4,953 research outputs found
Classical simulation complexity of extended Clifford circuits
Clifford gates are a winsome class of quantum operations combining
mathematical elegance with physical significance. The Gottesman-Knill theorem
asserts that Clifford computations can be classically efficiently simulated but
this is true only in a suitably restricted setting. Here we consider Clifford
computations with a variety of additional ingredients: (a) strong vs. weak
simulation, (b) inputs being computational basis states vs. general product
states, (c) adaptive vs. non-adaptive choices of gates for circuits involving
intermediate measurements, (d) single line outputs vs. multi-line outputs. We
consider the classical simulation complexity of all combinations of these
ingredients and show that many are not classically efficiently simulatable
(subject to common complexity assumptions such as P not equal to NP). Our
results reveal a surprising proximity of classical to quantum computing power
viz. a class of classically simulatable quantum circuits which yields universal
quantum computation if extended by a purely classical additional ingredient
that does not extend the class of quantum processes occurring.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur
Matchgates and classical simulation of quantum circuits
Let G(A,B) denote the 2-qubit gate which acts as the 1-qubit SU(2) gates A
and B in the even and odd parity subspaces respectively, of two qubits. Using a
Clifford algebra formalism we show that arbitrary uniform families of circuits
of these gates, restricted to act only on nearest neighbour (n.n.) qubit lines,
can be classically efficiently simulated. This reproduces a result originally
proved by Valiant using his matchgate formalism, and subsequently related by
others to free fermionic physics. We further show that if the n.n. condition is
slightly relaxed, to allowing the same gates to act only on n.n. and next-n.n.
qubit lines, then the resulting circuits can efficiently perform universal
quantum computation. From this point of view, the gap between efficient
classical and quantum computational power is bridged by a very modest use of a
seemingly innocuous resource (qubit swapping). We also extend the simulation
result above in various ways. In particular, by exploiting properties of
Clifford operations in conjunction with the Jordan-Wigner representation of a
Clifford algebra, we show how one may generalise the simulation result above to
provide further classes of classically efficiently simulatable quantum
circuits, which we call Gaussian quantum circuits.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure
Commuting Quantum Circuits with Few Outputs are Unlikely to be Classically Simulatable
We study the classical simulatability of commuting quantum circuits with n
input qubits and O(log n) output qubits, where a quantum circuit is classically
simulatable if its output probability distribution can be sampled up to an
exponentially small additive error in classical polynomial time. First, we show
that there exists a commuting quantum circuit that is not classically
simulatable unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the third level. This
is the first formal evidence that a commuting quantum circuit is not
classically simulatable even when the number of output qubits is exponentially
small. Then, we consider a generalized version of the circuit and clarify the
condition under which it is classically simulatable. Lastly, we apply the
argument for the above evidence to Clifford circuits in a similar setting and
provide evidence that such a circuit augmented by a depth-1 non-Clifford layer
is not classically simulatable. These results reveal subtle differences between
quantum and classical computation.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures; v2: Theorems 1 and 3 improved, proofs modifie
A linearized stabilizer formalism for systems of finite dimension
The stabilizer formalism is a scheme, generalizing well-known techniques
developed by Gottesman [quant-ph/9705052] in the case of qubits, to efficiently
simulate a class of transformations ("stabilizer circuits", which include the
quantum Fourier transform and highly entangling operations) on standard basis
states of d-dimensional qudits. To determine the state of a simulated system,
existing treatments involve the computation of cumulative phase factors which
involve quadratic dependencies. We present a simple formalism in which Pauli
operators are represented using displacement operators in discrete phase space,
expressing the evolution of the state via linear transformations modulo D <=
2d. We thus obtain a simple proof that simulating stabilizer circuits on n
qudits, involving any constant number of measurement rounds, is complete for
the complexity class coMod_{d}L and may be simulated by O(log(n)^2)-depth
boolean circuits for any constant d >= 2.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures. Reorganized to collect complexity results; some
corrections and elaborations of technical results. Differs slightly from the
version to be published (fixed typos, changes of wording to accommodate page
breaks for a different article format). To appear as QIC vol 13 (2013),
pp.73--11
Classical simulation of Yang-Baxter gates
A unitary operator that satisfies the constant Yang-Baxter equation
immediately yields a unitary representation of the braid group B n for every . If we view such an operator as a quantum-computational gate, then
topological braiding corresponds to a quantum circuit. A basic question is when
such a representation affords universal quantum computation. In this work, we
show how to classically simulate these circuits when the gate in question
belongs to certain families of solutions to the Yang-Baxter equation. These
include all of the qubit (i.e., ) solutions, and some simple families
that include solutions for arbitrary . Our main tool is a
probabilistic classical algorithm for efficient simulation of a more general
class of quantum circuits. This algorithm may be of use outside the present
setting.Comment: 17 pages. Corrected error in proof of Theorem
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