Optimizing Quantum Programs against Decoherence: Delaying Qubits into Quantum Superposition

Quantum computing technology has reached a second renaissance in the last decade. However, in the NISQ era pointed out by John Preskill in 2018, quantum noise and decoherence, which affect the accuracy and execution effect of quantum programs, cannot be ignored and corrected by the near future NISQ computers. In order to let users more easily write quantum programs, the compiler and runtime system should consider underlying quantum hardware features such as decoherence. To address the challenges posed by decoherence, in this paper, we propose and prototype QLifeReducer to minimize the qubit lifetime in the input OpenQASM program by delaying qubits into quantum superposition. QLifeReducer includes three core modules, i.e.,the parser, parallelism analyzer and transformer. It introduces the layered bundle format to express the quantum program, where a set of parallelizable quantum operations is packaged into a bundle. We evaluate quantum programs before and after transformed by QLifeReducer on both real IBM Q 5 Tenerife and the self-developed simulator. The experimental results show that QLifeReducer reduces the error rate of a quantum program when executed on IBMQ 5 Tenerife by 11%; and can reduce the longest qubit lifetime as well as average qubit lifetime by more than 20% on most quantum workloads.Comment: To appear in TASE2019 - the 13th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering (submitted on Jan 25, 2019, and this is camera-ready version

Photon scattering by an atomic ensemble coupled to a one-dimensional nanophotonic waveguide

We theoretically investigate the quantum scattering of a single-photon pulse interacting with an ensemble of $\Lambda$-type three-level atoms coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide. With an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, we study the collective interaction between the atoms mediated by the waveguide mode. In our scheme, the atoms are randomly placed in the lattice along the axis of the one-dimensional waveguide, which closely corresponds to the practical condition that the atomic positions can not be controlled precisely in experiment. Many interesting optical properties occur in our waveguide-atom system, such as electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and optical depth. Moreover, we observe that strong photon-photon correlation with quantum beats can be generated in the off-resonant case, which provides an effective candidate for producing non-classical light in experiment. With remarkable progress in waveguide-emitter system, our scheme may be feasible in the near future.Comment: 10 pages,7 figure

A Review of Recent Advances in Red-Clay Environmental Magnetism and Paleoclimate History of the Chinese Loess Plateau

The red-clay sequence on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) was deposited during the late Miocene-Pliocene and is encoded with important information of past climate changes. However, it has received much less study in comparison to the overlying Pleistocene loess-paleosol sequence. In this paper, we review recent progress in characterizing the environmental magnetic parameter-based paleoclimate history recorded by the red-clay sequence. Several key conclusions are as follows. (1) the red-clay and the loess-paleosol sequences have similar magnetic enhancement mechanisms but magnetic minerals in the red-clay sequence have experienced a higher degree of oxidation than in the loess-paleosol sequence. (2) The CLP experienced a cooling and wetting trend from 4.5 to 2.7 Ma, caused by ice sheet expansion and East Asian summer monsoon intensification, respectively. (3) The above conclusions benefit from backfield remanence curve unmixing and comparison of magnetic grain size/concentration records, which are particularly useful in separating the temperature from the precipitation signal. A clear need in future studies is to explore the concentration and the grain size variations of hematite and goethite in the red-clay sequence and their formation mechanisms. The payback would be a clear understanding of climate history during the late Miocene-Pliocene, a possible analog for future warmer climate