Quantum Physics

From arXiv: 1806.04937, with Carlo Sparaciari, Carlo Maria Scandolo, Philippe Faist and Jonathan Oppenheim

We extend the tools of quantum resource theories to scenarios in which multiple quantities (or resources) are present, and their interplay governs the evolution of the physical systems. We derive conditions for the interconversion of these resources, which generalise the first law of thermodynamics. We study reversibility conditions for multi-resource theories, and find that the relative entropy distances from the invariant sets of the theory play a fundamental role in the quantification of the resources. The first law for general multi-resource theories is a single relation which links the change in the properties of the system during a state transformation and the weighted sum of the resources exchanged. In fact, this law can be seen as relating the change in the relative entropy from different sets of states. In contrast to typical single-resource theories, the notion of free states and invariant sets of states become distinct in light of multiple constraints. Additionally, generalisations of the Helmholtz free energy, and of adiabatic and isothermal transformations, emerge. 

The precise relationship between post-selected classical and 
post-selected quantum computation is an open problem in complexity 
theory. Post-selection has proven to be a useful tool in uncovering some 
of the differences between quantum and classical theories, in 
foundations and elsewhere. This is no less true in the area of 
computational complexity -- quantum computations augmented with 
post-selection are thought to be vastly more powerful than their 
classical counterparts. However, the precise reasons why this might be 
the case are not well understood, and no rigorous separations between 
the two have been found. In this talk, I will consider the difference in 
computational power of classical and quantum post-selection in the 
computational query complexity setting.

We define post-selected classical query algorithms, and relate them to 
rational approximations of Boolean functions; in particular, by showing 
that the post-selected classical query complexity of a Boolean function 
is equal to the minimal degree of a rational function with nonnegative 
coefficients that approximates it (up to a factor of two). For 
post-selected quantum query algorithms, a similar relationship was shown 
by Mahadev and de Wolf, where the rational approximations are allowed to 
have negative coefficients. Using our characterisation, we find an 
exponentially large separation between post-selected classical query 
complexity and post-selected quantum query complexity, by proving a 
lower bound on the degree of rational approximations to the Majority 
function.

One long standing question on quantum non-locality is the quest for an informational principle explaining quantum correlations. Many candidates for such a principle have been proposed with partial success, but none fully explaining quantum correlation. Most of these principles rely on the analysis of the multipartite conditional probabilities. In this talk I will briefly review a few results we had when, instead of analysing multipartite probabilities, we analysed sequences of results from non-local boxes. First, that non-local deterministic boxes cannot be computable. Second, that pseudorandom inputs allow for a local model explaining non-local correlations. Finally, I will present a simple principle that rules out many non-physical sequences of experiments, and a unified view of local and non-signalling correlations based on sequences.

How does classical chaos affect the generation of quantum entanglement? What signatures of chaos exist at the quantum level and how can they be quantified? These questions have puzzled physicists for a couple of decades now. We answer these questions in spin systems by analytically establishing a connection between entanglement generation and a measure of delocalization of a quantum state in such systems. While delocalization is a generic feature of quantum chaotic systems, it is more nuanced in regular systems. We explore when the quantum dynamics mimics a localized classical trajectory, and find criteria to quantify Bohr's correspondence principle in periodically driven spin systems. These criteria are typically violated in a deep quantum regime due to delocalized evolution. Using our criteria, we establish that entanglement is a signature of chaos only in a semiclassical regime. Our work provides a new approach to analyzing quantum chaos and designing systems that can efficiently generate entanglement. This work has been done in collaboration with Prof. Shohini Ghose.

References: arXiv:1806.10545 (2018) and PRE 97, 052209 (2018).

Recent advances in scaling photonics for universal quantum computation spotlight the need for a thorough understanding of practicalities such as distinguishability in multimode quantum interference.  Rather than the usual second quantized approach, we can bring quantum information concepts to bear in first quantization.  Distinguishability can then be modelled as entanglement between photonic degrees of freedom, where loss of interference is caused by decoherence due to correlations with an environment carried by the particles themselves.  This shows that multiparticle, multimode Fock states can have natural Schmidt decompositions, corresponding to what has been called unitary-unitary duality in the representation theory of many-body physics.  
We present results along two lines: 
(i) Generalised Hong-Ou-Mandel interference as unambiguous state discrimination (arXiv:1806.01236, with S. Stanisic); we find optimised interferometers that discriminate between indistinguishable and interesting distinguishable states by projecting onto non-symmetric irreps of the unitary group of interferometers.  We give analytic and numerical results for up to nine photons in nine modes.
(ii) Quantum simulation of noisy boson sampling (arXiv:1803.03657, with A. Moylett); we provide quantum circuits that simulate bosonic sampling with arbitrarily distinguishable particles, based on the quantum Schur-Weyl transform.  This makes clear how particle distinguishabililty leads to decoherence in the standard quantum circuit model.  We show how ideal samples can be postselected, how photon loss can also be modelled, and how standard results in the classical simulation of noisy quantum computations fail to apply to the boson sampling case.

Extended Clifford circuits straddle the boundary between classical and quantum computational power. Whether such circuits are efficiently classically simulable seems to depend delicately on the ingredients of the circuits. While some combinations of ingredients lead to efficiently classically simulable circuits, other combinations, which might just be slightly different, lead to circuits which are likely not. We extend the results of Jozsa and Van den Nest [Quantum Inf. Comput. 14, 633 (2014)] by studying various further extensions of Clifford circuits. First, we consider how the classical simulation complexity changes when we allow for more general measurements. Second, we investigate different notions of what it means to "classically simulate" a quantum circuit. Third, we consider the class of conjugated Clifford circuits, where one conjugates every qubit in a Clifford circuit by the same single-qubit gate. Our results provide more examples where seemingly modest changes to the ingredients of Clifford circuits lead to "large" changes in the classical simulation complexities of the circuits, and also include new examples of extended Clifford circuits that are potential candidates for "quantum supremacy". Based on Quantum Inf. Comput. 17, 0262 (2017) and proceedings of CCC’18 pp.21:1–21:25 (2018) (joint work with Adam Bouland and Joseph F. Fitzsimons).

In quantum theory, the no-information-without-disturbance and no-free-information principles express that those observables that do not disturb the measurement of another observable and those that can be measured jointly with any other observable must be trivial, i.e., coin tossing observables. We show that in the framework of general probabilistic theories these principles do not hold in general. In this way, we obtain characterizations of the probabilistic theories where these principles hold and we show that the two principles are not equivalent.  

We show that there are two distinct obstacles to an efficient
classical simulation of a general quantum circuit. The first obstacle, which
has been well-studied, is the difficulty of efficiently estimating the
probability associated with a particular measurement outcome. We show that
this alone does not determine whether a quantum circuit can be efficiently
simulated. The second obstacle is that, in general, there can be an
exponential number of `relevant' outcomes that are needed for an accurate
simulation, and so efficient simulation may not be possible even in
situations where the probabilities of individual outcomes can be efficiently
estimated. We show that these two obstacles are distinct, overcoming the
former obstacle being necessary but not sufficient for simulability whilst
overcoming the pair is jointly sufficient for simulability. Specifically, we
prove that a family of quantum circuits is efficiently simulable if it
satisfies two properties: one related to the efficiency of Born rule
probability estimation, and the other related to the sparsity of the outcome
distribution. We then prove a pair of hardness results (using standard
complexity assumptions and a variant of a commonly-used average case
hardness conjecture), where we identify families of quantum circuits that
satisfy one property but not the other, and for which efficient simulation
is not possible. To prove our results, we consider a notion of simulation of
quantum circuits that we call epsilon-simulation. This notion is less
stringent than exact sampling and is now in common use in quantum hardness
proofs.

I will review recent and ongoing developments in path integral optimization and path integral complexity in 2d CFTs. After, I will discuss the connection with geometric approach to circuit complexity and point out several open problems.

A self-correcting quantum memory can store and protect quantum information for a time that increases without bound with the system size, without the need for active error correction. We demonstrate that symmetry can lead to self-correction in 3D spin lattice models. In particular, we investigate codes given by 2D symmetry-enriched topological (SET) phases that appear naturally on the boundary of 3D symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases. We find that while conventional onsite symmetries are not sufficient to allow for self-correction in commuting Hamiltonian models of this form, a generalized type of symmetry known as a 1-form symmetry is enough to guarantee self-correction. We illustrate this fact with the 3D `cluster state' model from the theory of quantum computing. This model is a self-correcting memory, where information is encoded in a 2D SET ordered phase on the boundary that is protected by the thermally stable SPT ordering of the bulk. We also investigate the gauge color code in this context. Finally, noting that a 1-form symmetry is a very strong constraint, we argue that topologically ordered systems can possess emergent 1-form symmetries, i.e., models where the symmetry appears naturally, without needing to be enforced externally. Joint work with Stephen Bartlett.

Quantum computers have the potential to significantly outperform classical computers at certain tasks. However, many applications of quantum computers require a fault-tolerant quantum computer. Such a device would function correctly even in the presence of noise. State-of-the art quantum computing architecture proposals require at least hundreds of thousands of high quality qubits to achieve fault-tolerance. These requirements are far beyond today's technology. In this talk, I will present results about a novel quantum computing architecture which is based on 3-d surface codes (a family of quantum error-correcting codes). This architecture may have smaller resource requirements than the current leading architectures for certain experimental parameters. I will show that the 3-d surface code has a transversal CCZ gate and I will discuss a cellular automaton which can be used to decode 3-d surface codes. Time permitting, I will also discuss the relationship between 3-d surface codes and 3-d colour codes. 

Recent years have shown that error correction is one of the most fundamental ingredients of various physical phenomena, from topological order to holography. However, only toy models and fixed point ground states could have been studied, even though the error-correcting properties are expected to hold generally in the low energy subspace.

In this talk, we will employ Matrix Product State formalism and see how low energy eigenstates of 1D translationally invariant Hamiltonians can form quantum error-correcting codes. Before diving into the results, we will review the necessary basics of quantum error correction and matrix product states.

Joint work with Martina Gschwendtner, Robert Koenig and Eugene Tang.