Modular quantum computation in a trapped ion system.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31619670.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-12643-2 and PMC identifier 6795904.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Modern computation relies crucially on modular architectures, breaking a complex algorithm into self-contained subroutines. A client can then call upon a remote server to implement parts of the computation independently via an application programming interface (API). Present APIs relay only classical information. Here we implement a quantum API that enables a client to estimate the absolute value of the trace of a server-provided unitary operation [Formula: see text]. We demonstrate that the algorithm functions correctly irrespective of what unitary [Formula: see text] the server implements or how the server specifically realizes [Formula: see text]. Our experiment involves pioneering techniques to coherently swap qubits encoded within the motional states of a trapped [Formula: see text] ion, controlled on its hyperfine state. This constitutes the first demonstration of modular computation in the quantum regime, providing a step towards scalable, parallelization of quantum computation.