A Comparison of Encoding Techniques for an Analog Quantum Emulation Device

TL;DR

This paper explores and compares different encoding techniques for an analog quantum emulation device, demonstrating its ability to emulate quantum algorithms like Grover's search and Quantum Fourier Transform, offering a potential alternative to traditional quantum computers.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analog quantum emulation device that uses classical signals to mimic quantum states, comparing frequency and spatial domain encoding methods.

Findings

Successfully emulated Grover's search algorithm and Quantum Fourier Transform.

Demonstrated the computational advantage of the analog device over classical methods.

Achieved a quantum volume equivalent to certain quantum systems.

Abstract

Quantum computers can outperform classical computers in certain tasks. However, there are still many challenges to the current quantum computers such as decoherence and fault tolerance, and other drawbacks such as portability and accessibility. In this study, we circumvent these issues by realizing an analog quantum emulation device (AQED) where each qubit state is represented by a unique analog signal. It is possible to do this because previously it was shown that Hermitian operations on a Hilbert space are not unique to quantum systems and can also be applied to a basis of complex signals that form a Hilbert space. Orthogonality of the complex signal basis can be maintained by separating the signals into the frequency domain or the spatial domain. We study both these approaches and present a comparison. We finally realize the entire device on a UMC 180nm processing node and demonstrate the computational advantage of an AQED by emulating Grover's search algorithm (GSA) and Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT). We also present the equivalent quantum volume achieved by this device.