arXiv subjects

Sergey Bravyi

Publications and source records attributed to Sergey Bravyi.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2010

Topological order in an exactly solvable 3D spin model

We study a 3D generalization of the toric code model introduced recently by Chamon. This is an exactly solvable spin model with six-qubit nearest neighbor interactions on an FCC lattice whose ground space exhibits topological quantum order. The elementary excitations of this model which we call monopoles can be geometrically described as the corners of rectangular-shaped membranes. We prove that the creation of an isolated monopole separated from other monopoles by a distance R requires an operator acting on at least R^2 qubits. Composite particles that consist of two monopoles (dipoles) and four monopoles (quadrupoles) can be described as end-points of strings. The peculiar feature of the model is that dipole-type strings are rigid, that is, such strings must be aligned with face-diagonals of the lattice. For periodic boundary conditions the ground space can encode 4g qubits where g is the greatest common divisor of the lattice dimensions. We describe a complete set of logical operators acting on the encoded qubits in terms of closed strings and closed membranes.

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arXiv2010

Majorana Fermion Codes

We initiate the study of Majorana fermion codes. These codes can be viewed as extensions of Kitaev's 1D model of unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires to higher spatial dimensions and interacting fermions. The purpose of Majorana fermion codes (MFCs) is to protect quantum information against low-weight fermionic errors, that is, operators acting on sufficiently small subsets of fermionic modes. We examine to what extent MFCs can surpass qubit stabilizer codes in terms of their stability properties. A general construction of 2D MFCs is proposed which combines topological protection based on a macroscopic code distance with protection based on fermionic parity conservation. Finally, we use MFCs to show how to transform any qubit stabilizer code to a weakly self-dual CSS code.

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arXiv2010

Topological quantum order: stability under local perturbations

We study zero-temperature stability of topological phases of matter under weak time-independent perturbations. Our results apply to quantum spin Hamiltonians that can be written as a sum of geometrically local commuting projectors on a D-dimensional lattice with certain topological order conditions. Given such a Hamiltonian H_0 we prove that there exists a constant threshold ε>0 such that for any perturbation V representable as a sum of short-range bounded-norm interactions the perturbed Hamiltonian H=H_0+εV has well-defined spectral bands originating from O(1) smallest eigenvalues of H_0. These bands are separated from the rest of the spectrum and from each other by a constant gap. The band originating from the smallest eigenvalue of H_0 has exponentially small width (as a function of the lattice size). Our proof exploits a discrete version of Hamiltonian flow equations, the theory of relatively bounded operators, and the Lieb-Robinson bound.

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arXiv2009

Thermodynamic stability criteria for a quantum memory based on stabilizer and subsystem codes

We discuss and review several thermodynamic criteria that have been introduced to characterize the thermal stability of a self-correcting quantum memory. We first examine the use of symmetry-breaking fields in analyzing the properties of self-correcting quantum memories in the thermodynamic limit: we show that the thermal expectation values of all logical operators vanish for any stabilizer and any subsystem code in any spatial dimension. On the positive side, we generalize the results in [R. Alicki et al., arXiv:0811.0033] to obtain a general upper bound on the relaxation rate of a quantum memory at nonzero temperature, assuming that the quantum memory interacts via a Markovian master equation with a thermal bath. This upper bound is applicable to quantum memories based on either stabilizer or subsystem codes.

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arXiv2009

Tradeoffs for reliable quantum information storage in 2D systems

We ask whether there are fundamental limits on storing quantum information reliably in a bounded volume of space. To investigate this question, we study quantum error correcting codes specified by geometrically local commuting constraints on a 2D lattice of finite-dimensional quantum particles. For these 2D systems, we derive a tradeoff between the number of encoded qubits k, the distance of the code d, and the number of particles n. It is shown that kd^2=O(n) where the coefficient in O(n) depends only on the locality of the constraints and dimension of the Hilbert spaces describing individual particles. We show that the analogous tradeoff for the classical information storage is k\sqrt{d} =O(n).

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arXiv2009

Quantum algorithms for testing properties of distributions

Suppose one has access to oracles generating samples from two unknown probability distributions P and Q on some N-element set. How many samples does one need to test whether the two distributions are close or far from each other in the L_1-norm ? This and related questions have been extensively studied during the last years in the field of property testing. In the present paper we study quantum algorithms for testing properties of distributions. It is shown that the L_1-distance between P and Q can be estimated with a constant precision using approximately N^{1/2} queries in the quantum settings, whereas classical computers need Ω(N) queries. We also describe quantum algorithms for testing Uniformity and Orthogonality with query complexity O(N^{1/3}). The classical query complexity of these problems is known to be Ω(N^{1/2}).

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arXiv2008

A no-go theorem for a two-dimensional self-correcting quantum memory based on stabilizer codes

We study properties of stabilizer codes that permit a local description on a regular D-dimensional lattice. Specifically, we assume that the stabilizer group of a code (the gauge group for subsystem codes) can be generated by local Pauli operators such that the support of any generator is bounded by a hypercube of constant size. Our first result concerns the optimal scaling of the distance $d$ with the linear size of the lattice $L$. We prove an upper bound $d=O(L^{D-1})$ which is tight for D=1,2. This bound applies to both subspace and subsystem stabilizer codes. Secondly, we analyze the suitability of stabilizer codes for building a self-correcting quantum memory. Any stabilizer code with geometrically local generators can be naturally transformed to a local Hamiltonian penalizing states that violate the stabilizer condition. A degenerate ground-state of this Hamiltonian corresponds to the logical subspace of the code. We prove that for D=1,2 the height of the energy barrier separating different logical states is upper bounded by a constant independent of the lattice size L. The same result holds if there are unused logical qubits that are treated as "gauge qubits". It demonstrates that a self-correcting quantum memory cannot be built using stabilizer codes in dimensions D=1,2. This result is in sharp contrast with the existence of a classical self-correcting memory in the form of a two-dimensional ferromagnet. Our results leave open the possibility for a self-correcting quantum memory based on 2D subsystem codes or on 3D subspace or subsystem codes.

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arXiv2008

Complexity of stoquastic frustration-free Hamiltonians

We study several problems related to properties of non-negative matrices that arise at the boundary between quantum and classical probabilistic computation. Our results are twofold. First, we identify a large class of quantum Hamiltonians describing systems of qubits for which the adiabatic evolution can be efficiently simulated on a classical probabilistic computer. These are stoquastic local Hamiltonians with a "frustration free" ground-state. A Hamiltonian belongs to this class iff it can be represented as $H=\sum_a H_a$ where (1) every term $H_a$ acts non-trivially on a constant number of qubits, (2) every term $H_a$ has real non-positive off-diagonal matrix elements in the standard basis, and (3) the ground-state of $H$ is a ground-state of every term $H_a$. Secondly, we generalize the Cook-Levin theorem proving NP-completeness of the satisfiability problem to the complexity class MA -- a probabilistic analogue of NP. Specifically, we construct a quantum version of the k-SAT problem which we call "stoquastic k-SAT" such that stoquastic k-SAT is contained in MA for any constant $k$, and any promise problem in MA is Karp-reducible to stoquastic 6-SAT. This result provides the first non-trivial example of a MA-complete promise problem.

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arXiv2008

Classical approximation schemes for the ground-state energy of quantum and classical Ising spin Hamiltonians on planar graphs

We describe an efficient approximation algorithm for evaluating the ground-state energy of the classical Ising Hamiltonian with linear terms on an arbitrary planar graph. The running time of the algorithm grows linearly with the number of spins and exponentially with 1/epsilon, where epsilon is the worst-case relative error. This result contrasts the well known fact that exact computation of the ground-state energy for the two-dimensional Ising spin glass model is NP-hard. We also present a classical approximation algorithm for the Local Hamiltonian Problem or Quantum Ising Spin Glass problem on a planar graph with bounded degree which is known to be a QMA-complete problem. Using a different technique we find a classical approximation algorithm for the quantum Ising spin glass problem on the simplest planar graph with unbounded degree, the star graph.

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arXiv2008

Simulation of Many-Body Hamiltonians using Perturbation Theory with Bounded-Strength Interactions

We show how to map a given n-qubit target Hamiltonian with bounded-strength k-body interactions onto a simulator Hamiltonian with two-body interactions, such that the ground-state energy of the target and the simulator Hamiltonians are the same up to an extensive error O(epsilon n) for arbitrary small epsilon. The strength of interactions in the simulator Hamiltonian depends on epsilon and k but does not depend on n. We accomplish this reduction using a new way of deriving an effective low-energy Hamiltonian which relies on the Schrieffer-Wolff transformation of many-body physics.

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arXiv2008

Contraction of matchgate tensor networks on non-planar graphs

A tensor network is a product of tensors associated with vertices of some graph $G$ such that every edge of $G$ represents a summation (contraction) over a matching pair of indexes. It was shown recently by Valiant, Cai, and Choudhary that tensor networks can be efficiently contracted on planar graphs if components of every tensor obey a system of quadratic equations known as matchgate identities. Such tensors are referred to as matchgate tensors. The present paper provides an alternative approach to contraction of matchgate tensor networks that easily extends to non-planar graphs. Specifically, it is shown that a matchgate tensor network on a graph $G$ of genus $g$ with $n$ vertices can be contracted in time $T=poly(n) + 2^{2g} O(m^3)$ where $m$ is the minimum number of edges one has to remove from $G$ in order to make it planar. Our approach makes use of anticommuting (Grassmann) variables and Gaussian integrals.

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arXiv2007

The Complexity of Stoquastic Local Hamiltonian Problems

We study the complexity of the Local Hamiltonian Problem (denoted as LH-MIN) in the special case when a Hamiltonian obeys conditions of the Perron-Frobenius theorem: all off-diagonal matrix elements in the standard basis are real and non-positive. We will call such Hamiltonians, which are common in the natural world, stoquastic. An equivalent characterization of stoquastic Hamiltonians is that they have an entry-wise non-negative Gibbs density matrix for any temperature. We prove that LH-MIN for stoquastic Hamiltonians belongs to the complexity class AM -- a probabilistic version of NP with two rounds of communication between the prover and the verifier. We also show that 2-local stoquastic LH-MIN is hard for the class MA. With the additional promise of having a polynomial spectral gap, we show that stoquastic LH-MIN belongs to the class POSTBPP=BPPpath -- a generalization of BPP in which a post-selective readout is allowed. This last result also shows that any problem solved by adiabatic quantum computation using stoquastic Hamiltonians lies in PostBPP.

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arXiv2007

Polynomial-time algorithm for simulation of weakly interacting quantum spin systems

We describe an algorithm that computes the ground state energy and correlation functions for 2-local Hamiltonians in which interactions between qubits are weak compared to single-qubit terms. The running time of the algorithm is polynomial in the number of qubits and the required precision. Specifically, we consider Hamiltonians of the form $H=H_0+εV$, where H_0 describes non-interacting qubits, V is a perturbation that involves arbitrary two-qubit interactions on a graph of bounded degree, and $ε$ is a small parameter. The algorithm works if $|ε|$ is below a certain threshold value that depends only upon the spectral gap of H_0, the maximal degree of the graph, and the maximal norm of the two-qubit interactions. The main technical ingredient of the algorithm is a generalized Kirkwood-Thomas ansatz for the ground state. The parameters of the ansatz are computed using perturbative expansions in powers of $ε$. Our algorithm is closely related to the coupled cluster method used in quantum chemistry.

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arXiv2007

Upper bounds on entangling rates of bipartite Hamiltonians

We discuss upper bounds on the rate at which unitary evolution governed by a non-local Hamiltonian can generate entanglement in a bipartite system. Given a bipartite Hamiltonian H coupling two finite dimensional particles A and B, the entangling rate is shown to be upper bounded by c*log(d)*norm(H), where d is the smallest dimension of the interacting particles, norm(H) is the operator norm of H, and c is a constant close to 1. Under certain restrictions on the initial state we prove analogous upper bound for the ancilla-assisted entangling rate with a constant c that does not depend upon dimensions of local ancillas. The restriction is that the initial state has at most two distinct Schmidt coefficients (each coefficient may have arbitrarily large multiplicity). Our proof is based on analysis of a mixing rate -- a functional measuring how fast entropy can be produced if one mixes a time-independent state with a state evolving unitarily.

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arXiv2006

Merlin-Arthur Games and Stoquastic Complexity

MA is a class of decision problems for which `yes'-instances have a proof that can be efficiently checked by a classical randomized algorithm. We prove that MA has a natural complete problem which we call the stoquastic k-SAT problem. This is a matrix-valued analogue of the satisfiability problem in which clauses are k-qubit projectors with non-negative matrix elements, while a satisfying assignment is a vector that belongs to the space spanned by these projectors. Stoquastic k-SAT is the first non-trivial example of a MA-complete problem. We also study the minimum eigenvalue problem for local stoquastic Hamiltonians that was introduced in quant-ph/0606140, stoquastic LH-MIN. A new complexity class StoqMA is introduced so that stoquastic LH-MIN is StoqMA-complete. Lastly, we consider the average LH-MIN problem for local stoquastic Hamiltonians that depend on a random or `quenched disorder' parameter, stoquastic AV-LH-MIN. We prove that stoquastic AV-LH-MIN is contained in the complexity class \AM, the class of decision problems for which yes-instances have a randomized interactive proof with two-way communication between prover and verifier.

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arXiv2006

On measurement-based quantum computation with the toric code states

We study measurement-based quantum computation (MQC) using as quantum resource the planar code state on a two-dimensional square lattice (planar analogue of the toric code). It is shown that MQC with the planar code state can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer if at each step of MQC the sets of measured and unmeasured qubits correspond to connected subsets of the lattice.

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arXiv2006

Efficient algorithm for a quantum analogue of 2-SAT

Complexity of a quantum analogue of the satisfiability problem is studied. Quantum k-SAT is a problem of verifying whether there exists n-qubit pure state such that its k-qubit reduced density matrices have support on prescribed subspaces. We present a classical algorithm solving quantum 2-SAT in a polynomial time. It generalizes the well-known algorithm for the classical 2-SAT. Besides, we show that for any k>=4 quantum k-SAT is complete in the complexity class QMA with one-sided error.

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arXiv2005

Universal Quantum Computation with the nu=5/2 Fractional Quantum Hall State

We consider topological quantum computation (TQC) with a particular class of anyons that are believed to exist in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect state at Landau level filling fraction nu=5/2. Since the braid group representation describing statistics of these anyons is not computationally universal, one cannot directly apply the standard TQC technique. We propose to use very noisy non-topological operations such as direct short-range interaction between anyons to simulate a universal set of gates. Assuming that all TQC operations are implemented perfectly, we prove that the threshold error rate for non-topological operations is above 14%. The total number of non-topological computational elements that one needs to simulate a quantum circuit with $L$ gates scales as $L(\log L)^3$.

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