Experiments showing supremacy, or more realistically advantage, of quantum computers
have been a staple in the community ever since the first claim by Google [1]. The latest demonstration by
Xanadu [2] has been extremely useful as a promotional tool for the photonic technology.
Following a workshop held at the University of Chicago in summer 2022, Scott Aaronson (one of the most
prominent figures in the field) has stressed the need for more solid proposals for quantum advantage experiments
(read the blogpost here https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6645). So far, most proposals have one of the
following shortcomings:
1. It is difficult to verify the output of the quantum device. Since the calculation performed by the QPU
is supposed to be classically intractable, there’s no way to know whether the output of the QPU is
correct or is mostly noise.
2. If a protocol for quantum advantage is devised such that some sort of predetermined verification key
(inaccessible to the QPU) can be efficiently retrieved from the output of the QPU, chances are that
the protocol cannot be implemented on NISQ devices.
The aim of the internship would be to get familiar with proposals for quantum advantage, and later on
to perform some feasibility tests on a recently proposed protocol based on the analog (rather than digital)
approach, and specifically tailored on neutral atom platforms
Activities :
Literature review of the current supremacy protocols involving random sampling (random circuit sampling, boson sampling).
Focus on the recent proposal Emergent Quantum Randomness and Benchmarking from Hamiltonian Many-body Dynamics involving random unitary sampling using Rydberg atoms.
Implementing the new protocol in simulations using Pulser and/or Tensor Networks.
Internship sone under the supervision of Mauro D'Arcangelo