019

Robustness of Magic and Symmetries of the Stabiliser Polytope

We give a new algorithm for computing the robustness of magic - a measure of the utility of quantum states as a computational resource. Our work is motivated by the magic state model of fault-tolerant quantum computation. In this model, all unitaries belong to the Clifford group. Non-Clifford operations are effected by injecting non-stabiliser states, which are referred to as magic states in this context. The robustness of magic measures the complexity of simulating such a circuit using a classical Monte Carlo algorithm. It is closely related to the degree negativity that slows down Monte Carlo simulations through the infamous sign problem. Surprisingly, the robustness of magic is submultiplicative. This implies that the classical simulation overhead scales subexponentially with the number of injected magic states - better than a naive analysis would suggest. However, determining the robustness of n copies of a magic state is difficult, as its definition involves a convex optimisation problem in a 4^n-dimensional space. In this paper, we make use of inherent symmetries to reduce the problem to n dimensions. The total run-time of our algorithm, while still exponential in n, is super-polynomially faster than previously published methods. We provide a computer implementation and give the robustness of up to 10 copies of the most commonly used magic states. Guided by the exact results, we find a finite hierarchy of approximate solutions where each level can be evaluated in polynomial time and yields rigorous upper bounds to the robustness. Technically, we use symmetries of the stabiliser polytope to connect the robustness of magic to the geometry of a low-dimensional convex polytope generated by certain signed quantum weight enumerators. As a by-product, we characterised the automorphism group of the stabiliser polytope, and, more generally, of projections onto complex projective 3-designs.

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