Online Convex Optimization of Programmable Quantum Computers to Simulate Time-Varying Quantum Channels

Simulating quantum channels is a fundamental primitive in quantum computing, since quantum channels define general (trace-preserving) quantum operations. An arbitrary quantum channel cannot be exactly simulated using a finite-dimensional programmable quantum processor, making it important to develop optimal approximate simulation techniques. In this paper, we study the challenging setting in which the channel to be simulated varies adversarially with time. We propose the use of matrix exponentiated gradient descent (MEGD), an online convex optimization method, and analytically show that it achieves a sublinear regret in time. Through experiments, we validate the main results for time-varying dephasing channels using a programmable generalized teleportation processor.

Learning Distributed Quantum State Discrimination with Noisy Classical Communications

Consider a distributed quantum sensing system in which Alice and Bob are tasked with detecting the state of a quantum system that is observed partly at Alice and partly at Bob via local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Prior work introduced LOCCNet, a distributed protocol that optimizes the local operations via parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) at Alice and Bob. This paper presents Noise Aware-LOCCNet (NA-LOCCNet) for distributed quantum state discrimination in the presence of noisy classical communication. We propose specific ansatzes for the case of two observed qubit pairs, and we describe a noise-aware training design criterion. Through experiments, we observe that quantum, entanglement-breaking, noise on the observed quantum system can be useful in improving the detection capacity of the system when classical communication is noisy.

Learning Quantum Entanglement Distillation with Noisy Classical Communications

Quantum networking relies on the management and exploitation of entanglement. Practical sources of entangled qubits are imperfect, producing mixed quantum state with reduced fidelity with respect to ideal Bell pairs. Therefore, an important primitive for quantum networking is entanglement distillation, whose goal is to enhance the fidelity of entangled qubits through local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Existing distillation protocols assume the availability of ideal, noiseless, communication channels. In this paper, we study the case in which communication takes place over noisy binary symmetric channels. We propose to implement local processing through parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) that are optimized to maximize the average fidelity, while accounting for communication errors. The introduced approach, Noise Aware-LOCCNet (NA-LOCCNet), is shown to have significant advantages over existing protocols designed for noiseless communications.

Coded Consensus Monte Carlo: Robust One-Shot Distributed Bayesian Learning with Stragglers

This letter studies distributed Bayesian learning in a setting encompassing a central server and multiple workers by focusing on the problem of mitigating the impact of stragglers. The standard one-shot, or embarrassingly parallel, Bayesian learning protocol known as consensus Monte Carlo (CMC) is generalized by proposing two straggler-resilient solutions based on grouping and coding. The proposed methods, referred to as Group-based CMC (G-CMC) and Coded CMC (C-CMC), leverage redundant computing at the workers in order to enable the estimation of global posterior samples at the server based on partial outputs from the workers. Simulation results show that C-CMC may outperform G-GCMC for a small number of workers, while G-CMC is generally preferable for a larger number of workers.