Vol.6 No.3 May 1, 2006
Research Articles:
A flow-map model for analyzing pseudothresholds in fault-tolerant quantum computing (pp193-212)
         K.M. Svore, A.W. Cross, I.L. Chuang, and A.V. Aho
An arbitrarily reliable quantum computer can be efficiently constructed from noisy components using a recursive simulation procedure, provided that those components fail with probability less than the fault-tolerance threshold. Recent estimates of the threshold are near some experimentally achieved gate fidelities. However, the landscape of threshold estimates includes pseudothresholds, threshold estimates based on a subset of components and a low level of the recursion.    In this paper, we observe that pseudothresholds are a generic phenomenon in fault-tolerant computation. We define pseudothresholds and present classical and quantum fault-tolerant circuits exhibiting pseudothresholds that differ by a factor of $4$ from fault-tolerance thresholds for typical relationships between component failure rates. We develop tools for visualizing how reliability is influenced by recursive simulation in order to determine the asymptotic threshold. Finally, we conjecture that refinements of these methods may establish upper bounds on the fault-tolerance threshold for particular codes and noise models.

A geometric approach to quantum circuit lower bounds (pp213-262)
         M.A. Nielsen
What is the minimal size quantum circuit required to exactly implement a specified n-qubit unitary operation, U, without the use of ancilla qubits? We show that a lower bound on the minimal size is provided by the length of the minimal geodesic between U and the identity, I, where length is defined by a suitable Finsler metric on the manifold SU(2^n). The geodesic curves on these manifolds have the striking property that once an initial position and velocity are set, the remainder of the geodesic is completely determined by a second order differential equation known as the geodesic equation. This is in contrast with the usual case in circuit design, either classical or quantum, where being given part of an optimal circuit does not obviously assist in the design of the rest of the circuit. Geodesic analysis thus offers a potentially powerful approach to the problem of proving quantum circuit lower bounds. In this paper we construct several Finsler metrics whose minimal length geodesics provide lower bounds on quantum circuit size. For each Finsler metric we give a procedure to compute the corresponding geodesic equation. We also construct a large class of solutions to the geodesic equation, which we call \emph{Pauli geodesics}, since they arise from isometries generated by the Pauli group. For any unitary U diagonal in the computational basis, we show that: (a) provided the minimal length geodesic is unique, it must be a Pauli geodesic; (b) finding the length of the minimal Pauli geodesic passing from I to U is equivalent to solving an exponential size instance of the closest vector in a lattice problem (CVP); and (c) all but a doubly exponentially small fraction of such unitaries have minimal Pauli geodesics of exponential length.

Mixing and decoherence in quantum walks on cycles (pp263-276)
         L. Fedichkin, D. Solenov, and C. Tamon
We prove analytical results showing that decoherence can be useful for mixing time in a continuous-time quantum walk on finite cycles. This complements the numerical observations by Kendon and Tregenna (Physical Review A 67 (2003), 042315) of a similar phenomenon for discrete-time quantum walks. Our analytical treatment of continuous-time quantum walks includes a continuous monitoring of all vertices that induces the decoherence process. We identify the dynamics of the probability distribution and observe how mixing times undergo the transition from quantum to classical behavior as our decoherence parameter grows from zero to infinity. Our results show that, for small rates of decoherence, the mixing time improves linearly with decoherence, whereas for large rates of decoherence, the mixing time deteriorates linearly towards the classical limit. In the middle region of decoherence rates, our numerical data confirms the existence of a unique optimal rate for which the mixing time is minimized.

On independent permutation separability criteria (pp277-288)
         L. Clarisse and P. Wocjan
Recently, P.\ Wocjan and M.\ Horodecki [Open Syst.\ Inf.\ Dyn.\ 12, 331 (2005)] gave a characterization of combinatorially independent permutation separability criteria. Combinatorial independence is a necessary condition for permutations to yield truly independent criteria meaning that no criterion is strictly stronger that any other. In this paper we observe that some of these criteria are still dependent and analyze why these dependencies occur. To remove them we introduce an improved necessary condition and give a complete classification of the remaining permutations. We conjecture that the remaining class of criteria only contains truly independent permutation separability criteria. Our conjecture is based on the proof that for two, three and four parties all these criteria are truly independent and on numerical verification of their independence for up to 8 parties. It was commonly believed that for three parties there were 9 independent criteria, here we prove that there are exactly 6 independent criteria for three parties and 22 for four parties.