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Title: Characterizing quantum supremacy in near-term devices

Journal Article · · Nature Physics
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4];  [5];  [1]
  1. Google Inc., Venice, CA (United States)
  2. Google Inc., Zurich (Switzerland)
  3. NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffett Field, Mountain View, CA (United States); SGT Inc., Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  4. Univ. of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW (Australia)
  5. Google Inc., Santa Barbara, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)

A critical question for quantum computing in the near future is whether quantum devices without error correction can perform a well-defined computational task beyond the capabilities of supercomputers. Such a demonstration of what is referred to as quantum supremacy requires a reliable evaluation of the resources required to solve tasks with classical approaches. Here, we propose the task of sampling from the output distribution of random quantum circuits as a demonstration of quantum supremacy. We extend previous results in computational complexity to argue that this sampling task must take exponential time in a classical computer. We introduce cross-entropy benchmarking to obtain the experimental fidelity of complex multiqubit dynamics. This can be estimated and extrapolated to give a success metric for a quantum supremacy demonstration. We study the computational cost of relevant classical algorithms and conclude that quantum supremacy can be achieved with circuits in a two-dimensional lattice of 7 × 7 qubits and around 40 clock cycles. This requires an error rate of around 0.5% for two-qubit gates (0.05% for one-qubit gates), and it would demonstrate the basic building blocks for a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC); Univ. of California, Oakland, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1543766
Journal Information:
Nature Physics, Vol. 14, Issue 6; ISSN 1745-2473
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group (NPG)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 519 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Experimental demonstration of quantum advantage for one-way communication complexity surpassing best-known classical protocol journal September 2019
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Decoding quantum errors with subspace expansions journal January 2020
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Simulating quantum many-body dynamics on a current digital quantum computer journal November 2019
On the complexity and verification of quantum random circuit sampling journal October 2018
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Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor journal October 2019
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Anti-Zeno quantum advantage in fast-driven heat machines journal January 2020
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Approximation Algorithms for Complex-Valued Ising Models on Bounded Degree Graphs journal July 2019
Nonadaptive fault-tolerant verification of quantum supremacy with noise journal July 2019
Theory of variational quantum simulation journal October 2019
From estimation of quantum probabilities to simulation of quantum circuits journal January 2020
A Proposal for Evading the Measurement Uncertainty in Classical and Quantum Computing: Application to a Resonant Tunneling Diode and a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer journal June 2019
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Topology-dependent quantum dynamics and entanglement-dependent topological pumping in superconducting qubit chains text January 2019
Predicting quantum advantage by quantum walk with convolutional neural networks text January 2019
Decoding quantum errors with subspace expansions text January 2019
Critical behavior at the localization transition on random regular graphs text January 2019
Variational Quantum Unsampling on a Quantum Photonic Processor text January 2019
Anti-Zeno quantum advantage in fast-driven heat machines text January 2019
Quantum Chemistry as a Benchmark for Near-Term Quantum Computers preprint January 2019
General-purpose quantum circuit simulator with Projected Entangled-Pair States and the quantum supremacy frontier text January 2019
Near-Term Quantum-Classical Associative Adversarial Networks text January 2019
High-dimensional quantum communication: benefits, progress, and future challenges text January 2019
Quantum phase transition with inhomogeneous driving in the Lechner-Hauke-Zoller model journalarticle January 2019
Averaged Circuit Eigenvalue Sampling text January 2022
Quantum Divide and Compute: Exploring the Effect of Different Noise Sources journal March 2021
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Geometric quantum speed limits: a case for Wigner phase space journal October 2017
Quantum advantage of unitary Clifford circuits with magic state inputs
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In situ characterization of linear-optical networks in randomized boson sampling journal April 2020
Implementing quantum algorithms on temporal photonic cluster states journal September 2018
Variational Inference with a Quantum Computer journal October 2021
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How to Efficiently Handle Complex Values? Implementing Decision Diagrams for Quantum Computing conference November 2019
Quantum Supremacy Circuit Simulation on Sunway TaihuLight journal April 2020
Robust quantum optimizer with full connectivity journal April 2017
Optimized Compilation of Aggregated Instructions for Realistic Quantum Computers
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Extracting Success from IBM’s 20-Qubit Machines Using Error-Aware Compilation journal May 2020
Achieving quantum supremacy with sparse and noisy commuting quantum computations journal April 2017
Reinforcement Learning Using Quantum Boltzmann Machines text January 2016
Architectures for quantum simulation showing a quantum speedup text January 2017
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