Training of quantum circuits on a hybrid quantum computer

Generative modeling is a flavor of machine learning with applications ranging from computer vision to chemical design. It is expected to be one of the techniques most suited to take advantage of the additional resources provided by near-term quantum computers. Here, we implement a data-driven quantum circuit training algorithm on the canonical Bars-and-Stripes dataset using a quantum-classical hybrid machine. The training proceeds by running parameterized circuits on a trapped ion quantum computer and feeding the results to a classical optimizer. We apply two separate strategies, Particle Swarm and Bayesian optimization to this task. We show that the convergence of the quantum circuit to the target distribution depends critically on both the quantum hardware and classical optimization strategy. Our study represents the first successful training of a high-dimensional universal quantum circuit and highlights the promise and challenges associated with hybrid learning schemes.

Universal quantum circuit for n-qubit quantum gate: a programmable quantum gate

Quantum computation has attracted much attention, among other things, due to its potentialities to solve classical NP problems in polynomial time. For this reason, there has been a growing interest to build a quantum computer. One of the basic steps is to implement the quantum circuit able to realize a given unitary operation. This task has been solved using decomposition of unitary matrices in simpler ones till reach quantum circuits having only single-qubits and CNOTs gates. Usually the goal is to find the minimal quantum circuit able to solve a given problem. In this paper we go in a different direction. We propose a general quantum circuit able to implement any specific quantum circuit by just setting correctly the parameters. In other words, we propose a programmable quantum circuit. This opens the possibility to construct a real quantum computer where several different quantum operations can be realized in the same hardware. The configuration is proposed and its optical implementation is discussed.