Quantum Physics

Continuous variable (CV) systems play an important role in quantum foundations and quantum information processing, especially because of their quantum optical realization. Gaussian states of CV systems, on the one hand have non-trivial quantum properties, and on the other hand, can be realized in the laboratory.  There are non-Gaussian states which can be obtained from Gaussian states via physically realizable operations and these too can be useful in enhancing  non-classicality and improving the performance of quantum information processing protocols.  In the talk, I will  introduce CV systems and their Gaussian and non-Gaussian states. The violation of Bell-type inequalities using CV systems will be discussed. Quantum key distribution protocols and quantum teleportation schemes using Gaussian and non-Gaussian states will also be taken up. 

We present a tensor-network-based classical algorithm (equipped with guarantees) for simulating $n$-qubit quantum circuits with arbitrary single-qubit noise. Our algorithm represents the state of a noisy quantum system by a particular ensemble of matrix product states from which we stochastically sample a pure quantum state. Each single qubit noise process acting on a pure state is then represented by the ensemble of states that achieve the minimal average entanglement (the entanglement of formation) between the noisy qubit and the rest of the system. This approach provides a connection between the entanglement of formation and the accuracy of the simulation algorithm. For a given maximum bond dimension $\chi$ and circuit, our algorithm comes with an upper bound on the simulation error (in total variation distance), runs in $poly(n,\chi)$-time and improves upon related prior work (1) in scope: by extending from the three commonly considered noise models to general single qubit noise (2) in performance: by employing a state-dependent locally-entanglement-optimal unraveling and (3) in conceptual contribution: by showing that the fixed unraveling used in prior work becomes equivalent to our choice of unraveling in the special case of depolarizing and dephasing noise acting on a maximally entangled state. This is joint work with Simon Cichy, Paul K. Faehrmann, Lennart Bittel and Jens Eisert.

In this talk, I will discuss the complexity of a fermionic analogue of Quantum k-SAT. In this Fermionic k-SAT problem, one is given the task to decide whether there is a fermionic state in the null-space of a collection of fermionic, parity-conserving, projectors on n fermionic modes, where each fermionic projector involves at most k fermionic modes. We prove that this problem can be solved efficiently classically for k = 2. In addition, we show that deciding whether there exists a satisfying assignment with a given fixed particle number parity can also be done efficiently classically for Fermionic 2-SAT: this problem is a quantum-fermionic extension of asking whether a classical 2-SAT problem has a solution with a given Hamming weight parity. We also prove that deciding whether there exists a satisfying assignment for particle-number-conserving Fermionic 2-SAT for some given particle number is NP-complete. Complementary to this, we show that Fermionic 9-SAT is QMA_1-hard.