Quantum Physics

The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics has been immensely influential, particularly in high energy physics. However, its applications to quantum circuits has so far been more limited. In this talk I will discuss the sum-over-paths approach to computing transition amplitudes in Clifford circuits. In such a formulation, the relative phases of different discrete-time paths through the configuration space can be defined in terms of a classical action which is provided by the discrete Wigner representation. As an application of the sum-over-paths technique I will show how to recover a version of the Gottesman-Knill theorem, namely that the transition amplitudes in Clifford circuits can be computed efficiently.

We present an in-depth study of the domain walls available in the color code. We begin by presenting new boundaries which gives rise to a new family of color codes. Interestingly, the smallest example of such a code consists of just 4 qubits and weight three parity check measurements, making it an accessible playground for today's experimentalists interested in small scale experiments on topological codes. Secondly, we catalogue the twist defects that are accessible with the color code model. We give lattice representations of these twists and investigate how they interact with one another, and how they interact with the anyons of the system. Our categorisation allows us to explore new approaches for the fault-tolerant storage and manipulation of quantum information in color codes. This research combines and extends recent work with the surface code [1,2] to the color code models, whose continuous domain walls have been studied in generality in [3]. [1] Delfosse, Nicolas, Pavithran Iyer, and David Poulin. "Generalized surface codes and packing of logical qubits." arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.07116 (2016). [2] Brown, Benjamin J., et al. "Poking holes and cutting corners to achieve Clifford gates with the surface code." Physical Review X 7.2 (2017): 021029. [3] Yoshida, Beni. "Topological color code and symmetry-protected topological phases." Physical Review B 91.24 (2015): 245131.

We first summarize background on the quantum capacity of a quantum channel, and explain why we know very little about this fundamental quantity, even for the qubit depolarizing channel (the quantum analogue of the binary symmetric channel) despite 20 years of effort by the community.

Then, we focus on low-noise quantum channels, and present recent results on the quantum capacity to leading order in the noise parameter.  This in particular solves the quantum capacity problem (to leading order) for the qubit depolarizing channel, and provides a structure theorem for the capacity achieving codes.  For low-noise channels, degenerate codes provide negligible superadditivity effect.

Analoguous results on the private capacity will be presented.  Our results imply that for low-noise channels, there is negligible difference between coherence and privacy, and a key rate approaching the capacity can already be obtained using classical error correction and privacy amplification.

Joint work with Felix Leditzky and Graeme Smith

Device-independent self-testing allows user to identify the measured quantum states and the measurements made in a device using the observed statistics. Such verification scheme only requires assuming the validity of quantum theory and no-signalling. As such, no assumptions are required about the inner-workings of the device. Hence, self-testing allows laymen to test the serviceability of a quantum device without needing its blueprint. This talk will be primarily focused on the self-testing of bipartite entangled pure states [Nat. Comms. 8, 15485 (2017)]. Also, I will be touching on the recent study of the geometry of the quantum set [In preparation].

While originally motivated by quantum computation, quantum error correction (QEC) is currently providing valuable insights into many-body quantum physics such as topological phases of matter. Furthermore, mounting evidence originating from holography research (AdS/CFT), indicates that QEC should also be pertinent for conformal field theories. With this motivation in mind, we introduce quantum source-channel codes, which combine features of lossy-compression and approximate quantum error correction, both of which are predicted in holography. Through a recent construction for approximate recovery maps, we derive guarantees on its erasure decoding performance from calculations of an entropic quantity called conditional mutual information. As an example, we consider Gibbs states of the transverse field Ising model at criticality and provide evidence that they exhibit non-trivial protection from local erasure. This gives rise to the first concrete interpretation of a bona fide conformal field theory as a quantum error correcting code. We argue that quantum source-channel codes are of independent interest beyond holography.

What can machine learning teach us about quantum mechanics? I will begin with a brief overview of attempts to bring together the two fields, and the insights this may yield. I will then focus on one particular framework, Projective Simulation, which describes physics-based agents that are capable of learning by themselves. These agents can serve as toy models for studying a wide variety of phenomena, as I will illustrate with examples from quantum experiments and biology.

We construct a hidden variable model for the EPR correlations using a Restricted Boltzmann Machine. The model reproduces the expected correlations and thus violates the Bell inequality, as required by Bell's theorem. Unlike most hidden-variable models, this model does not violate the locality assumption in Bell's argument. Rather, it violates measurement independence, albeit in a decidedly non-conspiratorial way.