Atomicity in Distributed Quantum Computing

Abstract: Atomicity is a ubiquitous assumption in distributed computing, under which actions are indivisible and appear sequential. In classical computing, this assumption has several theoretical and practical guarantees. In quantum computing, although atomicity is still commonly assumed, it has not been seriously studied, and a rigorous basis for it is missing. Classical results on atomicity do not directly carry over to distributed quantum computing, due to new challenges caused by quantum entanglement and the measurement problem from the underlying quantum mechanics. In this paper, we initiate the study of atomicity in distributed quantum computing. A formal model of (non-atomic) distributed quantum system is established. Based on the Dijkstra-Lamport condition, the system dynamics and observable dynamics of a distributed quantum system are defined, which correspond to the quantum state of and classically observable events in the system, respectively. Within this framework, we prove that local actions can be regarded as if they were atomic, up to the observable dynamics of the system.