7 research outputs found
Noise threshold for universality of 2-input gates
Evans and Pippenger showed in 1998 that noisy gates with 2 inputs are
universal for arbitrary computation (i.e. can compute any function with bounded
error), if all gates fail independently with probability epsilon and
epsilon<theta, where theta is roughly 8.856%.
We show that formulas built from gates with 2 inputs, in which each gate
fails with probability at least theta cannot be universal. Hence, there is a
threshold on the tolerable noise for formulas with 2-input gates and it is
theta. We conjecture that the same threshold also holds for circuits.Comment: International Symposium on Information Theory, 2007, minor
corrections in v
Tight Limits on Nonlocality from Nontrivial Communication Complexity; a.k.a. Reliable Computation with Asymmetric Gate Noise
It has long been known that the existence of certain superquantum nonlocal
correlations would cause communication complexity to collapse. The absurdity of
a world in which any nonlocal binary function could be evaluated with a
constant amount of communication in turn provides a tantalizing way to
distinguish quantum mechanics from incorrect theories of physics; the statement
"communication complexity is nontrivial" has even been conjectured to be a
concise information-theoretic axiom for characterizing quantum mechanics. We
directly address the viability of that perspective with two results. First, we
exhibit a nonlocal game such that communication complexity collapses in any
physical theory whose maximal winning probability exceeds the quantum value.
Second, we consider the venerable CHSH game that initiated this line of
inquiry. In that case, the quantum value is about 0.85 but it is known that a
winning probability of approximately 0.91 would collapse communication
complexity. We show that the 0.91 result is the best possible using a large
class of proof strategies, suggesting that the communication complexity axiom
is insufficient for characterizing CHSH correlations. Both results build on new
insights about reliable classical computation. The first exploits our
formalization of an equivalence between amplification and reliable computation,
while the second follows from a rigorous determination of the threshold for
reliable computation with formulas of noise-free XOR gates and
-noisy AND gates.Comment: 64 pages, 6 figure
Broadcasting on Random Directed Acyclic Graphs
We study a generalization of the well-known model of broadcasting on trees.
Consider a directed acyclic graph (DAG) with a unique source vertex , and
suppose all other vertices have indegree . Let the vertices at
distance from be called layer . At layer , is given a random
bit. At layer , each vertex receives bits from its parents in
layer , which are transmitted along independent binary symmetric channel
edges, and combines them using a -ary Boolean processing function. The goal
is to reconstruct with probability of error bounded away from using
the values of all vertices at an arbitrarily deep layer. This question is
closely related to models of reliable computation and storage, and information
flow in biological networks.
In this paper, we analyze randomly constructed DAGs, for which we show that
broadcasting is only possible if the noise level is below a certain degree and
function dependent critical threshold. For , and random DAGs with
layer sizes and majority processing functions, we identify the
critical threshold. For , we establish a similar result for NAND
processing functions. We also prove a partial converse for odd
illustrating that the identified thresholds are impossible to improve by
selecting different processing functions if the decoder is restricted to using
a single vertex.
Finally, for any noise level, we construct explicit DAGs (using expander
graphs) with bounded degree and layer sizes admitting
reconstruction. In particular, we show that such DAGs can be generated in
deterministic quasi-polynomial time or randomized polylogarithmic time in the
depth. These results portray a doubly-exponential advantage for storing a bit
in DAGs compared to trees, where but layer sizes must grow exponentially
with depth in order to enable broadcasting.Comment: 33 pages, double column format. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1803.0752
Noise in Quantum and Classical Computation & Non-locality
Quantum computers seem to have capabilities which go beyond those of classical computers. A particular example which is important for cryptography is that quantum computers are able to factor numbers much faster than what seems possible on classical machines.
In order to actually build quantum computers it is necessary to build sufficiently accurate hardware, which is a big challenge.
In part 1 of this thesis we prove lower bounds on the accuracy of the hardware needed to do quantum computation.
We also present a similar result for classical computers.
One resource that quantum computers have but classical computers do not have is entanglement. In Part 2 of this thesis we study certain general aspects of entanglement in terms of quantum XOR games and non-locality
Fault-tolerance in two-dimensional topological systems
This thesis is a collection of ideas with the general goal of building, at least in the abstract, a local fault-tolerant quantum computer. The connection between quantum information and topology has proven to be an active area of research in several fields. The introduction of the toric code by Alexei Kitaev demonstrated the usefulness of topology for quantum memory and quantum computation. Many quantum codes used for quantum memory are modeled by spin systems on a lattice, with operators that extract syndrome information placed on vertices or faces of the lattice. It is natural to wonder whether the useful codes in such systems can be classified. This thesis presents work that leverages ideas from topology and graph theory to explore the space of such codes. Homological stabilizer codes are introduced and it is shown that, under a set of reasonable assumptions, any qubit homological stabilizer code is equivalent to either a toric code or a color code. Additionally, the toric code and the color code correspond to distinct classes of graphs. Many systems have been proposed as candidate quantum computers. It is very desirable to design quantum computing architectures with two-dimensional layouts and low complexity in parity-checking circuitry. Kitaev\u27s surface codes provided the first example of codes satisfying this property. They provided a new route to fault tolerance with more modest overheads and thresholds approaching 1%. The recently discovered color codes share many properties with the surface codes, such as the ability to perform syndrome extraction locally in two dimensions. Some families of color codes admit a transversal implementation of the entire Clifford group. This work investigates color codes on the 4.8.8 lattice known as triangular codes. I develop a fault-tolerant error-correction strategy for these codes in which repeated syndrome measurements on this lattice generate a three-dimensional space-time combinatorial structure. I then develop an integer program that analyzes this structure and determines the most likely set of errors consistent with the observed syndrome values. I implement this integer program to find the threshold for depolarizing noise on small versions of these triangular codes. Because the threshold for magic-state distillation is likely to be higher than this value and because logical CNOT gates can be performed by code deformation in a single block instead of between pairs of blocks, the threshold for fault-tolerant quantum memory for these codes is also the threshold for fault-tolerant quantum computation with them. Since the advent of a threshold theorem for quantum computers much has been improved upon. Thresholds have increased, architectures have become more local, and gate sets have been simplified. The overhead for magic-state distillation has been studied, but not nearly to the extent of the aforementioned topics. A method for greatly reducing this overhead, known as reusable magic states, is studied here. While examples of reusable magic states exist for Clifford gates, I give strong reasons to believe they do not exist for non-Clifford gates