Qubit-efficient encoding schemes for binary optimisation problems

We propose and analyze a set of variational quantum algorithms for solving quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems where a problem consisting of $n_c$ classical variables can be implemented on $\mathcal O(\log n_c)$ number of qubits. The underlying encoding scheme allows for a systematic increase in correlations among the classical variables captured by a variational quantum state by progressively increasing the number of qubits involved. We first examine the simplest limit where all correlations are neglected, i.e. when the quantum state can only describe statistically independent classical variables. We apply this minimal encoding to find approximate solutions of a general problem instance comprised of 64 classical variables using 7 qubits. Next, we show how two-body correlations between the classical variables can be incorporated in the variational quantum state and how it can improve the quality of the approximate solutions. We give an example by solving a 42-variable Max-Cut problem using only 8 qubits where we exploit the specific topology of the problem. We analyze whether these cases can be optimized efficiently given the limited resources available in state-of-the-art quantum platforms. Lastly, we present the general framework for extending the expressibility of the probability distribution to any multi-body correlations.Comment: 9 pages of main text + 6 figures. Comments are welcom

Quantum supremacy in driven quantum many-body systems

A crucial milestone in the field of quantum simulation and computation is to demonstrate that a quantum device can compute certain tasks that are impossible to reproduce by a classical computer with any reasonable resources. Such a demonstration is referred to as quantum supremacy. One of the most important questions is to identify setups that exhibit quantum supremacy and can be implemented with current quantum technology. The two standard candidates are boson sampling and random quantum circuits. Here, we show that quantum supremacy can be obtained in generic periodically-driven quantum many-body systems. Our analysis is based on the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis and strongly-held conjectures in complexity theory. To illustrate our work, We give examples of simple disordered Ising chains driven by global magnetic fields and Bose-Hubbard chains with modulated hoppings. Our proposal opens the way for a large class of quantum platforms to demonstrate and benchmark quantum supremacy

Autonomous quantum error correction of Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill states

The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code encodes a logical qubit into a bosonic system with resilience against single-photon loss, the predominant error in most bosonic systems. Here we present experimental results demonstrating quantum error correction of GKP states based on reservoir engineering of a superconducting device. Error correction is made autonomous through an unconditional reset of an auxiliary transmon qubit. The lifetime of the logical qubit is shown to be increased from quantum error correction, therefore reaching the point at which more errors are corrected than generated.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures + 26 pages, 12 figure