QIC Abstracts

 Vol.13 No.5&6, May 1, 2013

Research Articles:

The robustness of magic state distillation against errors in Clifford gates (pp0361-0378)
          
Tomas Jochym-O'Connor, Yafei Yu, Bassam Helou, and Raymond Laflamme
Quantum error correction and fault-tolerance have provided the possibility for large scale quantum computations without a detrimental loss of quantum information. A very natural class of gates for fault-tolerant quantum computation is the Clifford gate set and as such their usefulness for universal quantum computation is of great interest. Clifford group gates augmented by magic state preparation give the possibility of simulating universal quantum computation. However, experimentally one cannot expect to perfectly prepare magic states. Nonetheless, it has been shown that by repeatedly applying operations from the Clifford group and measurements in the Pauli basis, the fidelity of noisy prepared magic states can be increased arbitrarily close to a pure magic state~\cite{Bravyi}. We investigate the robustness of magic state distillation to perturbations of the initial states to arbitrary locations in the Bloch sphere due to noise. Additionally, we consider a depolarizing noise model on the quantum gates in the decoding section of the distillation protocol and demonstrate its effect on the convergence rate and threshold value. Finally, we establish that faulty magic state distillation is more efficient than fault-tolerance-assisted magic state distillation at low error rates due to the large overhead in the number of quantum gates and qubits required in a fault-tolerance architecture. The ability to perform magic state distillation with noisy gates leads us to conclude that this could be a realistic scheme for future small-scale quantum computing devices as fault-tolerance need only be used in the final steps of the protocol.

Entanglement and output entropy of the diagonal map (pp0379-0392)
          
Meik Hellmund
We review some properties of the convex roof extension, a construction used, e.g., in the definition of the entanglement of formation. Especially we consider the use of symmetries of channels and states for the construction of the convex roof. As an application we study the entanglement entropy of the diagonal map for permutation symmetric real $N=3$ states $\omega(z)$ and solve the case $z<0$ where $z$ is the non-diagonal entry in the density matrix. We also report a surprising result about the behavior of the output entropy of the diagonal map for arbitrary dimensions $N$; showing a bifurcation at $N=6$.

Trivial low energy states for commuting Hamiltonians, and the quantum PCP conjecture (pp0393-0429)
          
Matthew Hastings

We consider the entanglement properties of ground states of Hamiltonians which are sums of commuting projectors (we call these commuting projector Hamiltonians), in particular whether or not they have ``trivial" ground states, where a state is trivial if it is constructed by a local quantum circuit of bounded depth and range acting on a product state. It is known that Hamiltonians such as the toric code only have nontrivial ground states in two dimensions. Conversely, commuting projector Hamiltonians which are sums of two-body interactions have trivial ground states\cite{bv}. Using a coarse-graining procedure, this implies that any such Hamiltonian with bounded range interactions in one dimension has a trivial ground state. In this paper, we further explore the question of which Hamiltonians have trivial ground states. We define an ``interaction complex" for a Hamiltonian, which generalizes the notion of interaction graph and we show that if the interaction complex can be continuously mapped to a $1$-complex using a map with bounded diameter of pre-images then the Hamiltonian has a trivial ground state assuming one technical condition on the Hamiltonians holds (this condition holds for all stabilizer Hamiltonians, and we additionally prove the result for all Hamiltonians under one assumption on the $1$-complex). While this includes the cases considered by Ref.~\onlinecite{bv}, we show that it also includes a larger class of Hamiltonians whose interaction complexes cannot be coarse-grained into the case of Ref.~\onlinecite{bv} but still can be mapped continuously to a $1$-complex. One motivation for this study is an approach to the quantum PCP conjecture. We note that many commonly studied interaction complexes can be mapped to a $1$-complex after removing a small fraction of sites. For commuting projector Hamiltonians on such complexes, in order to find low energy trivial states for the original Hamiltonian, it would suffice to find trivial ground states for the Hamiltonian with those sites removed. Such trivial states can act as a classical witness to the existence of a low energy state. While this result applies for commuting Hamiltonians and does not necessarily apply to other Hamiltonians, it suggests that to prove a quantum PCP conjecture for commuting Hamiltonians, it is worth investigating interaction complexes which cannot be mapped to $1$-complexes after removing a small fraction of points. We define this more precisely below; in some sense this generalizes the notion of an expander graph. Surprisingly, such complexes do exist as will be shown elsewhere\cite{fh}, and have useful properties in quantum coding theory.

Realization of the probability laws in the quantum central limit theorems by a quantum walk (pp0430-0438)
          
Takuya Machida
Since a limit distribution of a discrete-time quantum walk on the line was derived in 2002, a lot of limit theorems for quantum walks with a localized initial state have been reported. On the other hand, in quantum probability theory, there are four notions of independence (free, monotone, commuting, and boolean independence) and quantum central limit theorems associated to each independence have been investigated. The relation between quantum walks and quantum probability theory is still unknown. As random walks are fundamental models in the Kolmogorov probability theory, can the quantum walks play an important role in quantum probability theory? To discuss this problem, we focus on a discrete-time 2-state quantum walk with a non-localized initial state and present a limit theorem. By using our limit theorem, we generate probability laws in the quantum central limit theorems from the quantum walk.

Fault-tolerant quantum error correction code conversion (pp0439-0451)
          
Charles D. Hill, Austin G. Fowler, David S. Wang, and Lloyd C.L. Hollenberg
In this paper we demonstrate how data encoded in a five-qubit quantum error correction code can be converted, fault-tolerantly, into a seven-qubit Steane code. This is achieved by progressing through a series of codes, each of which fault-tolerantly corrects at least one error. Throughout the conversion the encoded qubit remains protected. We found, through computational search, that the method used to convert between codes given in this paper is optimal.

Quantum discord and quantum phase transition in spin-1/2 frustrated Heisenberg chain (pp0452-0468)
          
Chu-Hui Fan, Heng-Na Xiong, Yixiao Huang, and Zhe Sun
By using the concept of the quantum discord (QD), we study the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain with next-nearest-neighbor interaction. Due to the $SU(2)$ symmetry and $Z_{2}$ symmetry in this system, we obtain the analytical result of the QD and its geometric measure (GMQD), which is determined by the two-site correlators. For the 4-site and 6-site cases, the connection between GMQD (QD) and the eigenenergies was revealed. From the analytical and numerical results, we find GMQD (QD) is an effective tool in detecting the both the first-order and the infinite-order quantum-phase-transition points for the finite-size systems. Moreover, by using the entanglement excitation energy and a universal frustration measure we consider the frustration properties of the system and find a nonlinear dependence of the GMQD on the frustration.

Non-monogamy of quantum discord and upper bounds for quantum correlation (pp0469-0478)
          
Xi-Jun Ren and Heng Fan
We consider a monogamy inequality of quantum discord in a pure tripartite state and show that it is equivalent to an inequality between quantum mutual information and entanglement of formation of two parties. Since this inequality does not hold for arbitrary bipartite states, quantum discord can generally be both monogamous and polygamous. We also carry out numerical calculations for some special states. The upper bounds of quantum discord and classical correlation are also discussed and we give physical analysis on the invalidness of a previous conjectured upper bound of quantum correlation. Our results provide new insights for further understanding of distributions of quantum correlations.

Measurement-induced nonlocality for an arbitrary bipartite state (pp0479-0489)
          
Sayyed Y. Mirafzali, Iman Sargolzahi, Ali Ahanj, Kurosh Javidan, and Mohsen Sarbishaei

Measurement-induced nonlocality is a measure of nonlocalty introduced by Luo and Fu [Phys. Rev. Lett \textbf{106}, 120401 (2011)]. In this paper, we study the problem of evaluation of Measurement-induced nonlocality (MIN) for an arbitrary $m\times n$ dimensional bipartite density matrix $\rho$ for the case where one of its reduced density matrix, $\rho^{a}$, is degenerate (the nondegenerate case was explained in the preceding reference). Suppose that, in general, $\rho^{a}$ has $d$ degenerate subspaces with dimension $m_{i} (m_{i} \leq m , i=1, 2, ..., d)$. We show that according to the degeneracy of $\rho^{a}$, if we expand $\rho$ in a suitable basis, the evaluation of MIN for an $m\times n$ dimensional state $\rho$, is degraded to finding the MIN in the $m_{i}\times n$ dimensional subspaces of state $\rho$. This method can reduce the calculations in the evaluation of MIN. Moreover, for an arbitrary $m\times n$ state $\rho$ for which $m_{i}\leq 2$, our method leads to the exact value of the MIN. Also, we obtain an upper bound for MIN which can improve the ones introduced in the above mentioned reference. Finally, we explain the evaluation of MIN for $3\times n$ dimensional states in details.

Optimal Bacon-Shor codes (pp0490-0510)
          
John Napp and John Preskill
We study the performance of Bacon-Shor codes, quantum subsystem codes which are well suited for applications to fault-tolerant quantum memory because the error syndrome can be extracted by performing two-qubit measurements. Assuming independent noise, we find the optimal block size in terms of the bit-flip error probability $p_X$ and the phase error probability $p_Z$, and determine how the probability of a logical error depends on $p_X$ and $p_Z$. We show that a single Bacon-Shor code block, used by itself without concatenation, can provide very effective protection against logical errors if the noise is highly biased ($p_Z/p_X\gg 1)$ and the physical error rate $p_Z$ is a few percent or below. We also derive an upper bound on the logical error rate for the case where the syndrome data is noisy.

Perfect state transfer on signed graphs (pp0511-0530)
          
John Brown, Chris Godsil, Devlin Mallory, Abigail Raz, and Christino Tamon
We study perfect state transfer of quantum walks on signed graphs. Our aim is to show that negative edges are useful for perfect state transfer. First, we show that the signed join of a negative $2$-clique with any positive $(n,3)$-regular graph has perfect state transfer even if the unsigned join does not. Curiously, the perfect state transfer time improves as $n$ increases. Next, we prove that a signed complete graph has perfect state transfer if its positive subgraph is a regular graph with perfect state transfer and its negative subgraph is periodic. This shows that signing is useful for creating perfect state transfer since no complete graph (except for the $2$-clique) has perfect state transfer. Also, we show that the double-cover of a signed graph has perfect state transfer if the positive subgraph has perfect state transfer and the negative subgraph is periodic.Here, signing is useful for constructing unsigned graphs with perfect state transfer. Finally, we study perfect state transfer on a family of signed graphs called the exterior powers which is derived from a many-fermion quantum walk on graphs.

Entanglement transfer between atomic qubits and thermal fields (pp0531-0540)
          
Shi-Biao Zheng and Rong-Xin Chen
We investigate entanglement reciprocation between atomic qubits and cavity fields initially in a thermal state. We show that the entanglement between the atomic qubits can be fully transferred to the mixed fields through displacement operation and resonant atom-cavity interaction. This is a rare
example, in which quantum systems in mixed states can be used as the memory for entanglement. The entanglement can be retrieved by another atomic pair. Apart from fundamental interest, the results are useful for implementation of quantum networking with atom-field interface in the microwave regime.

back to QIC online Front page