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.
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Meeting link: https://umd.zoom.us/j/93192622019
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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).