arXiv subjects

William J Munro

Publications and source records attributed to William J Munro.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2010

Using Quantum Computers for Quantum Simulation

Numerical simulation of quantum systems is crucial to further our understanding of natural phenomena. Many systems of key interest and importance, in areas such as superconducting materials and quantum chemistry, are thought to be described by models which we cannot solve with sufficient accuracy, neither analytically nor numerically with classical computers. Using a quantum computer to simulate such quantum systems has been viewed as a key application of quantum computation from the very beginning of the field in the 1980s. Moreover, useful results beyond the reach of classical computation are expected to be accessible with fewer than a hundred qubits, making quantum simulation potentially one of the earliest practical applications of quantum computers. In this paper we survey the theoretical and experimental development of quantum simulation using quantum computers, from the first ideas to the intense research efforts currently underway.

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arXiv2006

Entanglement and its Role in Shor's Algorithm

Entanglement has been termed a critical resource for quantum information processing and is thought to be the reason that certain quantum algorithms, such as Shor's factoring algorithm, can achieve exponentially better performance than their classical counterparts. The nature of this resource is still not fully understood: here we use numerical simulation to investigate how entanglement between register qubits varies as Shor's algorithm is run on a quantum computer. The shifting patterns in the entanglement are found to relate to the choice of basis for the quantum Fourier transform.

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arXiv2002

Bounds on entanglement in qudit subsystems

The entanglement in a pure state of N qudits (d-dimensional distinguishable quantum particles) can be characterised by specifying how entangled its subsystems are. A generally mixed subsystem of m qudits is obtained by tracing over the other N-m qudits. We examine the entanglement in the space of mixed states of m qudits. We show that for a typical pure state of N qudits, its subsystems smaller than N/3 qudits will have a positive partial transpose and hence are separable or bound entangled. Additionally, our numerical results show that the probability of finding entangled subsystems smaller than N/3 falls exponentially in the dimension of the Hilbert space. The bulk of pure state Hilbert space thus consists of highly entangled states with multipartite entanglement encompassing at least a third of the qudits in the pure state.

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arXiv2001

Typical entanglement in multi-qubit systems

Quantum entanglement and its paradoxical properties hold the key to an information processing revolution. Much attention has focused recently on the challenging problem of characterizing entanglement. Entanglement for a two qubit system is reasonably well understood, however, the nature and properties of multiple qubit systems are largely unexplored. Motivated by the importance of such systems in quantum computing, we show that typical pure states of N qubits are highly entangled but have decreasing amounts of pairwise entanglement (measured using the Wootter's concurrence formula) as N increases. Above six qubits very few states have any pairwise entanglement, and generally, for a typical pure state of N qubits there is a sharp cut-off where its subsystems of size m become PPT (positive partial transpose i.e., separable or only bound entangled) around N >~ 2m + 3, based on numerical analysis up to N=13.

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