Designing a Hybrid Digital / Analog Quantum Physics Emulator as Open Hardware

Abstract

Existing approaches to emulating quantum computing algorithms using classical electronic hardware are limited by exponential scaling limitations in space, such as circuit size, or time, such as runtime or bandwidth. We introduce a scheme for representing quantum information using analog signals that lessens the bandwidth limitation problem seen in existing approaches [1, 2] by taking full advantage of the ability of analog signals to encode information using RMS voltage as well as frequency and phase. We introduce the mathematical framework for this representation, which separates the information relevant for measurement in the computational basis from information that is not relevant to it. We introduce circuits that take advantage of this separation of concerns to achieve simplifications, for working with quantum information in this representation. We argue that it is comparatively very inexpensive (as low as ~$5.00 / qubit) to outmatch the computing capabilities of existing FPGA based emulators [3], though scaling beyond tens of qubits is still impractical due to constraints of analog hardware module precision. However, our approach opens the door to a new avenue by which classical emulators can hope to improve: by improving on analog electronic circuit performance.

Updated with corrections and clarifications