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IKTPLUSS-IKT og digital innovasjon

Dissipative Quantum Chaos Perspective on Near-Term Quantum Computing

Alternative title: Kvanteberegninger i Nær Fremtid med Et Perspektiv på Dissipativt Kvantekaos

Awarded: NOK 1.8 mill.

The arrival of quantum computer prototypes in 2011-2013 marked the beginning of the era of Quantum Information Technology. Yet, after almost a decade, the available quantum computing platforms remain prototypical. The reason for this is rooted in physics: It is extremely difficult to isolate quantum processors from their environment while keeping the necessary degree of control. The ongoing fight with environment-induced effects has an extremely high technological cost, and it might be concluded that our generation is bound to live in the era of the so-called Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum prototypes. Therefore we, most probably, will not witness Quantum Computing - as it defined in the textbooks - as an established and competitive branch of the IT industry. We want turn the currently prevailing paradigm upside down: Instead of fighting environment-induced effects, we propose to use them as a resource. Our project is based on some recent ideas of the theory of open quantum systems, i.e., quantum systems that interact with their environments. It includes theoretical analysis, numerical simulations, and experiments on the existing Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum computational platforms. Our project will impact the state-of-the-art of Quantum Information Technology through insights on how to exploit environment-induced effects as means of harnessing and controlling open quantum systems for computation and information processing. It will help to uplift the present day Quantum Computing from the level of proof-of-concept experiments to a practical level, where everyday problems – portfolio optimization, traffic control, face recognition, etc. – can be solved.

The arrival of quantum computer prototypes developed by companies like D-Wave Systems, Honeywell, Google, and IBM, marked the beginning of the era of Quantum Information Technology. Yet, after almost a decade, the available platforms remain prototypical. The reason for this is rooted in physics: It is extremely difficult to isolate quantum processors from their environment while keeping the necessary degree of control. Rather than contributing to the ongoing fight with environment-induced decoherence and dissipation, we want to shift the paradigm and develop an approach that uses these two factors as a resource. We will accomplish this by re-viewing quantum processors, quantum algorithms, and quantum error correction schemes from the perspective of Dissipative Quantum Chaos (DQC). DQC is an emerging theory that addresses open quantum many-body systems; its agenda is to quantify generic properties of the dissipative evolution of such systems and provide a toolbox to sort the systems into “chaotic” and “regular” ones. DQC is thus ideally suited as a framework to model and analyze computations on NISQ computers, in which detailed microscopic knowledge on all involved processes will always remain limited. Our targeted breakthrough is to establish, by using tools and ideas of DQC, dissipative quantum operations and circuits as a route to applied quantum computing and simulations on the existing Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) platforms. Our project is aimed at providing a dissipative many-body framework to model NISQ computers, faulty quantum algorithms, and quantum error correction schemes.

Funding scheme:

IKTPLUSS-IKT og digital innovasjon