New England transformed

The feature essay of the 2010 annual report discusses some of the changes that have occurred in New England over the past four decades, comparing the challenges we faced in the mid-1970s with those we face today.Economic conditions - New England

Noise in One-Dimensional Measurement-Based Quantum Computing

Measurement-Based Quantum Computing (MBQC) is an alternative to the quantum circuit model, whereby the computation proceeds via measurements on an entangled resource state. Noise processes are a major experimental challenge to the construction of a quantum computer. Here, we investigate how noise processes affecting physical states affect the performed computation by considering MBQC on a one-dimensional cluster state. This allows us to break down the computation in a sequence of building blocks and map physical errors to logical errors. Next, we extend the Matrix Product State construction to mixed states (which is known as Matrix Product Operators) and once again map the effect of physical noise to logical noise acting within the correlation space. This approach allows us to consider more general errors than the conventional Pauli errors, and could be used in order to simulate noisy quantum computation.Comment: 16 page

Three-dimensional surface codes: Transversal gates and fault-tolerant architectures

One of the leading quantum computing architectures is based on the two-dimensional (2D) surface code. This code has many advantageous properties such as a high error threshold and a planar layout of physical qubits where each physical qubit need only interact with its nearest neighbours. However, the transversal logical gates available in 2D surface codes are limited. This means that an additional (resource intensive) procedure known as magic state distillation is required to do universal quantum computing with 2D surface codes. Here, we examine three-dimensional (3D) surface codes in the context of quantum computation. We introduce a picture for visualizing 3D surface codes which is useful for analysing stacks of three 3D surface codes. We use this picture to prove that the $CZ$ and $CCZ$ gates are transversal in 3D surface codes. We also generalize the techniques of 2D surface code lattice surgery to 3D surface codes. We combine these results and propose two quantum computing architectures based on 3D surface codes. Magic state distillation is not required in either of our architectures. Finally, we show that a stack of three 3D surface codes can be transformed into a single 3D color code (another type of quantum error-correcting code) using code concatenation.Comment: 23 pages, 24 figures, v2: published versio

Exact and Efficient Simulation of Concordant Computation

Concordant computation is a circuit-based model of quantum computation for mixed states, that assumes that all correlations within the register are discord-free (i.e. the correlations are essentially classical) at every step of the computation. The question of whether concordant computation always admits efficient simulation by a classical computer was first considered by B. Eastin in quant-ph/1006.4402v1, where an answer in the affirmative was given for circuits consisting only of one- and two-qubit gates. Building on this work, we develop the theory of classical simulation of concordant computation. We present a new framework for understanding such computations, argue that a larger class of concordant computations admit efficient simulation, and provide alternative proofs for the main results of quant-ph/1006.4402v1 with an emphasis on the exactness of simulation which is crucial for this model. We include detailed analysis of the arithmetic complexity for solving equations in the simulation, as well as extensions to larger gates and qudits. We explore the limitations of our approach, and discuss the challenges faced in developing efficient classical simulation algorithms for all concordant computations.Comment: 16 page

The Curci-Ferrari model with massive quarks at two loops

Massive quarks are included in the Curci-Ferrari model and the theory is renormalized at two loops in the MSbar scheme in an arbitrary covariant gauge.Comment: 8 latex page

Bound States for Magic State Distillation in Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation

Magic state distillation is an important primitive in fault-tolerant quantum computation. The magic states are pure non-stabilizer states which can be distilled from certain mixed non-stabilizer states via Clifford group operations alone. Because of the Gottesman-Knill theorem, mixtures of Pauli eigenstates are not expected to be magic state distillable, but it has been an open question whether all mixed states outside this set may be distilled. In this Letter we show that, when resources are finitely limited, non-distillable states exist outside the stabilizer octahedron. In analogy with the bound entangled states, which arise in entanglement theory, we call such states bound states for magic state distillation.Comment: Published version. This paper builds on a theorem proven in "On the Structure of Protocols for Magic State Distillation", arXiv:0908.0838. These two papers jointly form the content of a talk entitled "Neither Magical nor Classical?", which was presented at TQC 2009, Waterlo

Stronger Quantum Correlations with Loophole-free Post-selection

One of the most striking non-classical features of quantum mechanics is in the correlations it predicts between spatially separated measurements. In local hidden variable theories, correlations are constrained by Bell inequalities, but quantum correlations violate these. However, experimental imperfections lead to "loopholes" whereby LHV correlations are no longer constrained by Bell inequalities, and violations can be described by LHV theories. For example, loopholes can emerge through selective detection of events. In this letter, we introduce a clean, operational picture of multi-party Bell tests, and show that there exists a non-trivial form of loophole-free post-selection. Surprisingly, the same post-selection can enhance quantum correlations, and unlock a connection between non-classical correlations and non-classical computation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, substantially revised in response to referee suggestion

Loss tolerant linear optical quantum memory by measurement-based quantum computing

We give a scheme for loss tolerantly building a linear optical quantum memory which itself is tolerant to qubit loss. We use the encoding recently introduced in Varnava et al 2006 Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 120501, and give a method for efficiently achieving this. The entire approach resides within the 'one-way' model for quantum computing (Raussendorf and Briegel 2001 Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 5188–91; Raussendorf et al 2003 Phys. Rev. A 68 022312). Our results suggest that it is possible to build a loss tolerant quantum memory, such that if the requirement is to keep the data stored over arbitrarily long times then this is possible with only polynomially increasing resources and logarithmically increasing individual photon life-times

How the commercial real estate boom undid the banks

Real property ; Construction industry ; Regional economics