Andrew Jackson (Warwick), Theodoros Kapourniotis (STFC) and Animesh Datta (Warwick) have published their paper ‘Accreditation of Analogue Quantum Simulators’ in the PNAS journal.

The aim of the research is to provide a method to ascertain the correctness of the outputs of an analogue quantum simulator – a task we dub accreditation. This is important because real-world analogue quantum simulators are subject to errors and imperfections, leading to incorrect outputs.

Quantum computers and simulators hold the potential to revolutionize the computational landscape. Amongst these are analogue quantum simulators: devices that simulate quantum systems by physically implementing them and their dynamics. As these systems improve in size and performance, their computational capabilities are beginning to surpass existing classical computers.

Animesh says:

“The research will provide an efficient route to developing trust in these promising and powerful, but imperfect computational devices.”

The image shows an example circuit from the protocol (left) used in the accreditation of a system of qubits with interactions represented by the graph (right) in the figure. The protocol relies on the graph representation of the system being two colourable and so a two-coluring is highlighted in the graph (right).