IQC-QuICS Math and Computer Science Seminar

Thursday, November 4, 2021 2:00 pm - 2:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Google's quantum experiment: A mathematical perspective
Gail Letzter, National Security Agency and University of Maryland, College Park

In 2019, Google announced that they had achieved quantum supremacy: they performed a task on their newly constructed quantum device that could not be accomplished using classical computers in a reasonable amount of time. In this talk, we present the mathematics and statistics involved in the set-up and analysis of the experiment, sampling from random quantum circuits. We start with the theory of random matrices and explain how to produce a sequence of (pseudo) random unitary matrices using quantum circuits. We then discuss how the Google team compares quantum and classical approaches using cross entropy and the Porter-Thomas distribution. Along the way, we present other problems with potential quantum advantage and some of the latest results related to noisy near-term quantum computers.

Join the seminar on Zoom
Meeting link: https://umd.zoom.us/j/93192622019

Add event to calendar

Apple   Google   Office 365   Outlook   Outlook.com   Yahoo

This virtual seminar is jointly sponsored by the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science.


If you are interested in presenting at a future seminar, please email either Daniel Grier (daniel.grier@uwaterloo.ca) or Hakop Pashayan (hpashaya@uwaterloo.ca).