arXiv subjects

Robert Koenig

Publications and source records attributed to Robert Koenig.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Fault-Tolerant One-Shot Entanglement Generation with Constant-Sized Quantum Devices in the Plane

Consider a rectangular grid of qubits in 2D with single-qubit and nearest-neighbor two-qubit operations subject to local stochastic Pauli noise. At different length scales, this setup describes both a single quantum computing device with geometrically limited connectivity between qubits arranged on a disc, and planar networks composed of quantum repeater stations of constant size. We give a protocol which robustly generates entanglement between distant qubits in this setup. For noise below a constant threshold error strength, it generates a constant-fidelity Bell pair between qubits separated by an arbitrarily large distance $R$. To generate distance-$R$ entanglement, a rectangular grid of qubits of dimensions $\Theta(R)\times \Theta(\mathsf{poly}(\log R))$ suffices. Our protocol applies quantum operations in one shot, establishing a Bell state in a constant time up to a known Pauli correction. In contrast, existing entanglement generation protocols either require local quantum devices controlling a number of qubits growing with the targeted distance, or are not single-shot, i.e., have a distance-dependent execution time. The protocol leverages many-body entanglement in networks and provides the first example of a short-range entangled state in 2D with long-range localizable entanglement robust to local stochastic Pauli noise. As an immediate corollary, we construct a 2D-local stabilizer Hamiltonian whose Gibbs states possess long-range localizable entanglement at constant positive temperature.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Trading modes against energy

We ask how much energy is required to weakly simulate an $n$-qubit quantum circuit (i.e., produce samples from its output distribution) by a unitary circuit in a hybrid qubit-oscillator model. The latter consists of a certain number of bosonic modes coupled to a constant number of qubits by a Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian. We find that efficient approximate weak simulation of an $n$-qubit quantum circuit of polynomial size with inverse polynomial error is possible with (1) a linear number of bosonic modes and a polynomial amount of energy, or (2) a sublinear (polynomial) number of modes and a subexponential amount of energy, or (3) a constant number of modes and an exponential amount of energy. Our construction encodes qubits into high-dimensional approximate Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes. It provides new insight into the trade-off between system size (i.e., number of modes) and the amount of energy required to perform quantum computation in the continuous-variable setting.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Qubit-oscillator-based gate implementations for approximate Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill codes

We consider hybrid qubit-oscillator systems together with Gaussian, multi-qubit as well as qubit-controlled Gaussian unitaries. We propose implementations of logical gates for approximate Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill codes in this model using two oscillators and three qubits. We show that these gate implementations become exact in the limit of large squeezing: The logical gate error is upper bounded by a linear function of the squeezing parameter, and depends polynomially on the number of encoded qubits. For certain Cliffords, our constructions overcome a shortcoming of well-known Gaussian implementations which have a constant logical gate error even in the absence of noise.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Composable logical gate error in approximate quantum error correction: reexamining gate implementations in Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill codes

Quantifying the accuracy of logical gates is paramount in approximate error correction, where perfect implementations are often unachievable with the available set of physical operations. To this end, we introduce a single scalar quantity we call the (composable) logical gate error. It captures both the deviation of the logical action from the desired target gate as well as leakage out of the code space. It is subadditive under successive application of gates, providing a simple means for analyzing circuits. We show how to bound the composable logical gate error in terms of matrix elements of physical unitaries between (approximate) logical computational basis states. In the continuous-variable context, this sidesteps the need for computing energy-bounded norms. As an example, we study the composable logical gate error for linear optics implementations of Paulis and Cliffords in approximate Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes. We find that the logical gate error for implementations of Paulis depends linearly on the squeezing parameter. This implies that their accuracy improves monotonically with the amount of squeezing. For some Cliffords, however, linear optics implementations which are exact for ideal GKP codes fail in the approximate case: they have a constant logical gate error even in the limit of infinite squeezing. This is consistent with previous results about the limitations of certain gate implementations for approximate GKP codes. It shows that findings applicable to ideal GKP codes do not always translate to the realm of physically realizable approximate GKP codes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

On the sampling complexity of coherent superpositions

We consider the problem of sampling from the distribution of measurement outcomes when applying a POVM to a superposition $|\Psi\rangle = \sum_{j=0}^{\chi-1} c_j |\psi_j\rangle$ of $\chi$ pure states. We relate this problem to that of drawing samples from the outcome distribution when measuring a single state $|\psi_j\rangle$ in the superposition. Here $j$ is drawn from the distribution $p(j)=|c_j|^2/\|c\|^2_2$ of normalized amplitudes. We give an algorithm which $-$ given $O(\chi \|c\|_2^2 \log1/\delta)$ such samples and calls to oracles evaluating the involved probability density functions $-$ outputs a sample from the target distribution except with probability at most $\delta$. In many cases of interest, the POVM and individual states in the superposition have efficient classical descriptions allowing to evaluate matrix elements of POVM elements and to draw samples from outcome distributions. In such a scenario, our algorithm gives a reduction from strong classical simulation (i.e., the problem of computing outcome probabilities) to weak simulation (i.e., the problem of sampling). In contrast to prior work focusing on finite-outcome POVMs, this reduction also applies to continuous-outcome POVMs. An example is homodyne or heterodyne measurements applied to a superposition of Gaussian states. Here we obtain a sampling algorithm with time complexity $O(N^3 \chi^3 \|c\|_2^2 \log1/\delta)$ for a state of $N$ bosonic modes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Factoring an integer with three oscillators and a qubit

A common starting point of traditional quantum algorithm design is the notion of a universal quantum computer with a scalable number of qubits. This convenient abstraction mirrors classical computations manipulating finite sets of symbols, and allows for a device-independent development of algorithmic primitives. Here we advocate an alternative approach centered on the physical setup and the associated set of natively available operations. We show that these can be leveraged to great benefit by sidestepping the standard approach of reasoning about computation in terms of individual qubits. As an example, we consider hybrid qubit-oscillator systems with linear optics operations augmented by certain qubit-controlled Gaussian unitaries. The continuous-variable (CV) Fourier transform has a native realization in such systems in the form of homodyne momentum measurements. We show that this fact can be put to algorithmic use. Specifically, we give a polynomial-time quantum algorithm in this setup which finds a factor of an $n$-bit integer $N$. Unlike Shor's algorithm, or CV implementations thereof based on qubit-to-oscillator encodings, our algorithm relies on the CV (rather than discrete) Fourier transform. The physical system used is independent of the number $N$ to be factored: It consists of a single qubit and three oscillators only.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

The complexity of Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill states

We initiate the study of state complexity for continuous-variable quantum systems. Concretely, we consider a setup with bosonic modes and auxiliary qubits, where available operations include Gaussian one- and two-mode operations, single- and two-qubit operations, as well as qubit-controlled phase-space displacements. We define the (approximate) complexity of a bosonic state by the minimum size of a circuit that prepares an $L^1$-norm approximation to the state. We propose a new circuit which prepares an approximate Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) state $|\mathsf{GKP}_{\kappa,\Delta}\rangle$. Here $\kappa^{-2}$ is the variance of the envelope and $\Delta^2$ is the variance of the individual peaks. We show that the circuit accepts with constant probability and -- conditioned on acceptance -- the output state is polynomially close in $(\kappa,\Delta)$ to the state $|\mathsf{GKP}_{\kappa,\Delta}\rangle$. The size of our circuit is linear in $(\log 1/\kappa,\log 1/\Delta)$. To our knowledge, this is the first protocol for GKP-state preparation with fidelity guarantees for the prepared state. We also show converse bounds, establishing that the linear circuit-size dependence of our construction is optimal. This fully characterizes the complexity of GKP states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Classical simulation of non-Gaussian bosonic circuits

We propose efficient classical algorithms which (strongly) simulate the action of bosonic linear optics circuits applied to superpositions of Gaussian states. Our approach relies on an augmented covariance matrix formalism to keep track of relative phases between individual terms in a linear combination. This yields an exact simulation algorithm whose runtime is polynomial in the number of modes and the size of the circuit, and quadratic in the number of terms in the superposition. We also present a faster approximate randomized algorithm whose runtime is linear in this number. Our main building blocks are a formula for the triple overlap of three Gaussian states and a fast algorithm for estimating the norm of a superposition of Gaussian states up to a multiplicative error. Our construction borrows from earlier work on simulating quantum circuits in finite-dimensional settings, including, in particular, fermionic linear optics with non-Gaussian initial states and Clifford computations with non-stabilizer initial states. It provides algorithmic access to a practically relevant family of non-Gaussian bosonic circuits.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

How to fault-tolerantly realize any quantum circuit with local operations

We show how to realize a general quantum circuit involving gates between arbitrary pairs of qubits by means of geometrically local quantum operations and efficient classical computation. We prove that circuit-level local stochastic noise modeling an imperfect implementation of our derived schemes is equivalent to local stochastic noise in the original circuit. Our constructions incur a constant-factor increase in the quantum circuit depth and a polynomial overhead in the number of qubits: To execute an arbitrary quantum circuit on $n$ qubits, we give a 3D quantum fault-tolerance architecture involving $O(n^{3/2} \log^3 n)$ qubits, and a quasi-2D architecture using $O(n^2 \log^3 n)$ qubits. Applied to recent fault-tolerance constructions, this gives a fault-tolerance threshold theorem for universal quantum computations with local operations, a polynomial qubit overhead and a quasi-polylogarithmic depth overhead. More generally, our transformation dispenses with the need for considering the locality of operations when designing schemes for fault-tolerant quantum information processing.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

A colossal advantage: 3D-local noisy shallow quantum circuits defeat unbounded fan-in classical circuits

We present a computational problem with the following properties: (i) Every instance can be solved with near-certainty by a constant-depth quantum circuit using only nearest-neighbor gates in 3D even when its implementation is corrupted by noise. (ii) Any constant-depth classical circuit composed of unbounded fan-in AND, OR, as well as NOT gates, i.e., an AC0-circuit, of size smaller than a certain subexponential, fails to solve a uniformly random instance with probability greater than a certain constant. Such an advantage against unbounded fan-in classical circuits was previously only known in the noise-free case or without locality constraints. We overcome these limitations, proposing a quantum advantage demonstration amenable to experimental realizations. Subexponential circuit-complexity lower bounds have traditionally been referred to as exponential. We use the term colossal since our fault-tolerant 3D architecture resembles a certain Roman monument.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Classical simulation of non-Gaussian fermionic circuits

We propose efficient algorithms for classically simulating fermionic linear optics operations applied to non-Gaussian initial states. By gadget constructions, this provides algorithms for fermionic linear optics with non-Gaussian operations. We argue that this problem is analogous to that of simulating Clifford circuits with non-stabilizer initial states: Algorithms for the latter problem immediately translate to the fermionic setting. Our construction is based on an extension of the covariance matrix formalism which permits to efficiently track relative phases in superpositions of Gaussian states. It yields simulation algorithms with polynomial complexity in the number of fermions, the desired accuracy, and certain quantities capturing the degree of non-Gaussianity of the initial state. We study one such quantity, the fermionic Gaussian extent, and show that it is multiplicative on tensor products when the so-called fermionic Gaussian fidelity is. We establish this property for the tensor product of two arbitrary pure states of four fermions with positive parity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Single-qubit gate teleportation provides a quantum advantage

Gate-teleportation circuits are arguably among the most basic examples of computations believed to provide a quantum computational advantage: In seminal work [Quantum Inf. Comput., 4(2):134--145], Terhal and DiVincenzo have shown that these circuits elude simulation by efficient classical algorithms under plausible complexity-theoretic assumptions. Here we consider possibilistic simulation [Phys. Rev. A 106, 062430 (2022)], a particularly weak form of this task where the goal is to output any string appearing with non-zero probability in the output distribution of the circuit. We show that even for single-qubit Clifford-gate-teleportation circuits this simulation problem cannot be solved by constant-depth classical circuits with bounded fan-in gates. Our results are unconditional and are obtained by a reduction to the problem of computing the parity, a well-studied problem in classical circuit complexity.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Long-range data transmission in a fault-tolerant quantum bus architecture

We propose a scheme for fault-tolerant long-range entanglement generation at the ends of a rectangular array of qubits of length $R$ and a square cross section of size $d\times d$ with $d=O(\log R)$. Up to an efficiently computable Pauli correction, the scheme generates a maximally entangled state of two qubits using a depth-$6$ circuit consisting of nearest-neighbor Clifford gates and local measurements only. Compared with existing fault-tolerance schemes for quantum communication, the protocol is distinguished by its low latency: starting from a product state, the entangled state is prepared in a time $O(t_{\textrm{local}})$ determined only by the local gate and measurement operation time $t_{\textrm{local}}$. Furthermore, the requirements on local repeater stations are minimal: Each repeater uses only $\Theta(\log^2 R)$ qubits with a lifetime of order $O(t_{\textrm{local}})$. We prove a converse bound $\Omega(\log R)$ on the number of qubits per repeater among all low-latency schemes for fault-tolerant quantum communication over distance $R$. Furthermore, all operations within a repeater are local when the qubits are arranged in a square lattice. The noise-resilience of our scheme relies on the fault-tolerance properties of the underlying cluster state. We give a full error analysis, establishing a fault-tolerance threshold against general (circuit-level) local stochastic noise affecting preparation, entangling operations and measurements. This includes, in particular, errors correlated in time and space. Our conservative analytical estimates are surprisingly optimistic, suggesting that the scheme is suited for long-range entanglement generation both in and between near-term quantum computing devices.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Adaptive constant-depth circuits for manipulating non-abelian anyons

We consider Kitaev's quantum double model based on a finite group $G$ and describe quantum circuits for (a) preparation of the ground state, (b) creation of anyon pairs separated by an arbitrary distance, and (c) non-destructive topological charge measurement. We show that for any solvable group $G$ all above tasks can be realized by constant-depth adaptive circuits with geometrically local unitary gates and mid-circuit measurements. Each gate may be chosen adaptively depending on previous measurement outcomes. Constant-depth circuits are well suited for implementation on a noisy hardware since it may be possible to execute the entire circuit within the qubit coherence time. Thus our results could facilitate an experimental study of exotic phases of matter with a non-abelian particle statistics. We also show that adaptiveness is essential for our circuit construction. Namely, task (b) cannot be realized by non-adaptive constant-depth local circuits for any non-abelian group $G$. This is in a sharp contrast with abelian anyons which can be created and moved over an arbitrary distance by a depth-$1$ circuit composed of generalized Pauli gates.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Twisted hybrid algorithms for combinatorial optimization

Proposed hybrid algorithms encode a combinatorial cost function into a problem Hamiltonian and optimize its energy by varying over a set of states with low circuit complexity. Classical processing is typically only used for the choice of variational parameters following gradient descent. As a consequence, these approaches are limited by the descriptive power of the associated states. We argue that for certain combinatorial optimization problems, such algorithms can be hybridized further, thus harnessing the power of efficient non-local classical processing. Specifically, we consider combining a quantum variational ansatz with a greedy classical post-processing procedure for the MaxCut-problem on $3$-regular graphs. We show that the average cut-size produced by this method can be quantified in terms of the energy of a modified problem Hamiltonian. This motivates the consideration of an improved algorithm which variationally optimizes the energy of the modified Hamiltonian. We call this a twisted hybrid algorithm since the additional classical processing step is combined with a different choice of variational parameters. We exemplify the viability of this method using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA), giving analytic lower bounds on the expected approximation ratios achieved by twisted QAOA. These show that the necessary non-locality of the quantum ansatz can be reduced compared to the original QAOA: We find that for levels $p=2,\ldots, 6$, the level $p$ can be reduced by one while roughly maintaining the expected approximation ratio. This reduces the circuit depth by $4$ and the number of variational parameters by $2$.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Oscillator-to-oscillator codes do not have a threshold

It is known that continuous variable quantum information cannot be protected against naturally occurring noise using Gaussian states and operations only. Noh et al. (PRL 125:080503, 2020) proposed bosonic oscillator-to-oscillator codes relying on non-Gaussian resource states as an alternative, and showed that these encodings can lead to a reduction of the effective error strength at the logical level as measured by the variance of the classical displacement noise channel. An oscillator-to-oscillator code embeds K logical bosonic modes (in an arbitrary state) into N physical modes by means of a Gaussian N-mode unitary and N-K auxiliary one-mode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill-states. Here we ask if - in analogy to qubit error-correcting codes - there are families of oscillator-to-oscillator codes with the following threshold property: They allow to convert physical displacement noise with variance below some threshold value to logical noise with variance upper bounded by any (arbitrary) constant. We find that this is not the case if encoding unitaries involving a constant amount of squeezing and maximum likelihood error decoding are used. We show a general lower bound on the logical error probability which is only a function of the amount of squeezing and independent of the number of modes. As a consequence, any physically implementable family of oscillator-to-oscillator codes combined with maximum likelihood error decoding does not admit a threshold.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for approximate graph coloring

We show how to apply the recursive quantum approximate optimization algorithm (RQAOA) to MAX-$k$-CUT, the problem of finding an approximate $k$-vertex coloring of a graph. We compare this proposal to the best known classical and hybrid classical-quantum algorithms. First, we show that the standard (non-recursive) QAOA fails to solve this optimization problem for most regular bipartite graphs at any constant level $p$: the approximation ratio achieved by QAOA is hardly better than assigning colors to vertices at random. Second, we construct an efficient classical simulation algorithm which simulates level-$1$ QAOA and level-$1$ RQAOA for arbitrary graphs. In particular, these hybrid algorithms give rise to efficient classical algorithms, and no benefit arising from the use of quantum mechanics is to be expected. Nevertheless, they provide a suitable testbed for assessing the potential benefit of hybrid algorithm: We use the simulation algorithm to perform large-scale simulation of level-$1$ QAOA and RQAOA with up to $300$ qutrits applied to ensembles of randomly generated $3$-colorable constant-degree graphs. We find that level-$1$ RQAOA is surprisingly competitive: for the ensembles considered, its approximation ratios are often higher than those achieved by the best known generic classical algorithm based on rounding an SDP relaxation. This suggests the intriguing possibility that higher-level RQAOA may be a potentially useful algorithm for NISQ devices.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Enhanced noise resilience of the surface-GKP code via designed bias

We study the code obtained by concatenating the standard single-mode Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code with the surface code. We show that the noise tolerance of this surface-GKP code with respect to (Gaussian) displacement errors improves when a single-mode squeezing unitary is applied to each mode assuming that the identification of quadratures with logical Pauli operators is suitably modified. We observe noise-tolerance thresholds of up to $\sigma\approx 0.58$ shift-error standard deviation when the surface code is decoded without using GKP syndrome information. In contrast, prior results by Fukui et al. and Vuillot et al. report a threshold between $\sigma\approx 0.54$ and $\sigma\approx 0.55$ for the standard (toric-, respectively) surface-GKP code. The modified surface-GKP code effectively renders the mode-level physical noise asymmetric, biasing the logical-level noise on the GKP-qubits. The code can thus benefit from the resilience of the surface code against biased noise. We use the approximate maximum likelihood decoding algorithm of Bravyi et al. to obtain our threshold estimates. Throughout, we consider an idealized scenario where measurements are noiseless and GKP states are ideal. Our work demonstrates that Gaussian encodings of individual modes can enhance concatenated codes.

quant-ph↗