Quantum computing (QC) is a new paradigm offering the potential of exponential speedups over classical computing for certain computational problems. Each additional qubit doubles the size of the computational state space available to a QC algorithm. This exponential scaling underlies QCβs power, but todayβs Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices face significant engineering challenges in scalability. The set of quantum circuits that can be reliably run on NISQ devices is limited by their noisy operations and low qubit counts.
This paper introduces CutQC, a scalable hybrid computing approach that combines classical computers and quantum computers to enable evaluation of quantum circuits that cannot be run on classical or quantum computers alone. CutQC cuts large quantum circuits into smaller subcircuits, allowing them to be executed on smaller quantum devices. Classical postprocessing can then reconstruct the output of the original circuit. This approach offers significant runtime speedup compared with the only viable current alternative -- purely classical simulations -- and demonstrates evaluation of quantum circuits that are larger than the limit of QC or classical simulation. Furthermore, in real-system runs, CutQC achieves much higher quantum circuit evaluation fidelity using small prototype quantum computers than the state-of-the-art large NISQ devices achieve. Overall, this hybrid approach allows users to leverage classical and quantum computing resources to evaluate quantum programs far beyond the reach of either one alone.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on June 10, 2025
Learning Shallow Quantum Circuits
Despite fundamental interests in learning quantum circuits, the existence of a computationally efficient algorithm for learning shallow quantum circuits remains an open question. Because shallow quantum circuits can generate distributions that are classically hard to sample from, existing learning algorithms do not apply. In this work, we present a polynomial-time classical algorithm for learning the description of any unknown π-qubit shallow quantum circuit π (with arbitrary unknown architecture) within a small diamond distance using single-qubit measurement data on the output states of π. We also provide a polynomial-time classical algorithm for learning the description of any unknown π-qubit state |πβ© = π|0^πβ© prepared by a shallow quantum circuit π (on a 2D lattice) within a small trace distance using single-qubit measurements on copies of |πβ©. Our approach uses a quantum circuit representation based on local inversions and a technique to combine these inversions. This circuit representation yields an optimization landscape that can be efficiently navigated and enables efficient learning of quantum circuits that are classically hard to simulate.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10525478
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 9798400703836
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1343 to 1351
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Quantum computing Shallow quantum circuits Quantum learning theory Quantum algorithms Quantum complexity theory Machine learning theory
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Vancouver BC Canada
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
We describe how classical supercomputing can aid unreliable quantum processors of intermediate size to solve large problem instances reliably. We advocate using a hybrid quantum-classical architecture where larger quantum circuits are broken into smaller sub-circuits that are evaluated separately, either using a quantum processor or a quantum simulator running on a classical supercomputer. Circuit compilation techniques that determine which qubits are simulated classically will greatly impact the system performance as well as provide a tradeoff between circuit reliability and runtime. We describe how classical supercomputing can aid unreliable quantum processors of intermediate size to solve large problem instances reliably. We advocate using a hybrid quantum-classical architecture where larger quantum circuits are broken into smaller sub-circuits that are evaluated separately, either using a quantum processor or a quantum simulator running on a classical supercomputer. Circuit compilation techniques that determine which qubits are simulated classically will greatly impact the system performance as well as provide a tradeoff between circuit reliability and runtime.more » « less
-
Abstract Random quantum circuits have been utilized in the contexts of quantum supremacy demonstrations, variational quantum algorithms for chemistry and machine learning, and blackhole information. The ability of random circuits to approximate any random unitaries has consequences on their complexity, expressibility, and trainability. To study this property of random circuits, we develop numerical protocols for estimating the frame potential, the distance between a given ensemble and the exact randomness. Our tensor-network-based algorithm has polynomial complexity for shallow circuits and is high-performing using CPU and GPU parallelism. We study 1. local and parallel random circuits to verify the linear growth in complexity as stated by the BrownβSusskind conjecture, and; 2. hardware-efficient ansΓ€tze to shed light on its expressibility and the barren plateau problem in the context of variational algorithms. Our work shows that large-scale tensor network simulations could provide important hints toward open problems in quantum information science.more » « less
-
Quantum Computing has attracted much research attention because of its potential to achieve fundamental speed and efficiency improvements in various domains. Among different quantum algorithms, Parameterized Quantum Circuits (PQC) for Quantum Machine Learning (QML) show promises to realize quantum advantages on the current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) Machines. Therefore, to facilitate the QML and PQC research, a recent python library called TorchQuantum has been released. It can construct, simulate, and train PQC for machine learning tasks with high speed and convenient debugging supports. Besides quantum for ML, we want to raise the community's attention on the reversed direction: ML for quantum. Specifically, the TorchQuantum library also supports using data-driven ML models to solve problems in quantum system research, such as predicting the impact of quantum noise on circuit fidelity and improving the quantum circuit compilation efficiency. This paper presents a case study of the ML for quantum part in TorchQuantum. Since estimating the noise impact on circuit reliability is an essential step toward understanding and mitigating noise, we propose to leverage classical ML to predict noise impact on circuit fidelity. Inspired by the natural graph representation of quantum circuits, we propose to leverage a graph transformer model to predict the noisy circuit fidelity. We firstly collect a large dataset with a variety of quantum circuits and obtain their fidelity on noisy simulators and real machines. Then we embed each circuit into a graph with gate and noise properties as node features, and adopt a graph transformer to predict the fidelity. We can avoid exponential classical simulation cost and efficiently estimate fidelity with polynomial complexity. Evaluated on 5 thousand random and algorithm circuits, the graph transformer predictor can provide accurate fidelity estimation with RMSE error 0.04 and outperform a simple neural network-based model by 0.02 on average. It can achieve 0.99 and 0.95 R2 scores for random and algorithm circuits, respectively. Compared with circuit simulators, the predictor has over 200Γ speedup for estimating the fidelity. The datasets and predictors can be accessed in the TorchQuantum library.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Due to the unreliability and limited capacity of existing quantum computer prototypes, quantum circuit simulation continues to be a vital tool for validating next generation quantum computers and for studying variational quantum algorithms, which are among the leading candidates for useful quantum computation. Existing quantum circuit simulators do not address the common traits of variational algorithms, namely: 1) their ability to work with noisy qubits and operations, 2) their repeated execution of the same circuits but with different parameters, and 3) the fact that they sample from circuit final wavefunctions to drive a classical optimization routine. We present a quantum circuit simulation toolchain based on logical abstractions targeted for simulating variational algorithms. Our proposed toolchain encodes quantum amplitudes and noise probabilities in a probabilistic graphical model, and it compiles the circuits to logical formulas that support efficient repeated simulation of and sampling from quantum circuits for different parameters. Compared to state-of-the-art state vector and density matrix quantum circuit simulators, our simulation approach offers greater performance when sampling from noisy circuits with at least eight to 20 qubits and with around 12 operations on each qubit, making the approach ideal for simulating near-term variational quantum algorithms. And for simulating noise-free shallow quantum circuits with 32 qubits, our simulation approach offers a 66X reduction in sampling cost versus quantum circuit simulation techniques based on tensor network contraction.more » « less