ExpandQISE: Track 1: Reimagining Adaptive Quantum Algorithms

Non-technical Description:

This research focuses on new methods for solving important problems in science using quantum computers, broadly addressing a wide range of problems for various practical applications. In particular, the project will develop a family of quantum algorithms that are able to solve important problems of societal impact, including in health, agriculture, and climate.

The education and outreach activities play a critical role in the growth and diversification of a strong quantum information science and engineering (QISE) workforce. The developed textbook from this project will make QISE accessible to all students and may also influence how linear algebra is introduced.

Technical Description:

Quantum simulation algorithms face several challenges associated with ansatz selection, noise, rugged optimization landscapes, and applicability to large-scale problems. The project aims to overcome these challenges by developing a family of quantum algorithms that adaptively create the quantum circuit needed to carry out ground state quantum simulation.

This is achieved through a broad family of adaptive algorithms that leverage deterministic as well as random elements and variational and non-variational approaches, to efficiently prepare ground states in a noise-robust and reliable manner. Randomized adaptive strategies that do not involve classical optimization routines are expected to provide convergence guarantees, while additionally adding classical optimization enhances the speed of convergence.

Performance is benchmarked and tested under realistic conditions using IBM’s largest quantum devices. The insights gained are leveraged to design the most efficient adaptive quantum algorithms that are noise-robust and yield high convergence guarantees. While the research activities are expected to have a profound effect across the sciences by providing solution strategies that use existing and near-term, noisy quantum hardware to solve a wide range of problems, the research also establishes the much-needed algorithms for reliable and efficient quantum state preparation in the fault-tolerant era.

The project includes educational and outreach activities that make quantum science accessible to students from all backgrounds and that could play a critical role in the growth and diversification of a strong QISE workforce. The research is tightly integrated into the workforce development program by engaging students in research early on. The cornerstone of the workforce development program is a pictorial formalism that exposes students to quantum computing without the need for elaborate mathematical concepts.

This formalism is developed in a textbook, which simultaneously serves as a guide to designing a freshman quantum information science and engineering course and training high-school teachers and K12 students in QISE summer programs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.