arXiv subjects

Richard Jozsa

Publications and source records attributed to Richard Jozsa.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2008

Embedding classical into quantum computation

We describe a simple formalism for generating classes of quantum circuits that are classically efficiently simulatable and show that the efficient simulation of Clifford circuits (Gottesman-Knill theorem) and of matchgate circuits (Valiant's theorem) appear as two special cases. Viewing these simulatable classes as subsets of the space of all quantum computations, we may consider minimal extensions that suffice to regain full quantum computational power, which provides an approach to exploring the efficacy of quantum over classical computation.

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arXiv2008

Matchgates and classical simulation of quantum circuits

Let G(A,B) denote the 2-qubit gate which acts as the 1-qubit SU(2) gates A and B in the even and odd parity subspaces respectively, of two qubits. Using a Clifford algebra formalism we show that arbitrary uniform families of circuits of these gates, restricted to act only on nearest neighbour (n.n.) qubit lines, can be classically efficiently simulated. This reproduces a result originally proved by Valiant using his matchgate formalism, and subsequently related by others to free fermionic physics. We further show that if the n.n. condition is slightly relaxed, to allowing the same gates to act only on n.n. and next-n.n. qubit lines, then the resulting circuits can efficiently perform universal quantum computation. From this point of view, the gap between efficient classical and quantum computational power is bridged by a very modest use of a seemingly innocuous resource (qubit swapping). We also extend the simulation result above in various ways. In particular, by exploiting properties of Clifford operations in conjunction with the Jordan-Wigner representation of a Clifford algebra, we show how one may generalise the simulation result above to provide further classes of classically efficiently simulatable quantum circuits, which we call Gaussian quantum circuits.

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arXiv2007

Sequential weak measurement

The notion of weak measurement provides a formalism for extracting information from a quantum system in the limit of vanishing disturbance to its state. Here we extend this formalism to the measurement of sequences of observables. When these observables do not commute, we may obtain information about joint properties of a quantum system that would be forbidden in the usual strong measurement scenario. As an application, we provide a physically compelling characterisation of the notion of counterfactual quantum computation.

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arXiv2007

Complex weak values in quantum measurement

In the weak measurement formalism of Y. Aharonov et al. the so-called weak value A_w of any observable A is generally a complex number. We derive a physical interpretation of its value in terms of the shift in the measurement pointer's mean position and mean momentum. In particular we show that the mean position shift contains a term jointly proportional to the imaginary part of the weak value and the rate at which the pointer is spreading in space as it enters the measurement interaction.

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arXiv2007

Generalised Clifford groups and simulation of associated quantum circuits

Quantum computations that involve only Clifford operations are classically simulable despite the fact that they generate highly entangled states; this is the content of the Gottesman-Knill theorem. Here we isolate the ingredients of the theorem and provide generalisations of some of them with the aim of identifying new classes of simulable quantum computations. In the usual construction, Clifford operations arise as projective normalisers of the first and second tensor powers of the Pauli group. We consider replacing the Pauli group by an arbitrary finite subgroup G of U(d). In particular we seek G such that G tensor G has an entangling normaliser. Via a generalisation of the Gottesman-Knill theorem the resulting normalisers lead to classes of quantum circuits that can be classically efficiently simulated. For the qubit case d=2 we exhaustively treat all finite subgroups of U(2) and find that the only ones (up to unitary equivalence and trivial phase extensions) with entangling normalisers are the groups G_n generated by X and the n^th root of Z.

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arXiv2007

The limits of counterfactual computation

We show that the protocol recently proposed by Hosten et al. does not allow all possible results of a computation to be obtained counterfactually, as was claimed. It only gives a counterfactual outcome for one of the computer outputs. However, we confirm the observation that the protocol gives some protection against decoherence. In some situations, though, it may be more effective simply to run the computer several times.

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arXiv2006

On the simulation of quantum circuits

We consider recent works on the simulation of quantum circuits using the formalism of matrix product states and the formalism of contracting tensor networks. We provide simplified direct proofs of many of these results, extending an explicit class of efficiently simulable circuits (log depth circuits with 2-qubit gates of limited range) to the following: let C be any poly sized quantum circuit (generally of poly depth too) on n qubits comprising 1- and 2- qubit gates and 1-qubit measurements (with 2-qubit gates acting on arbitrary pairs of qubit lines). For each qubit line j let D_j be the number of 2-qubit gates that touch or cross the line j i.e. the number of 2-qubit gates that are applied to qubits i,k with i \leq j \leq k. Let D=max_j D_j. Then the quantum process can be classically simulated in time n poly(2^D). Thus if D=O(log n) then C may be efficiently classically simulated.

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arXiv2005

An introduction to measurement based quantum computation

In the formalism of measurement based quantum computation we start with a given fixed entangled state of many qubits and perform computation by applying a sequence of measurements to designated qubits in designated bases. The choice of basis for later measurements may depend on earlier measurement outcomes and the final result of the computation is determined from the classical data of all the measurement outcomes. This is in contrast to the more familiar gate array model in which computational steps are unitary operations, developing a large entangled state prior to some final measurements for the output. Two principal schemes of measurement based computation are teleportation quantum computation (TQC) and the so-called cluster model or one-way quantum computer (1WQC). We will describe these schemes and show how they are able to perform universal quantum computation. We will outline various possible relationships between the models which serve to clarify their workings. We will also discuss possible novel computational benefits of the measurement based models compared to the gate array model, especially issues of parallelisability of algorithms.

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arXiv2003

Towards a geometrical interpretation of quantum information compression

Let S be the von Neumann entropy of a finite ensemble E of pure quantum states. We show that S may be naturally viewed as a function of a set of geometrical volumes in Hilbert space defined by the states and that S is monotonically increasing in each of these variables. Since S is the Schumacher compression limit of E, this monotonicity property suggests a geometrical interpretation of the quantum redundancy involved in the compression process. It provides clarification of previous work in which it was shown that S may be increased while increasing the overlap of each pair of states in the ensemble. As a byproduct, our mathematical techniques also provide a new interpretation of the subentropy of E.

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arXiv2003

Structure of states which satisfy strong subadditivity of quantum entropy with equality

We give an explicit characterisation of the quantum states which saturate the strong subadditivity inequality for the von Neumann entropy. By combining a result of Petz characterising the equality case for the monotonicity of relative entropy with a recent theorem by Koashi and Imoto, we show that such states will have the form of a so-called short quantum Markov chain, which in turn implies that two of the systems are independent conditioned on the third, in a physically meaningful sense. This characterisation simultaneously generalises known necessary and sufficient entropic conditions for quantum error correction as well as the conditions for the achievability of the Holevo bound on accessible information.

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arXiv2003

On the existence of physical transformations between sets of quantum states

Let A = {rho_1,...,rho_n} be a given set of quantum states. We consider the problem of finding necessary and sufficient conditions on another set B = {sigma_1,...,sigma_n} that guarantee the existence of a physical transformation taking rho_i to sigma_i for all i. Uhlmann has given an elegant such condition when both sets comprise pure states. We give a simple proof of this condition and develop some consequences. Then we consider multi-probabilistic transformations between sets of pure states which leads to conditions for the problem of transformability between A and B when one set is pure and the other is arbitrary.

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arXiv2003

On the reversible extraction of classical information from a quantum source

Consider a source E of pure quantum states with von Neumann entropy S. By the quantum source coding theorem, arbitrarily long strings of signals may be encoded asymptotically into S qubits/signal (the Schumacher limit) in such a way that entire strings may be recovered with arbitrarily high fidelity. Suppose that classical storage is free while quantum storage is expensive and suppose that the states of E do not fall into two or more orthogonal subspaces. We show that if E can be compressed with arbitrarily high fidelity into A qubits/signal plus any amount of auxiliary classical storage then A must still be at least as large as the Schumacher limit S of E. Thus no part of the quantum information content of E can be faithfully replaced by classical information. If the states do fall into orthogonal subspaces then A may be less than S, but only by an amount not exceeding the amount of classical information specifying the subspace for a signal from the source.

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arXiv2003

Illustrating the concept of quantum information

Over the past decade quantum information theory has developed into a vigorous field of research despite the fact that quantum information, as a precise concept, is undefined. Indeed the very idea of viewing quantum states as carriers of some kind of information (albeit unknowable in classical terms), leads naturally to interesting questions that might otherwise never have been asked, and corresponding new insights. We will discuss some illustrative examples, including a strengthening of the well known no-cloning theorem leading to a property of permanence for quantum information, and considerations arising from information compression that reflect on fundamental issues.

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arXiv2003

Entanglement cost of generalised measurements

Bipartite entanglement is one of the fundamental quantifiable resources of quantum information theory. We propose a new application of this resource to the theory of quantum measurements. According to Naimark's theorem any rank 1 generalised measurement (POVM) M may be represented as a von Neumann measurement in an extended (tensor product) space of the system plus ancilla. By considering a suitable average of the entanglements of these measurement directions and minimising over all Naimark extensions, we define a notion of entanglement cost E_min(M) of M. We give a constructive means of characterising all Naimark extensions of a given POVM. We identify various classes of POVMs with zero and non-zero cost and explicitly characterise all POVMs in 2 dimensions having zero cost. We prove a constant upper bound on the entanglement cost of any POVM in any dimension. Hence the asymptotic entanglement cost (i.e. the large n limit of the cost of n applications of M, divided by n) is zero for all POVMs. The trine measurement is defined by three rank 1 elements, with directions symmetrically placed around a great circle on the Bloch sphere. We give an analytic expression for its entanglement cost. Defining a normalised cost of any d-dimensional POVM by E_min(M)/log(d), we show (using a combination of analytic and numerical techniques) that the trine measurement is more costly than any other POVM with d>2, or with d=2 and ancilla dimension 2. This strongly suggests that the trine measurement is the most costly of all POVMs.

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arXiv2003

Notes on Hallgren's efficient quantum algorithm for solving Pell's equation

Pell's equation is x^2-d*y^2=1 where d is a square-free integer and we seek positive integer solutions x,y>0. Let (x',y') be the smallest solution (i.e. having smallest A=x'+y'sqrt(d)). Lagrange showed that every solution can easily be constructed from A so given d it suffices to compute A. It is known that A can be exponentially large in d so just to write down A we need exponential time in the input size log d. Hence we introduce the regulator R=ln A and ask for the value of R to n decimal places. The best known classical algorithm has sub-exponential running time O(exp(sqrt(log d)), poly(n)). Hallgren's quantum algorithm gives the result in polynomial time O(poly(log d),poly(n)) with probability 1/poly(log d). The idea of the algorithm falls into two parts: using the formalism of algebraic number theory we convert the problem of solving Pell's equation into the problem of determining R as the period of a function on the real numbers. Then we generalise the quantum Fourier transform period finding algorithm to work in this situation of an irrational period on the (not finitely generated) abelian group of real numbers. These notes are intended to be accessible to a reader having no prior acquaintance with algebraic number theory; we give a self contained account of all the necessary concepts and we give elementary proofs of all the results needed. Then we go on to describe Hallgren's generalisation of the quantum period finding algorithm, which provides the efficient computational solution of Pell's equation in the above sense.

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arXiv2002

Universal quantum information compression and degrees of prior knowledge

We describe a universal information compression scheme that compresses any pure quantum i.i.d. source asymptotically to its von Neumann entropy, with no prior knowledge of the structure of the source. We introduce a diagonalisation procedure that enables any classical compression algorithm to be utilised in a quantum context. Our scheme is then based on the corresponding quantum translation of the classical Lempel-Ziv algorithm. Our methods lead to a conceptually simple way of estimating the entropy of a source in terms of the measurement of an associated length parameter while maintaining high fidelity for long blocks. As a by-product we also estimate the eigenbasis of the source. Since our scheme is based on the Lempel-Ziv method, it can be applied also to target sequences that are not i.i.d.

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arXiv2002

A stronger no-cloning theorem

It is well known that (non-orthogonal) pure states cannot be cloned so one may ask: how much or what kind of additional (quantum) information is needed to supplement one copy of a quantum state in order to be able to produce two copies of that state by a physical operation? For classical information, no supplementary information is required. However for pure quantum (non-orthogonal) states, we show that the supplementary information must always be as large as it can possibly be i.e. the clone must be able to be generated from the additional information alone, independently of the first (given) copy.

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arXiv2002

Trading quantum for classical resources in quantum data compression

We study the visible compression of a source E of pure quantum signal states, or, more formally, the minimal resources per signal required to represent arbitrarily long strings of signals with arbitrarily high fidelity, when the compressor is given the identity of the input state sequence as classical information. According to the quantum source coding theorem, the optimal quantum rate is the von Neumann entropy S(E) qubits per signal. We develop a refinement of this theorem in order to analyze the situation in which the states are coded into classical and quantum bits that are quantified separately. This leads to a trade--off curve Q(R), where Q(R) qubits per signal is the optimal quantum rate for a given classical rate of R bits per signal. Our main result is an explicit characterization of this trade--off function by a simple formula in terms of only single signal, perfect fidelity encodings of the source. We give a thorough discussion of many further mathematical properties of our formula, including an analysis of its behavior for group covariant sources and a generalization to sources with continuously parameterized states. We also show that our result leads to a number of corollaries characterizing the trade--off between information gain and state disturbance for quantum sources. In addition, we indicate how our techniques also provide a solution to the so--called remote state preparation problem. Finally, we develop a probability--free version of our main result which may be interpreted as an answer to the question: ``How many classical bits does a qubit cost?'' This theorem provides a type of dual to Holevo's theorem, insofar as the latter characterizes the cost of coding classical bits into qubits.

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