Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>One of the most promising applications for near term quantum computers is the simulation of physical quantum systems, particularly many-electron systems in chemistry and condensed matter physics. In solid state physics, finding the correct symmetry broken ground state of an interacting electron system is one of the central challenges. To help finding the correct broken symmetries in the thermodynamic limit methods that allow to determine the groundstate of large but finite interacting electron systems are very useful. The variational Hamiltonian ansatz (VHA), a variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithm especially suited for finding the ground state of a solid state system, will in general not prepare a broken symmetry state unless the initial state is chosen to exhibit the correct symmetry. In this work, we discuss three variations of the VHA designed to find the symmetry-breaking groundstate of a finite system close to a transition point between different orders. As a test case we use the two-dimensional Hubbard model where we break the symmetry explicitly by means of external fields coupling to the Hamiltonian and calculate the response to these fields. For the calculation we simulate a gate-based quantum computer and also consider the effects of dephasing noise on the algorithms. We find that two of the three algorithms are in good agreement with the exact solution for the considered parameter range. The third algorithm agrees with the exact solution only for a part of the parameter regime, but is more robust with respect to dephasing compared to the other two algorithms.</jats:p>

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>A novel concept of quantum random access memory (qRAM) employing a quantum walk is provided. Our qRAM relies on a bucket brigade scheme to access the memory cells. Introducing a bucket with chirality <jats:italic>left</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>right</jats:italic> as a quantum walker, and considering its quantum motion on a full binary tree, we can efficiently deliver the bucket to the designated memory cells, and fill the bucket with the desired information in the form of quantum superposition states. Our procedure has several advantages. First, we do not need to place any quantum devices at the nodes of the binary tree, and hence in our qRAM architecture, the cost to maintain the coherence can be significantly reduced. Second, our scheme is fully parallelized. Consequently, only <jats:italic>O</jats:italic>(<jats:italic>n</jats:italic>) steps are required to access and retrieve <jats:italic>O</jats:italic>(2<jats:sup> <jats:italic>n</jats:italic> </jats:sup>) data in the form of quantum superposition states. Finally, the simplicity of our procedure may allow the design of qRAM with simpler structures.</jats:p>

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Optimizing the physical realization of quantum gates is important to build a quantum computer. The controlled-SWAP gate, also named Fredkin gate, can be widely applicable in various quantum information processing schemes. In the present research, we propose and experimentally implement quantum Fredkin gate in a single-photon hybrid-degrees-of-freedom system. Polarization is used as the control qubit, and SWAP operation is achieved in a four-dimensional Hilbert space spanned by photonic orbital angular momentum. The effective conversion rate <jats:inline-formula> <jats:tex-math><?CDATA $\mathcal{P}$?></jats:tex-math> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi mathvariant="script">P</mml:mi> </mml:math> <jats:inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="qstabf996ieqn1.gif" xlink:type="simple" /> </jats:inline-formula> of the quantum Fredkin gate in our experiment is (95.4 ± 2.6)%. Besides, we find that a kind of Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger-like states can be prepared by using our quantum Fredkin gate, and these nonseparale states can show its quantum contextual characteristic by the violation of Mermin inequality. Our experimental design and coding method are useful for quantum computing and quantum fundamental study in high-dimensional and hybrid coding quantum systems.</jats:p>

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Quantum neural networks (QNNs) offer a powerful paradigm for programming near-term quantum computers and have the potential to speed up applications ranging from data science to chemistry to materials science. However, a possible obstacle to realizing that speed-up is the barren plateau (BP) phenomenon, whereby the gradient vanishes exponentially in the system size <jats:italic>n</jats:italic> for certain QNN architectures. The question of whether high-order derivative information such as the Hessian could help escape a BP was recently posed in the literature. Here we show that the elements of the Hessian are exponentially suppressed in a BP, so estimating the Hessian in this situation would require a precision that scales exponentially with <jats:italic>n</jats:italic>. Hence, Hessian-based approaches do not circumvent the exponential scaling associated with BPs. We also show the exponential suppression of higher order derivatives. Hence, BPs will impact optimization strategies that go beyond (first-order) gradient descent. In deriving our results, we prove novel, general formulas that can be used to analytically evaluate any high-order partial derivative on quantum hardware. These formulas will likely have independent interest and use for training QNNs (outside of the context of BPs).</jats:p>

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Long-distance quantum communication via entanglement distribution is of great importance for the quantum internet. However, scaling up to such long distances has proved challenging due to the loss of photons, which grows exponentially with the distance covered. Quantum repeaters could in theory be used to extend the distances over which entanglement can be distributed, but in practice hardware quality is still lacking. Furthermore, it is generally not clear how an improvement in a certain repeater parameter, such as memory quality or attempt rate, impacts the overall network performance, rendering the path toward scalable quantum repeaters unclear. In this work we propose a methodology based on genetic algorithms and simulations of quantum repeater chains for optimization of entanglement generation and distribution. By applying it to simulations of several different repeater chains, including real-world fiber topology, we demonstrate that it can be used to answer questions such as what are the minimum viable quantum repeaters satisfying given network performance benchmarks. This methodology constitutes an invaluable tool for the development of a blueprint for a pan-European quantum internet. We have made our code, in the form of NetSquid simulations and the <jats:italic>smart-stopos</jats:italic> optimization tool, freely available for use either locally or on high-performance computing centers.</jats:p>

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This paper presents the feasibility study of deploying quantum key distribution (QKD) from high altitude platforms (HAPs), as a way of securing future communications applications and services. The paper provides a thorough review of the state of the art HAP technologies and summarises the benefits that HAPs can bring to the QKD services. A detailed link budget analysis is presented in the paper to evaluate the feasibility of delivering QKD from stratospheric HAPs flying at 20 km altitude. The results show a generous link budget under most operating conditions which brings the possibility of using diverged beams, thereby simplifying the pointing, acquisition and tracking of the optical system on the HAPs and ground, potentially widening the range of future use cases where QKD could be a viable solution.</jats:p>

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The parameters of a quantum system grow exponentially with the number of involved quantum particles. Hence, the associated memory requirement to store or manipulate the underlying wavefunction goes well beyond the limit of the best classical computers for quantum systems composed of a few dozen particles, leading to serious challenges in their numerical simulation. This implies that the verification and design of new quantum devices and experiments are fundamentally limited to small system size. It is not clear how the full potential of large quantum systems can be exploited. Here, we present the concept of quantum computer designed quantum hardware and apply it to the field of quantum optics. Specifically, we map complex experimental hardware for high-dimensional, many-body entangled photons into a gate-based quantum circuit. We show explicitly how digital quantum simulation of Boson sampling experiments can be realized. We then illustrate how to design quantum-optical setups for complex entangled photonic systems, such as high-dimensional Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger states and their derivatives. Since photonic hardware is already on the edge of quantum supremacy and the development of gate-based quantum computers is rapidly advancing, our approach promises to be a useful tool for the future of quantum device design.</jats:p>

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>In state-of-the-art quantum key distribution systems, the main limiting factor in increasing the key generation rate is the timing resolution in detecting photons. Here, we present and experimentally demonstrate a strategy to overcome this limitation, also for high-loss and long-distance implementations. We exploit the intrinsic wavelength correlations of entangled photons using wavelength multiplexing to generate a quantum secure key from polarization entanglement. The presented approach can be integrated into both fiber- and satellite-based quantum-communication schemes, without any changes to most types of entanglement sources. This technique features a huge scaling potential allowing to increase the secure key rate by several orders of magnitude as compared to non-multiplexed schemes.</jats:p>