Robust universal Hamiltonian quantum computing using two-body interactions

Abstract: We present a new scheme to perform noise resilient universal adiabatic quantum computation using two-body interactions. To achieve this, we introduce a new family of error detecting subsystem codes whose gauge generators and a set of their logical operators - capable of encoding universal Hamiltonian computations - can be implemented using two-body interactions. Logical operators of the code are used to encode any given computational Hamiltonian, and the gauge operators are used to construct a penalty Hamiltonian whose ground subspace is protected against local-errors. In contrast to previous approaches, the constructed penalty Hamiltonian does not necessarily commute with the encoded computational Hamiltonians, but for our construction, the undesirable effect of the penalty Hamiltonian on the computation can be compensated by a simple modification of the implemented Hamiltonians. We also investigate whether a similar scheme can be constructed by encoding the computational Hamiltonian using only bare-logical operators of subsystem codes, to guarantee that computational Hamiltonian commutes with the penalty Hamiltonian. We prove a no-go theorem showing that restricting to two-body interactions and using any general CSS-type subsystem codes, such a construction cannot encode systems beyond an Ising chain in a transverse field. We point out that such a chain is universal for Hamiltonian-based quantum computation, but it is not universal for ground-state quantum computation.