DQC · Diagrammatic Quantum Computation
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-09-01 → 2024-08-31
- EU contribution
- €212,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
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Results in brief
Diagrammatic Quantum Computation
The idea that quantum-mechanical computers might outperform classical computers was introduced decades ago. However, it was only late last year that a quantum computer was able to perform a computation that would be intractable on a classical computer. Still, current-generation quantum computers cannot yet solve useful practical problems due to technological limitations, such as the small number of available qubits and the limited maximum number of operations that can be executed before decoherence occurs. While these bounds can be improved by advances in technology, it is equally crucial that we use existing machines to their full extent by running desired computations as efficiently as possible. Doing so will shorten the time to having quantum computers that solve useful problems. This project will build a compiler that uses novel graphical methods to optimise quantum computations in a threefold manner. Firstly, we will develop theoretical insights and practical implementations that help optimise the number of resources needed for a given computation. Secondly, we will find ways to verify the correctness of these optimisations, and lastly we will build a classical simulator to test quantum computations. In contrast to previous work, which has treated optimisation, verification, and classical simulation as distinct problems in quantum software, this project will advance a new unified approach, revealing previously unforeseen connections and applying the same core techniques to all three problems.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Existing quantum computers are on the verge of solving practical problems that are intractable for classical computers. The obstacles that are holding current generation quantum computers back are their limited number of qubits and the presence of noise, both of which prohibit lengthy computations. Tools that decrease the size of a given computation can hence greatly increase the scope of problems current quantum computers can solve. This project will build such tools.Firstly, we develop new methods and software for optimising quantum circuits. Secondly, we build powerful verification methods that ensure correctness of our optimisations. Thirdly, we develop classical simulators of quantum circuits to allow the testing of quantum computations.While these might seem like disparate problems, in our approach they become aspects of a single problem which is solved by employing powerful graph-theoretic simplification methods that combine techniques from measurement-based quantum computation, tensor networks and the ZX-calculus. This allows us to develop simplifications that would be hard to find with previous methods. In summary, this project unifies the problems of optimisation, verification and simulation of quantum circuits while improving upon the state-of-the-art.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD · OxfordCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union