{"id":1008,"date":"2019-02-16T02:00:39","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T02:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2019-02-17T23:45:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T23:45:14","slug":"hybrid-quantum-classical-algorithms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/2019\/02\/hybrid-quantum-classical-algorithms\/","title":{"rendered":"Hybrid Quantum Classical Algorithms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I was preparing slides (around 9pm on Feb 12th, sipping a super nice California Cabernet blend, from Napa, as I am now &#x1f60a;, writing this) for my talk in CMU Physics Department the next day when I received this email:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I read with interest your pre-print on the arXiv this evening.&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>For those folks more interested in wine than in quantum computing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Del Dotto Winery. <\/p><p>The Beast.<\/p><p>Totally Awesome.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Ok, back to quantum computing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We had posted our third quantum computing <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1902.04215\">paper<\/a> just a few hours ago!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> It is titled:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\" class=\"has-text-color has-vivid-red-color\"><strong>Graver Bases via Quantum Annealing with Application to Non-Linear Integer Programs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As you know, I have been working on quantum computing with Raouf and Hedayat for some time now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We call ourselves the CMU Quantum Computing Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Continuing, this email went:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I am working on an optical annealing machine at Stanford that does not suffer from the connectivity issues of D-Wave\u2019s system (we see a ~10-million-times performance difference between our system and D-Wave\u2019s on dense problems).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>What? 10-million times! <em>Right.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This looks a bit too good to be true, I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks to NASA, USRA and Google, I have access to a D-Wave quantum computer to test my algorithms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our paper  describes a novel hybrid quantum-classical approach and summarizes some of our computational findings (on D-Wave).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fake news permeates quantum computing stuff these days and so I was about to delete the email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then I saw that this was an email from <em>Stanford<\/em>, so I kept reading:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>However, we do also suffer from limited precision in our machine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Aha! Some reality here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> He continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>We have not perfectly calibrated how limited it is, but I think it\u2019s likely around 5 bits. (We are working on improved versions of the machine where the precision might reach 8 bits in the future.)&nbsp;I would however be very curious to try a few of your instances on my machine. <br><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>My talk (part of a special seminar series on quantum initiatives) was titled:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\" class=\"has-text-color has-vivid-red-color\"><strong>Quantum Computing and Integer Optimization: An Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are curious about my talk, here is a <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/RTCA2rlvnRc\">video.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Warning! It is about an hour long, and discusses (among other things): <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Ising model, spectral gap, computational algebraic geometry, toric ideals, randomized algorithms, graph theory, test sets, kernel of matrices.<\/p><p>I did not have time to really get into Morse homology and Gauss-Bonnet theorem, though, so you know, and are not disappointed.<\/p><p>In any case, you may enjoy the first 10 minutes as I discuss why I am <em>so<\/em> interested in quantum computing!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to the email. I knew he had read our paper quite carefully:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Would you mind sending me some sample instances of Problem 4.4.1 (in Ising form \u2013 as J matrices and h vectors)? I think it would be interesting for us to try an instance with just 20 spins, and then one with 50 spins, and finally one with 100 spins. I think running this with various choices of&nbsp;<em>t<\/em>&nbsp;could be informative; maybe starting with&nbsp;<em>t<\/em>=1,&nbsp;<em>t<\/em>=10, and&nbsp;<em>t<\/em>=100. (If the experiment works, and we get a publishable result, you\u2019d of course be co-authors on any resulting publication, needless to say.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>We had a great zoom session earlier today, and indeed we are going to check out how well our instances are tackled by his machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay tuned!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the spirit of transparency, this was was not the only email I received on our work as I was creating my slides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This one stood out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Dear professor:<\/p><p>I have gone through your work on quantum adiabatic evolution.<\/p><p>I am working on the same problem and trying to develop a better quantum adiabatic algorithm&#8230; May I request a discussion on skype, if you agree.<\/p><p>I would be thankful to you for your kind cooperation for the same.<\/p><p><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Who is he?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A senior researcher, from Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, from, wait for it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Dubna, Moscow Oblast, Russia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Probably not a good idea to Skype?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\" class=\"has-text-color has-vivid-red-color\"><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was preparing slides (around 9pm on Feb 12th, sipping a super&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[159,25,218,121,21,20,145,220,221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1054,"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions\/1054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myamplelife.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}