EC funding approves a project of INL – FoQaCiA “Foundations of quantum computational advantage”

March 24, 2022

The EC funding approved a project of INL – FoQaCiA “Foundations of quantum computational advantage” within the Digital Horizon Europe calls: DATA, DIGITAL-EMERGING and HUMAN (HORIZON-CL4-2021-DIGITAL-EMERGING-01-23).

FoQaCiA focuses on expanding the theoretical basis for the design of quantum algorithms. The success of quantum computing critically depends on advances at the most fundamental level. Large-scale investment in quantum implementations will only pay off if they can draw on additional foundational insights and ideas. While several powerful quantum algorithms are known, the basic techniques are few and far between. Largely, it remains to be discovered how to harness the quantum for computation systematically.

Researchers will study four areas of quantum phenomenology:

Quantum contextuality, non-classicality, and quantum advantage;
The complexity of classical simulation of quantum computation;
Arithmetic of quantum circuits;
The efficiency of fault-tolerant quantum computation.

These fields are chosen for two reasons. First, their progress is of great importance for the physical realisation and the broad applicability of quantum computation. Regarding (1), one of the most straightforward proofs of quantum contextuality, Mermin’s star, has recently been employed to prove (Bravyi, Gosset, König) that bounded-depth quantum circuits are more powerful than their classical analogues. We seek to expand this result beyond bounded depth. In (2), we study the quantum speedup by shaving off the redundant part – the efficiently classically simulable. In (3), we aim to provide more efficient gate and circuit synthesis techniques, utilising the number-theoretic underpinnings of the problem. Regarding (4), given the celebrated threshold theorem, and the fact that the error threshold is now known to be within reach of the experiment, researchers will tackle the remaining challenge of reducing the cost of fault tolerance.

The second reason for selecting the above work areas is to mine them for foundational quantum mechanical structures and find related quantum algorithmic uses.

The project has 11 partners, 7 in Europe (including Turkey and UK) and 4 in Canada. It was a specific call for collaborative projects between Europe and Canada in quantum computation.

If you want to know more about the project, please contact Ernesto Galvão, Group Leader of Quantum and Linear-Optical Computation, INL.

Participating institutions