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Creators/Authors contains: "Gullans, Michael"

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  1. Realizing computationally complex quantum circuits in the presence of noise and imperfections is a challenging task. While fault-tolerant quantum computing provides a route to reducing noise, it requires a large overhead for generic algorithms. Here, we develop and analyze a hardware-efficient, fault-tolerant approach to realizing complex sampling circuits. We co-design the circuits with the appropriate quantum error-correcting codes for efficient implementation in a reconfigurable neutral atom-array architecture, constituting what we call a of the sampling algorithm. Specifically, we consider a family of 2 D , D , 2 quantum error-detecting codes whose transversal and permutation gate set can realize arbitrary degree- D instantaneous quantum polynomial (IQP) circuits. Using native operations of the code and the atom-array hardware, we compile a fault-tolerant and fast-scrambling family of such IQP circuits in a hypercube geometry, realized recently in the experiments by Bluvstein [Nature 626, 7997 (2024)]. We develop a theory of second-moment properties of degree- D IQP circuits for analyzing hardness and verification of random sampling by mapping to a statistical mechanics model. We provide strong evidence that sampling from these hypercube IQP circuits is classically hard to simulate even at relatively low depths. We analyze the linear cross-entropy benchmark (XEB) in comparison to the average fidelity and, depending on the local noise rate, find two different asymptotic regimes. To realize a fully scalable approach, we first show that Bell sampling from degree-4 IQP circuits is classically intractable and can be efficiently validated. We further devise new families of O ( d D ) , D , d color codes of increasing distance d , permitting exponential error suppression for transversal IQP sampling. Our results highlight fault-tolerant compiling as a powerful tool in co-designing algorithms with specific error-correcting codes and realistic hardware. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available May 1, 2026
  2. Geometric locality is an important theoretical and practical factor for quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes that affects code performance and ease of physical realization. For device architectures restricted to two-dimensional (2D) local gates, naively implementing the high-rate codes suitable for low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computing incurs prohibitive overhead. In this work, we present an error-correction protocol built on a bilayer architecture that aims to reduce operational overheads when restricted to 2D local gates by measuring some generators less frequently than others. We investigate the family of bivariate-bicycle qLDPC codes and show that they are well suited for a parallel syndrome-measurement scheme using fast routing with local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Through circuit-level simulations, we find that in some parameter regimes, bivariate-bicycle codes implemented with this protocol have logical error rates comparable to the surface code while using fewer physical qubits. Published by the American Physical Society2025 
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  3. Free, publicly-accessible full text available November 10, 2026
  4. We provide the first tensor-network method for computing quantum weight enumerator polynomials in the most general form. If a quantum code has a known tensor-network construction of its encoding map, our method is far more efficient, and in some cases exponentially faster than the existing approach. As a corollary, it produces decoders and an algorithm that computes the code distance. For non-(Pauli)-stabilizer codes, this constitutes the current best algorithm for computing the code distance. For degenerate stabilizer codes, it can be substantially faster compared to the current methods. We also introduce novel weight enumerators and their applications. In particular, we show that these enumerators can be used to compute logical error rates exactly and thus construct (optimal) decoders for any independent and identically distributed single qubit or qudit error channels. The enumerators also provide a more efficient method for computing nonstabilizerness in quantum many-body states. As the power for these speedups rely on a quantum Lego decomposition of quantum codes, we further provide systematic methods for decomposing quantum codes and graph states into a modular construction for which our technique applies. As a proof of principle, we perform exact analyses of the deformed surface codes, the holographic pentagon code, and the two-dimensional Bacon-Shor code under (biased) Pauli noise and limited instances of coherent error at sizes that are inaccessible by brute force. Published by the American Physical Society2024 
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  5. In this work, drawing inspiration from the type of noise present in real hardware, we study the output distribution of random quantum circuits under practical nonunital noise sources with constant noise rates. We show that even in the presence of unital sources such as the depolarizing channel, the distribution, under the combined noise channel, never resembles a maximally entropic distribution at any depth. To show this, we prove that the output distribution of such circuits never anticoncentrates—meaning that it is never too “flat”—regardless of the depth of the circuit. This is in stark contrast to the behavior of noiseless random quantum circuits or those with only unital noise, both of which anticoncentrate at sufficiently large depths. As a consequence, our results shows that the complexity of random-circuit sampling under realistic noise is still an open question, since anticoncentration is a critical property exploited by both state-of-the-art classical hardness and easiness results. Published by the American Physical Society2024 
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  6. Various realizations of Kitaev’s surface code perform surprisingly well for biased Pauli noise. Attracted by these potential gains, we study the performance of Clifford-deformed surface codes (CDSCs) obtained from the surface code by the application of single-qubit Clifford operators. We first analyze CDSCs on the 3×3 square lattice and find that, depending on the noise bias, their logical error rates can differ by orders of magnitude. To explain the observed behavior, we introduce the effective distance d′, which reduces to the standard distance for unbiased noise. To study CDSC performance in the thermodynamic limit, we focus on random CDSCs. Using the statistical mechanical mapping for quantum codes, we uncover a phase diagram that describes random CDSC families with 50% threshold at infinite bias. In the high-threshold region, we further demonstrate that typical code realizations outperform the thresholds and subthreshold logical error rates, at finite bias, of the best-known translationally invariant codes. We demonstrate the practical relevance of these random CDSC families by constructing a translation-invariant CDSC belonging to a high-performance random CDSC family. We also show that our translation-invariant CDSC outperforms well-known translation-invariant CDSCs, such as the XZZX and XY codes. 
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  7. Shadow tomography is a framework for constructing succinct descriptions of quantum states using randomized measurement bases, called “classical shadows,” with powerful methods to bound the estimators used. We recast existing experimental protocols for continuous-variable quantum state tomography in the classical-shadow framework, obtaining rigorous bounds on the number of independent measurements needed for estimating density matrices from these protocols. We analyze the efficiency of homodyne, heterodyne, photon-number-resolving, and photon-parity protocols. To reach a desired precision on the classical shadow of an N-photon density matrix with high probability, we show that homodyne detection requires order O(N4+1/3) measurements in the worst case, whereas photon-number-resolving and photon-parity detection require O(N4) measurements in the worst case (both up to logarithmic corrections). We benchmark these results against numerical simulation as well as experimental data from optical homodyne experiments. We find that numerical and experimental analyses of homodyne tomography match closely with our theoretical predictions. We extend our single-mode results to an efficient construction of multimode shadows based on local measurements. 
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  8. We generalize the notion of quantum state designs to infinite-dimensional spaces. We first prove that, under the definition of continuous-variable (CV) state t-designs from [Blume-Kohout et al., Commun.Math. Phys. 326, 755 (2014)], no state designs exist for t ≥ 2. Similarly, we prove that no CV unitary t-designs exist for t ≥ 2. We propose an alternative definition for CV state designs, which we call rigged t-designs, and provide explicit constructions for t ¼ 2. As an application of rigged designs, we develop a design-based shadow-tomography protocol for CV states. Using energy-constrained versions of rigged designs, we define an average fidelity for CV quantum channels and relate this fidelity to the CV entanglement fidelity. As an additional result of independent interest, we establish a connection between torus 2-designs and complete sets of mutually unbiased bases. 
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