Publications
staq - A full-stack quantum processing toolkit
We describe 'staq', a full-stack quantum processing toolkit written in standard C++. 'staq' is a quantum compiler toolkit, comprising of tools that range from quantum optimizers and translators to physical mappers for quantum devices with restricted connectives. The design of 'staq' is inspired from the UNIX philosophy of "less is more", i.e. 'staq' achieves complex functionality via combining (piping) small tools, each of which performs a single task using the most advanced current state-of-the-art methods. We also provide a set of illustrative benchmarks.
Quantum circuit optimizations for NISQ architectures
Currently available quantum computing hardware platforms have limited 2-qubit connectivity among their addressable qubits. In order to run a generic quantum algorithm on such a platform, one has to transform the initial logical quantum circuit describing the algorithm into an equivalent one that obeys the connectivity restrictions. In this work we construct a circuit synthesis scheme that takes as input the qubit connectivity graph and a quantum circuit over the gate set generated by and outputs a circuit that respects the connectivity of the device. As a concrete application, we apply our techniques to Google's Bristlecone 72-qubit quantum chip connectivity, IBM's Tokyo 20-qubit quantum chip connectivity, and Rigetti's Acorn 19-qubit quantum chip connectivity. In addition, we also compare the performance of our scheme as a function of sparseness of randomly generated quantum circuits, and discuss how to apply our techniques as a subroutine for the more general mapping problem over universal set of gates (Clifford + T).
Neural ensemble decoding for topological quantum error-correcting codes
Topological quantum error-correcting codes are a promising candidate for building fault-tolerant quantum computers. Decoding topological codes optimally, however, is known to be a computationally hard problem. Various decoders have been proposed that achieve approximately optimal error thresholds. Due to practical constraints, it is not known if there exists an obvious choice for a decoder. In this paper, we introduce a framework which can combine arbitrary decoders for any given code to significantly reduce the logical error rates. We rely on the crucial observation that two different decoding techniques, while possibly having similar logical error rates, can perform differently on the same error syndrome. We classify each error syndrome to the decoder which is more likely to decode it correctly using machine learning techniques. We apply our framework to an ensemble of minimum-weight perfect matching (MWPM) and hard-decision re-normalization-group decoders for the surface code in the depolarizing noise model. Our simulations show an improvement of 38.4%, 14.6%, and 7.1% over the pseudothreshold of MWPM in the instance of distance 5, 7, and 9 codes, respectively. Lastly, we discuss the advantages and limitations of our framework and applicability to other error-correcting codes. Our framework can provide a significant boost to error correction by combining the strengths of various decoders. In particular, it may allow for combining very fast decoders with moderate error-correcting capability to create a very fast ensemble decoder with high error-correcting capability.
Quantum++: A modern C++ quantum computing library
Quantum++ is a modern general-purpose multi-threaded quantum computing library written in C++11 and composed solely of header files. The library is not restricted to qubit systems or specific quantum information processing tasks, being capable of simulating arbitrary quantum processes. The main design factors taken in consideration were the ease of use, portability, and performance. The library’s simulation capabilities are only restricted by the amount of available physical memory. On a typical machine (Intel i5 8Gb RAM) Quantum++ can successfully simulate the evolution of 25 qubits in a pure state or of 12 qubits in a mixed state reasonably fast. The library also includes support for classical reversible logic, being able to simulate classical reversible operations on billions of bits. This latter feature may be useful in testing quantum circuits composed solely of Toffoli gates, such as certain arithmetic circuits.