arXiv subjects

Simon J. Devitt

Publications and source records attributed to Simon J. Devitt.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2014

Cross-level Validation of Topological Quantum Circuits

Quantum computing promises a new approach to solving difficult computational problems, and the quest of building a quantum computer has started. While the first attempts on construction were succesful, scalability has never been achieved, due to the inherent fragile nature of the quantum bits (qubits). From the multitude of approaches to achieve scalability topological quantum computing (TQC) is the most promising one, by being based on an flexible approach to error-correction and making use of the straightforward measurement-based computing technique. TQC circuits are defined within a large, uniform, 3-dimensional lattice of physical qubits produced by the hardware and the physical volume of this lattice directly relates to the resources required for computation. Circuit optimization may result in non-intuitive mismatches between circuit specification and implementation. In this paper we introduce the first method for cross-level validation of TQC circuits. The specification of the circuit is expressed based on the stabilizer formalism, and the stabilizer table is checked by mapping the topology on the physical qubit level, followed by quantum circuit simulation. Simulation results show that cross-level validation of error-corrected circuits is feasible.

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arXiv2014

Classical Control of Large-Scale Quantum Computers

The accelerated development of quantum technology has reached a pivotal point. Early in 2014, several results were published demonstrating that several experimental technologies are now accurate enough to satisfy the requirements of fault-tolerant, error corrected quantum computation. While there are many technological and experimental issues that still need to be solved, the ability of experimental systems to now have error rates low enough to satisfy the fault-tolerant threshold for several error correction models is a tremendous milestone. Consequently, it is now a good time for the computer science and classical engineering community to examine the {\em classical} problems associated with compiling quantum algorithms and implementing them on future quantum hardware. In this paper, we will review the basic operational rules of a topological quantum computing architecture and outline one of the most important classical problems that need to be solved; the decoding of error correction data for a large-scale quantum computer. We will endeavour to present these problems independently from the underlying physics as much of this work can be effectively solved by non-experts in quantum information or quantum mechanics.

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arXiv2014

Mapping of Topological Quantum Circuits to Physical Hardware

Topological quantum computation is a promising technique to achieve large-scale, error-corrected computation. Quantum hardware is used to create a large, 3-dimensional lattice of entangled qubits while performing computation requires strategic measurement in accordance with a topological circuit specification. The specification is a geometric structure that defines encoded information and fault-tolerant operations. The compilation of a topological circuit is one important aspect of programming a quantum computer, another is the mapping of the topological circuit into the operations performed by the hardware. Each qubit has to be controlled, and measurement results are needed to propagate encoded quantum information from input to output. In this work, we introduce an algorithm for mapping an topological circuit to the operations needed by the physical hardware. We determine the control commands for each qubit in the computer and the relevant measurements that are needed to track information as it moves through the circuit.

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arXiv2014

Software Pauli Tracking for Quantum Computation

The realisation of large-scale quantum computing is no longer simply a hardware question. The rapid development of quantum technology has resulted in dozens of control and programming problems that should be directed towards the classical computer science and engineering community. One such problem is known as Pauli tracking. Methods for implementing quantum algorithms that are compatible with crucial error correction technology utilise extensive quantum teleportation protocols. These protocols are intrinsically probabilistic and result in correction operators that occur as byproducts of teleportation. These byproduct operators do not need to be corrected in the quantum hardware itself. Instead, byproduct operators are tracked through the circuit and output results reinterpreted. This tracking is routinely ignored in quantum information as it is assumed that tracking algorithms will eventually be developed. In this work we help fill this gap and present an algorithm for tracking byproduct operators through a quantum computation. We formulate this work based on quantum gate sets that are compatible with all major forms of quantum error correction and demonstrate the completeness of the algorithm.

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arXiv2013

Photonic architecture for scalable quantum information processing in NV-diamond

Physics and information are intimately connected, and the ultimate information processing devices will be those that harness the principles of quantum mechanics. Many physical systems have been identified as candidates for quantum information processing, but none of them are immune from errors. The challenge remains to find a path from the experiments of today to a reliable and scalable quantum computer. Here, we develop an architecture based on a simple module comprising an optical cavity containing a single negatively-charged nitrogen vacancy centre in diamond. Modules are connected by photons propagating in a fiber-optical network and collectively used to generate a topological cluster state, a robust substrate for quantum information processing. In principle, all processes in the architecture can be deterministic, but current limitations lead to processes that are probabilistic but heralded. We find that the architecture enables large-scale quantum information processing with existing technology.

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arXiv2013

Quantum Error Correction for Beginners

Quantum error correction (QEC) and fault-tolerant quantum computation represent one of the most vital theoretical aspect of quantum information processing. It was well known from the early developments of this exciting field that the fragility of coherent quantum systems would be a catastrophic obstacle to the development of large scale quantum computers. The introduction of quantum error correction in 1995 showed that active techniques could be employed to mitigate this fatal problem. However, quantum error correction and fault-tolerant computation is now a much larger field and many new codes, techniques, and methodologies have been developed to implement error correction for large scale quantum algorithms. In response, we have attempted to summarize the basic aspects of quantum error correction and fault-tolerance, not as a detailed guide, but rather as a basic introduction. This development in this area has been so pronounced that many in the field of quantum information, specifically researchers who are new to quantum information or people focused on the many other important issues in quantum computation, have found it difficult to keep up with the general formalisms and methodologies employed in this area. Rather than introducing these concepts from a rigorous mathematical and computer science framework, we instead examine error correction and fault-tolerance largely through detailed examples, which are more relevant to experimentalists today and in the near future.

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arXiv2013

A bridge to lower overhead quantum computation

Two primary challenges stand in the way of practical large-scale quantum computation, namely achieving sufficiently low error rate quantum gates and implementing interesting quantum algorithms with a physically reasonable number of qubits. In this work we address the second challenge, presenting a new technique, bridge compression, which enables remarkably low volume structures to be found that implement complex computations in the surface code. The surface code has a number of highly desirable properties, including the ability to achieve arbitrarily reliable computation given sufficient qubits and quantum gate error rates below approximately 1%, and the use of only a 2-D array of qubits with nearest neighbor interactions. As such, our compression technique is of great practical relevance.

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arXiv2013

Synthesis of Topological Quantum Circuits

Topological quantum computing has recently proven itself to be a very powerful model when considering large- scale, fully error corrected quantum architectures. In addition to its robust nature under hardware errors, it is a software driven method of error corrected computation, with the hardware responsible for only creating a generic quantum resource (the topological lattice). Computation in this scheme is achieved by the geometric manipulation of holes (defects) within the lattice. Interactions between logical qubits (quantum gate operations) are implemented by using particular arrangements of the defects, such as braids and junctions. We demonstrate that junction-based topological quantum gates allow highly regular and structured implementation of large CNOT (controlled-not) gate networks, which ultimately form the basis of the error corrected primitives that must be used for an error corrected algorithm. We present a number of heuristics to optimise the area of the resulting structures and therefore the number of the required hardware resources.

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arXiv2013

Surface code implementation of block code state distillation

State distillation is the process of taking a number of imperfect copies of a particular quantum state and producing fewer better copies. Until recently, the lowest overhead method of distilling states |A>=(|0>+e^{iπ/4}|1>)/\sqrt{2} produced a single improved |A> state given 15 input copies. New block code state distillation methods can produce k improved |A> states given 3k+8 input copies, potentially significantly reducing the overhead associated with state distillation. We construct an explicit surface code implementation of block code state distillation and quantitatively compare the overhead of this approach to the old. We find that, using the best available techniques, for parameters of practical interest, block code state distillation does not always lead to lower overhead, and, when it does, the overhead reduction is typically less than a factor of three.

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arXiv2012

Requirements for fault-tolerant factoring on an atom-optics quantum computer

Quantum information processing and its associated technologies has reached an interesting and timely stage in their development where many different experiments have been performed establishing the basic building blocks. The challenge moving forward is to scale up to larger sized quantum machines capable of performing tasks not possible today. This raises a number of interesting questions like: How big will these machines need to be? how many resources will they consume? This needs to be urgently addressed. Here we estimate the resources required to execute Shor's factoring algorithm on a distributed atom-optics quantum computer architecture. We determine the runtime and requisite size of the quantum computer as a function of the problem size and physical error rate. Our results suggest that once experimental accuracy reaches levels below the fault-tolerant threshold, further optimisation of computational performance and resources is largely an issue of how the algorithm and circuits are implemented, rather than the physical quantum hardware

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arXiv2012

Programming a Topological Quantum Computer

Topological quantum computing has recently proven itself to be a powerful computational model when constructing viable architectures for large scale computation. The topological model is constructed from the foundation of a error correction code, required to correct for inevitable hardware faults that will exist for a large scale quantum device. It is also a measurement based model of quantum computation, meaning that the quantum hardware is responsible only for the construction of a large, computationally universal quantum state. This quantum state is then strategically consumed, allowing for the realisation of a fully error corrected quantum algorithm. The number of physical qubits needed by the quantum hardware and the amount of time required to implement an algorithm is dictated by the manner in which this universal quantum state is consumed. In this paper we examine the problem of algorithmic optimisation in the topological lattice and introduce the required elements that will be needed when designing a classical software package to compile and implement a large scale algorithm on a topological quantum computer.

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arXiv2011

Integration of highly probabilistic sources into optical quantum architectures: perpetual quantum computation

In this paper we introduce a design for an optical topological cluster state computer constructed exclusively from a single quantum component. Unlike previous efforts we eliminate the need for on demand, high fidelity photon sources and detectors and replace them with the same device utilised to create photon/photon entanglement. This introduces highly probabilistic elements into the optical architecture while maintaining complete specificity of the structure and operation for a large scale computer. Photons in this system are continually recycled back into the preparation network, allowing for a arbitrarily deep 3D cluster to be prepared using a comparatively small number of photonic qubits and consequently the elimination of high frequency, deterministic photon sources.

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arXiv2009

Classical Processing Requirements for a Topological Quantum Computing System

Dedicated research into the design and construction of a large scale Quantum Information Processing (QIP) system is a complicated task. The design of an experimentally feasible quantum processor must draw upon results in multiple fields; from experimental efforts in system control and fabrication through to far more abstract areas such as quantum algorithms and error correction. Recently, the adaptation of topological coding models to physical systems in optics has illustrated a possible long term pathway to truly large scale QIP. As the topological model has well defined protocols for Quantum Error Correction (QEC) built in as part of its construction, a more grounded analysis of the {\em classical} processing requirements is possible. In this paper we analyze the requirements for a classical processing system, designed specifically for the topological cluster state model. We demonstrate that via extensive parallelization, the construction of a classical "front-end" system capable of processing error correction data for a large topological computer is possible today.

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arXiv2009

Architectural design for a topological cluster state quantum computer

The development of a large scale quantum computer is a highly sought after goal of fundamental research and consequently a highly non-trivial problem. Scalability in quantum information processing is not just a problem of qubit manufacturing and control but it crucially depends on the ability to adapt advanced techniques in quantum information theory, such as error correction, to the experimental restrictions of assembling qubit arrays into the millions. In this paper we introduce a feasible architectural design for large scale quantum computation in optical systems. We combine the recent developments in topological cluster state computation with the photonic module, a simple chip based device which can be used as a fundamental building block for a large scale computer. The integration of the topological cluster model with this comparatively simple operational element addresses many significant issues in scalable computing and leads to a promising modular architecture with complete integration of active error correction exhibiting high fault-tolerant thresholds.

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arXiv2008

High Performance Quantum Computing

The architecture scalability afforded by recent proposals of a large scale photonic based quantum computer, utilizing the theoretical developments of topological cluster states and the photonic chip, allows us to move on to a discussion of massively scaled Quantum Information Processing (QIP). In this letter we introduce the model for a secure and unsecured topological cluster mainframe. We consider the quantum analogue of High Performance Computing, where a dedicated server farm is utilized by many users to run algorithms and share quantum data. The scaling structure of photonics based topological cluster computing leads to an attractive future for server based QIP, where dedicated mainframes can be constructed and/or expanded to serve an increasingly hungry user base with the ideal resource for individual quantum information processing.

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arXiv2007

The Photonic Module: an on-demand resource for photonic entanglement

Photonic entanglement has a wide range of applications in quantum computation and communication. Here we introduce a new device: the "photonic module", which allows for the rapid, deterministic preparation of a large class of entangled photon states. The module is an application independent, "plug and play" device, with sufficient flexibility to prepare entanglement for all major quantum computation and communication applications in a completely deterministic fashion without number-discriminated photon detection. We present two alternative constructions for the module, one using free-space components and one in a photonic bandgap structures. The natural operation of the module is to generate states within the stabilizer formalism and we present an analysis on the cavity-QED requirements to experimentally realize this device.

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arXiv2007

Subspace Confinement: How good is your qubit?

The basic operating element of standard quantum computation is the qubit, an isolated two-level system that can be accurately controlled, initialized and measured. However, the majority of proposed physical architectures for quantum computation are built from systems that contain much more complicated Hilbert space structures. Hence, defining a qubit requires the identification of an appropriate controllable two-dimensional sub-system. This prompts the obvious question of how well a qubit, thus defined, is confined to this subspace, and whether we can experimentally quantify the potential leakage into to states outside the qubit subspace. In this paper we demonstrate that subspace leakage can be quantitatively characterized using minimal theoretical assumptions by examining the Fourier spectrum of the Rabi oscillation experiment.

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arXiv2007

Information free quantum bus for generating stabiliser states

Efficient generation of spatially delocalised entangled states is at the heart of quantum information science. Generally flying qubits are proposed for long range entangling interactions, however here we introduce a bus-mediated alternative for this task. Our scheme permits efficient and flexible generation of deterministic two-qubit operator measurements and has links to the important concepts of mode-entanglement and repeat-until-success protocols. Importantly, unlike flying qubit protocols, our bus particle never contains information about the individual quantum states of the particles, hence is information-free.

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