Superdense Coding and Quantum Teleportation

We are now ready to look at our first protocols for quantum information. In this section, we examine two communication protocols which can be implemented using the tools we have developed in the preceding sections. These protocols are known as superdense coding and quantum teleportation. Both are inherently quantum: there are no classical protocols which behave in the same way. Both involve two parties who wish to perform some communication task between them. In descriptions of such communication protocols (especially in cryptography), it is very common to name the two parties ‘Alice’ and ‘Bob’, for convenience. We will follow this tradition. We will repeatedly refer to communication channels. A quantum communication channel refers to a communication line (e.g. a fiberoptic cable), which can carry qubits between two remote locations. A classical communication channel is one which can carry classical bits (but not qubits).1 The protocols (like many in quantum communication) require that Alice and Bob initially share an entangled pair of qubits in the Bell state The above Bell state is sometimes referred to as an EPR pair. Such a state would have to be created ahead of time, when the qubits are in a lab together and can be made to interact in a way which will give rise to the entanglement between them. After the state is created, Alice and Bob each take one of the two qubits away with them. Alternatively, a third party could create the EPR pair and give one particle to Alice and the other to Bob. If they are careful not to let them interact with the environment, or any other quantum system, Alice and Bob’s joint state will remain entangled. This entanglement becomes a resource which Alice and Bob can use to achieve protocols such as the following. Suppose Alice wishes to send Bob two classical bits of information. Superdense coding is a way of achieving this task over a quantum channel, requiring only that Alice send one qubit to Bob. Alice and Bob must initially share the Bell state Suppose Alice is in possession of the first qubit and Bob the second qubit.

Linear Algebra and the Dirac Notation

We assume the reader has a strong background in elementary linear algebra. In this section we familiarize the reader with the algebraic notation used in quantum mechanics, remind the reader of some basic facts about complex vector spaces, and introduce some notions that might not have been covered in an elementary linear algebra course. The linear algebra notation used in quantum computing will likely be familiar to the student of physics, but may be alien to a student of mathematics or computer science. It is the Dirac notation, which was invented by Paul Dirac and which is used often in quantum mechanics. In mathematics and physics textbooks, vectors are often distinguished from scalars by writing an arrow over the identifying symbol: e.g a⃗. Sometimes boldface is used for this purpose: e.g. a. In the Dirac notation, the symbol identifying a vector is written inside a ‘ket’, and looks like |a⟩. We denote the dual vector for a (defined later) with a ‘bra’, written as ⟨a|. Then inner products will be written as ‘bra-kets’ (e.g. ⟨a|b⟩). We now carefully review the definitions of the main algebraic objects of interest, using the Dirac notation. The vector spaces we consider will be over the complex numbers, and are finite-dimensional, which significantly simplifies the mathematics we need. Such vector spaces are members of a class of vector spaces called Hilbert spaces. Nothing substantial is gained at this point by defining rigorously what a Hilbert space is, but virtually all the quantum computing literature refers to a finite-dimensional complex vector space by the name ‘Hilbert space’, and so we will follow this convention. We will use H to denote such a space. Since H is finite-dimensional, we can choose a basis and alternatively represent vectors (kets) in this basis as finite column vectors, and represent operators with finite matrices. As you see in Section 3, the Hilbert spaces of interest for quantum computing will typically have dimension 2n, for some positive integer n. This is because, as with classical information, we will construct larger state spaces by concatenating a string of smaller systems, usually of size two.

Algorithms Based on Amplitude Amplification

In this section, we discuss a broadly applicable quantum algorithm that provides a polynomial speed-up over the best-known classical algorithms for a wide class of important problems. The quantum search algorithm performs a generic search for a solution to a very wide range of problems. Consider any problem where one can efficiently recognize a good solution and wishes to search through a list of potential solutions in order to find a good one. For example, given a large integer N, one can efficiently recognize whether an integer p is a non-trivial factor of N, and thus one naive strategy for finding non-trivial factors of N is to simply search through the set {2, 3, 4, . . . , ⌊√N⌋} until a factor is found. The factoring algorithm we described in Chapter 7 is not such a naive algorithm, as it makes profound use of the structure of the problem. However, for many interesting problems, there are no known techniques that make much use of the structure of the problem, and the best-known algorithm for solving these problems is to naively search through the potential solutions until one is found. Typically the number of potential solutions is exponential in the size of the problem instance, and so the naive algorithm is not efficient. Often the best-known classical search makes some very limited use of the structure of the problem, perhaps to rule out some obviously impossible candidates, or to prioritize some more likely candidates, but the overall complexity of the search is still exponential. Quantum searching is a tool for speeding up these sorts of generic searches through a space of potential solutions. It is worth noting that having a means of recognizing a solution to a problem, and knowing the set of possible solutions, means that in some sense one ‘knows’ the solution. However, one cannot necessarily efficiently produce the solution. For example, it is easy to recognize the factors of a number, but finding those factors can take a long time. We give this problem a more general mathematical structure as follows.

Algorithms With Superpolynomial Speed-Up

In this chapter we examine one of two main classes of algorithms: quantum algorithms that solve problems with a complexity that is superpolynomially less than the complexity of the best-known classical algorithm for the same problem. That is, the complexity of the best-known classical algorithm cannot be bounded above by any polynomial in the complexity of the quantum algorithm. The algorithms we will detail all make use of the quantum Fourier transform (QFT). We start off the chapter by studying the problem of quantum phase estimation, which leads us naturally to the QFT. Section 7.1 also looks at using the QFT to find the period of periodic states, and introduces some elementary number theory that is needed in order to post-process the quantum algorithm. In Section 7.2, we apply phase estimation in order to estimate eigenvalues of unitary operators. Then in Section 7.3, we apply the eigenvalue estimation algorithm in order to derive the quantum factoring algorithm, and in Section 7.4 to solve the discrete logarithm problem. In Section 7.5, we introduce the hidden subgroup problem which encompasses both the order finding and discrete logarithm problem as well as many others. This chapter by no means exhaustively covers the quantum algorithms that are superpolynomially faster than any known classical algorithm, but it does cover the most well-known such algorithms. In Section 7.6, we briefly discuss other quantum algorithms that appear to provide a superpolynomial advantage. To introduce the idea of phase estimation, we begin by noting that the final Hadamard gate in the Deutsch algorithm, and the Deutsch–Jozsa algorithm, was used to get at information encoded in the relative phases of a state. The Hadamard gate is self-inverse and thus does the opposite as well, namely it can be used to encode information into the phases. To make this concrete, first consider H acting on the basis state |x⟩ (where x ∊ {0, 1}). It is easy to see that You can think about the Hadamard gate as having encoded information about the value of x into the relative phases between the basis states |0⟩ and |1⟩.

A Quantum Model of Computation

In Section 1.3, we introduced the circuit model of (classical) computation. We restricted attention to reversible circuits since they can simulate any non-reversible circuit with modest overhead. This model can be generalized to a model of quantum circuits. In the quantum circuit model, we have logical qubits carried along ‘wires’, and quantum gates that act on the qubits. A quantum gate acting on n qubits has the input qubits carried to it by n wires, and n other wires carry the output qubits away from the gate. A quantum circuit is often illustrated schematically by a circuit diagram as shown in Figure 4.1. The wires are shown as horizontal lines, and we imagine the qubits propagating along the wires from left to right in time. The gates are shown as rectangular blocks. For convenience, we will restrict attention to unitary quantum gates (which are also reversible). Recall from Section 3.5.3 that non-unitary (non-reversible) quantum operations can be simulated by unitary (reversible) quantum gates if we allow the possibility of adding an ancilla and of discarding some output qubits. A circuit diagram describing a superoperator being implemented using a unitary operator is illustrated in Figure 4.2. In the example of Figure 4.1, the 4-qubit state |ψi⟩= |0⟩⊗ |0⟩⊗ |0⟩⊗ |0⟩ enters the circuit at the left (recall we often write this state as |ψi⟩ = |0⟩|0⟩|0⟩|0⟩ or |ψi⟩ = |0000⟩.) These qubits are processed by the gates U1, U2, U3, and U4. At the output of the circuit we have the collective (possibly entangled) 4-qubit state |ψf⟩. A measurement is then made of the resulting state. The measurement will often be a simple qubit-by-qubit measurement in the computational basis, but in some cases may be a more general measurement of the joint state. A measurement of a single qubit in the computational basis is denoted on a circuit diagram by a small triangle, as shown in Figure 4.1 (there are other symbols used in the literature, but we adopt this one). The triangle symbol will be modified for cases in which there is a need to indicate different types of measurements.R50

Qubits and the Framework of Quantum Mechanics

In this section we introduce the framework of quantum mechanics as it pertains to the types of systems we will consider for quantum computing. Here we also introduce the notion of a quantum bit or ‘qubit’, which is a fundamental concept for quantum computing. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was believed by most that the laws of Newton and Maxwell were the correct laws of physics. By the 1930s, however, it had become apparent that these classical theories faced serious problems in trying to account for the observed results of certain experiments. As a result, a new mathematical framework for physics called quantum mechanics was formulated, and new theories of physics called quantum physics were developed in this framework. Quantum physics includes the physical theories of quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, but we do not need to know these physical theories in order to learn about quantum information. Quantum information is the result of reformulating information theory in this quantum framework. We saw in Section 1.6 an example of a two-state quantum system: a photon that is constrained to follow one of two distinguishable paths. We identified the two distinguishable paths with the 2-dimensional basis vectors and then noted that a general ‘path state’ of the photon can be described by a complex vector with |α0|2 +|α1|2 = 1. This simple example captures the essence of the first postulate, which tells us how physical states are represented in quantum mechanics. Depending on the degree of freedom (i.e. the type of state) of the system being considered, H may be infinite-dimensional. For example, if the state refers to the position of a particle that is free to occupy any point in some region of space, the associated Hilbert space is usually taken to be a continuous (and thus infinite-dimensional) space. It is worth noting that in practice, with finite resources, we cannot distinguish a continuous state space from one with a discrete state space having a sufficiently small minimum spacing between adjacent locations. For describing realistic models of quantum computation, we will typically only be interested in degrees of freedom for which the state is described by a vector in a finite-dimensional (complex) Hilbert space.

Introduction and Background

A computer is a physical device that helps us process information by executing algorithms. An algorithm is a well-defined procedure, with finite description, for realizing an information-processing task. An information-processing task can always be translated into a physical task. When designing complex algorithms and protocols for various information-processing tasks, it is very helpful, perhaps essential, to work with some idealized computing model. However, when studying the true limitations of a computing device, especially for some practical reason, it is important not to forget the relationship between computing and physics. Real computing devices are embodied in a larger and often richer physical reality than is represented by the idealized computing model. Quantum information processing is the result of using the physical reality that quantum theory tells us about for the purposes of performing tasks that were previously thought impossible or infeasible. Devices that perform quantum information processing are known as quantum computers. In this book we examine how quantum computers can be used to solve certain problems more efficiently than can be done with classical computers, and also how this can be done reliably even when there is a possibility for errors to occur. In this first chapter we present some fundamental notions of computation theory and quantum physics that will form the basis for much of what follows. After this brief introduction, we will review the necessary tools from linear algebra in Chapter 2, and detail the framework of quantum mechanics, as relevant to our model of quantum computation, in Chapter 3. In the remainder of the book we examine quantum teleportation, quantum algorithms and quantum error correction in detail. We are often interested in the amount of resources used by a computer to solve a problem, and we refer to this as the complexity of the computation. An important resource for a computer is time. Another resource is space, which refers to the amount of memory used by the computer in performing the computation. We measure the amount of a resource used in a computation for solving a given problem as a function of the length of the input of an instance of that problem.

Quantum Error Correction

A mathematical model of computation is an idealized abstraction. We design algorithms and perform analysis on the assumption that the mathematical operations we specify will be carried out exactly, and without error. Physical devices that implement an abstract model of computation are imperfect and of limited precision. For example, when a digital circuit is implemented on a physical circuit board, unwanted electrical noise in the environment may cause components to behave differently than expected, and may cause voltage levels (bit-values) to change. These sources of error must be controlled or compensated for, or else the resulting loss of efficiency may reduce the power of the information-processing device. If individual steps in a computation succeed with probability p, then a computation involving t sequential steps will have a success probability that decreases exponentially as pt. Although it may be impossible to eliminate the sources of errors, we can devise schemes to allow us to recover from errors using a reasonable amount of additional resources. Many classical digital computing devices use error-correcting codes to perform detection of and recovery from errors. The theory of error-correcting codes is itself a mathematical abstraction, but it is one that explicitly accounts for errors introduced by the imperfection and imprecision of realistic devices. This theory has proven extremely effective in allowing engineers to build computing devices that are resilient against errors. Quantum computers are more susceptible to errors than classical digital computers, because quantum mechanical systems are more delicate and more difficult to control. If large-scale quantum computers are to be possible, a theory of quantum error correction is needed. The discovery of quantum error correction has given researchers confidence that realistic large-scale quantum computing devices can be built despite the presence of errors. We begin by considering fundamental concepts for error correction in a classical setting. We will focus on three of these concepts: (a) the characterization of the error model, (b) the introduction of redundancy through encoding, and (c) an error recovery procedure. We will later see that these concepts generalize quite naturally for quantum error correction.

Quantum Computational Complexity Theory and Lower Bounds

We have seen in the previous chapters that quantum computers seem to be more powerful than classical computers for certain problems. There are limits on the power of quantum computers, however. Since a classical computer can simulate a quantum computer, a quantum computer can only compute the same set of functions that a classical computer can. The advantage of using a quantum computer is that the amount of resources needed by a quantum algorithm might be much less than what is needed by the best classical algorithm. In Section 9.1 we briefly define some classical and quantum complexity classes and give some relationships between them. Most of the interesting questions relating classical and quantum complexity classes remain open. For example, we do not yet know if a quantum computer is capable of efficiently solving an NP-complete problem (defined later). One can prove upper bounds on the difficulty of a problem by providing an algorithm that solves that problem, and proving that it will work within in a given running time. But how does one prove a lower bound on the computational complexity of a problem? For example, if we wish to find the product of two n-bit numbers, computing the answer requires outputting roughly 2n bits and that requires Ω(n) steps (in any computing model with finite-sized gates). The best-known upper bound for integer multiplication is O(n log n log log n) steps. It has proved extremely difficult to derive non-trivial lower bounds on the computational complexity of a problem. Most of the known non-trivial lower bounds are in the ‘black-box’ model (for both classical and quantum computing), where we only query the input via a ‘black-box’ of a specific form. We discuss the black-box model in more detail in Section 9.2. We then sketch several approaches for proving black-box lower bounds. The first technique has been called the ‘hybrid method’ and was used to prove that quantum searching requires Ω(√n) queries to succeed with constant probability. The second technique is called the ‘polynomial method’. We then describe a technique based on ‘block sensitivity’, and conclude with a technique known as the ‘adversary method’.

Introductory Quantum Algorithms

In this chapter we will describe some of the early quantum algorithms. These algorithms are simple and illustrate the main ingredients behind the more useful and powerful quantum algorithms we describe in the subsequent chapters. Since quantum algorithms share some features with classical probabilistic algorithms, we will start with a comparison of the two algorithmic paradigms. Classical probabilistic algorithms were introduced in Chapter 1. In this section we will see how quantum computation can be viewed as a generalization of probabilistic computation. We begin by considering a simple probabilistic computation. Figure 6.1 illustrates the first two steps of such a computation on a register that can be in one of the four states, labelled by the integers 0, 1, 2, and 3. Initially the register is in the state 0. After the first step of the computation, the register is in the state j with probability p0,j . For example, the probability that the computation is in state 2 after the first step is p0,2. In the second step of the computation, the register goes from state j to state k with probability qj,k. For example, in the second step the computation proceeds from state 2 to state 3 with probability q2,3. Suppose we want to find the total probability that the computation ends up in state 3 after the second step. This is calculated by first determining the probability associated with each computation ‘path’ that could end up at the state 3, and then by adding the probabilities for all such paths. There are four computation paths that can leave the computation in state 3 after the first step. The computation can proceed from state 0 to state j and then from state j to state 3, for any of the four j ∊ {0, 1, 2, 3}. The probability associated with any one of these paths is obtained by multiplying the probability p0,j of the transition from state 0 to state j, with the probability qj,3 of the transition from state j to state 3.