Leveraging Secondary Storage to Simulate Deep 54-qubit Sycamore Circuits

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that leveraging secondary storage enables the classical simulation of large, complex quantum circuits like the 54-qubit Sycamore, achieving high fidelity outputs within days on supercomputers.

Contribution

Refines previous techniques to simulate 54-qubit Sycamore circuits using secondary storage, enabling high-fidelity classical simulation of complex entanglement patterns.

Findings

Simulated 54-qubit Sycamore circuits with high fidelity

Achieved simulation within days on Summit supercomputer

Extended classical simulation capabilities for complex quantum circuits

Abstract

In a recent paper, we showed that secondary storage can extend the range of quantum circuits that can be practically simulated with classical algorithms. Here we refine those techniques and apply them to the simulation of Sycamore circuits with 53 and 54 qubits, with the entanglement pattern ABCDCDAB that has proven difficult to classically simulate with other approaches. Our analysis shows that on the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, such circuits can be simulated with high fidelity to arbitrary depth in a matter of days, outputting all the amplitudes.