Practical unitary simulator for non-markovian complex processes

• Main Authors: Binder, Felix Christoph, Thompson, Jayne, Gu, Mile
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Quantum Channels; Quantum Algorithms
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/87679; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/45507
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Stochastic processes are as ubiquitous throughout the quantitative sciences as they are notorious for being difficult to simulate and predict. In this Letter, we propose a unitary quantum simulator for discrete-time stochastic processes which requires less internal memory than any classical analogue throughout the simulation. The simulator’s internal memory requirements equal those of the best previous quantum models. However, in contrast to previous models, it only requires a (small) finite-dimensional Hilbert space. Moreover, since the simulator operates unitarily throughout, it avoids any unnecessary information loss. We provide a stepwise construction for simulators for a large class of stochastic processes hence directly opening the possibility for experimental implementations with current platforms for quantum computation. The results are illustrated for an example process.