A robust quantum advantage scheme using fermionic linear optics and magic input states
Fermion Sampling
Michał Oszmaniec, ND, Mauro E. Morales, Zoltán Zimborás
Presented at Physics Research Seminar, CU
15 Sep 2022
Computational complexity seeks to characterize the difficulty of a mathematical problem based on the scaling of the resource required to solve the problem w.r.t the problem size \(n\)
- A polynomial scaling \(\propto n^c\) is said to be efficient
- \(O(f(n))\) complexity gives an upper bound (worst-case complexity)
Computational Complexity
hackerdashery, Youtube
P vs NP
Traversing the graph without crossing the same edge twice
Traversing the graph without visiting the same vertex twice
- Generalize to \(\mathrm{Euler}(G)\) and \(\mathrm{Hamilton}(G)\) where a graph \(G\) defines an instance of the problem
- If an Eulerian cycle exists, it can be found in \(\propto n\) steps. Meanwhile no efficient way to find a Hamiltonian path is known despite the similarity of the two problems!
Eulerian cycle
Hamiltonian cycle
P vs NP
Map of Computational Complexity
Difficulty
P: problems solvable in polynomial time
- Eulerian cycle
- Multiplication
- Primality testing
NP: problems checkable in polynomial time
- Hamiltonian cycle
- Traveling salesman
- Packing
- Graph coloring
#P: counting the number of solutions to an NP problem
BQP: problems solvable in polynomial time on a quantum computer
- Factoring
- Discrete log
- Jones polynomial
- Introduction - What is a simulation?
- Fermionic linear optics
- Summary
Outline
Defining the Problem
Intro to Java Programming, Y. Daniel Liang
String of \(n\) bits
Output distribution over \(2^n\) bitstrings \(p({\bf x}) = p_{\bf x}\)
Simulating a probability distribution?
Strong vs Weak Simulation
Strong simulation
Weak simulation
Can compute \(p_{\bf x}\)
Can sample from \(p\)
In practice, there need to be some notions of errors
In this talk, I will use these definitions of strong and weak simulation unless stated otherwise
Relative error
Additive error
Quantum Advantage?
Can a classical computer weakly simulates a quantum computer?
- Weak simulation is a natural problem for quantum computers
- Strong simulation is very hard (#P)
- Weak simulation is easy
- Strong simulation is a bit harder than NP (\(\Delta_3^{\mathrm{P}}\)) (Stockmeyer theorem)
Quantum Advantage
Aaronson and Arkhipov (STOC'11) argued that one can prove that weak classical simulation of a family of quantum circuits is hard from
- A sufficiently robust #P-hardness of strong simulation
- Anti-concentration of output probabilities
Rio Grande, 2017
- Introduction - What is a simulation?
- Fermionic linear optics
- Summary
Outline
Fermionic Linear Optics (FLO)
- fSim gates are realized with high fidelity in the demonstration of random circuit sampling on the 53-qubit Sycamore quantum processor (Arute et al., Nature 2019, Foxen et al., PRL 2020)
- The same processor is used for proof-of-principle quantum chemistry calculation (Arute et al., Science 2020), non-planar QAOA (Harrigan et al., Nat Phys 2021), preparing the toric code ground state (Satzinger et al., Science 2021)
Fermionic Linear Optics (FLO)
Even parity
Odd parity
FLO gates AKA Matchgates
(Valiant, SIAM J Comput 2002)
Non-example
Fermionic Linear Optics (FLO)
Reminder
Identify computational basis states with occupation number states
Jordan-Wigner
CAR
\(f_j^{\dagger}\) creates a fermion at site \(j\)
Pauli exclusion
Fermionic Linear Optics (FLO)
cf. Dirac's gamma matrices
Majoranas
Non-example
\(Z\!\otimes\! Z\) interaction is not FLO
FLO Hamiltonians are quadratic
Antisymmetric
Fermionic Linear Optics (FLO)
Generators of rotations SO(\(2n\))
(Defining representation)
Antisymmetric
FLO unitaries occupy an exponentially small corner of the space of unitaries!
Fermionic Linear Optics (FLO)
(Adjoint representation)
Induce a transformation of the state \(\rho = (|0\rangle\langle 0|)^{\otimes n}\)
\(2n\times 2n\) matrices instead of \(2^n\times 2^n\) matrices!
- More convenient to work with correlation matrix (2nd moments)
- All higher moments can be extracted from \(\Sigma\) via Wick's theorem
Fermion Sampling
- FLO with computational-basis input state admits strong simulation (compute \(p_{\bf x}\) up to logarithmic number of decimals)
- Not the case with magic input state; strong simulation is #P-hard (cf. Ivanov, PRA 2017)
- Our work shows that the weak simulation is also hard!
Hardness Guarantees
Quantum advantage scheme | Robustness (additive error) |
Anti-concentration |
---|---|---|
Boson Sampling | ||
Random circuit sampling (Google layout) | ||
Fermion Sampling |
Bouland et al., FOCS 2021
- Introduction - What is a simulation?
- Fermionic linear optics
- Summary
Outline
Summary
- There are several notions of simulation of randomness:
- Strong simulation refers to the ability to compute \(p_{\bf{x}}\)
- Weak simulation refers to the ability to sample from \(p\)
- The notion of strong simulation is often too strong; a (possibly quantum) computer cannot strongly simulate itself
- However, (#P-) hardness of strong simulation is a necessary ingredient to show hardness of classical weak simulation of quantum computers (quantum advantage)
- FLO gates, which can be realized with high fidelity in near-term superconducting architectures, can be used to demonstrate such quantum advantage when supplemented by magic input states
What we want to prove is this:
If I pick a quantum circuit \(U\) from a family \(\mathcal{C}\) at random, then there is a high chance that a weak simulation of the output probability \(p_{\bf x}(U)\) is infeasible
Quantum Advantage
(Don't average the results over random \(U\)! Too much scrambling)
Weak simulation of Fermion Sampling
Result:
Anti-concentration
Strong simulation on average (over Haar)
in \(\Delta_3^{\mathrm{P}}\)
Result:
Average-case hardness of approximating up to additive error \(2^{-\tilde{O}(n^2)}\)
Collapse of the polynomial hierarchy
(conjectured to be false)
Conjecture: average-case hardness of approximating up to additive error
Quantum Advantage Conjecture
Anti-concentration
- \(l^2\)-distance to the uniform distribution \(\Vert p-p_{\mathrm{unif}}\Vert^2 = Z - \displaystyle{\frac{1}{2^n}}\)
- implies \(\Pr\left(p_{{\bf x}} \ge \displaystyle{\frac{\beta}{2^n}}\right) \ge \alpha(1-\beta)^2 \) via the Paley-Zygmund inequality
To turn relative error to additive error, we need most probabilities to be large
Collision probability
\(p_{\bf{x}}(U)\) anti-concentrates if
Modified from Dalzell et al., PRX Quantum 2022
- Uniform \(Z=\displaystyle{\frac{1}{2^n}}\)
- Global Haar \(Z =\displaystyle{\frac{2}{2^n+1}}\)
- Local Haar \(Z=\displaystyle{\frac{(4/3)^n}{2^n}}\)
Anti-concentration
Sum of projectors onto irreps under nice conditions
- SO(\(2n\)) for FLO
- U(\(n\)) for passive (number-preserving) FLO
Anti-concentration
Worst-to-average-case reduction
- Average-case hardness of strong simulation of Boson Sampling originates from the argument for average-case hardness of the computation of the permanent via polynomial interpolation (Lipton 1991).
- Bouland et al., Nat Phys (2018) and Movassagh 2019 import the argument to Random Circuit Sampling
- There exists a "worst case circuit" \(V_0\) for which \(p_0 = |\langle \mathbf{x}_0|V_0|\Psi_{in}\rangle|^2\) is #P-hard to approximate
- Deform to average-case (Haar random) circuits where \(p_0 (\theta)= |\langle \mathbf{x}_0|V(\theta)|\Psi_{in}\rangle|^2\) is a polynomial of low-degree \(q\)
- Sample \(\gtrsim q\) points (some can be errorneous\(\iff\)robustness) and recover \(p_0(\theta)\) via Berlekamp–Welch
- Plug in \(\theta = 0\) to solve a #P-hard problem!
\(-\) Actual polynomial
\(-\) Noisy polynomial
Unitary Paths
First idea: truncated exponential path
Movassage 2019
Truncation gives rise to a non-unitary operator
Better idea: Cayley path
Unitary
Hermitian
Hardness Guarantees
Quantum advantage scheme | Robustness (additive error) |
Anti-concentration |
---|---|---|
Boson Sampling | ||
Random circuit sampling (Google layout) | ||
Fermion Sampling |
Bouland et al., FOCS 2021
Other Results
- Numerics suggest that random FLO circuits anti-concentrate in sub-linear depth
- Assuming that the circuit is FLO, circuit tomography can be performed efficiently utilizing single-mode input states and product measurements
Fermion Sampling (Chula Masters research seminar)
By Ninnat Dangniam
Fermion Sampling (Chula Masters research seminar)
Chula Masters research seminar (15 Sep 2022)
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