Distributed Quantum Simulation

Abstract: Quantum simulation is a promising pathway toward practical quantum advantage by simulating large-scale quantum systems. In this work, we propose communication-efficient distributed quantum simulation protocols by exploring three quantum simulation algorithms, including the product formula, the truncated Taylor series, and the processing of quantum signals over a quantum network. Our protocols are further shown to be optimal by deriving a lower bound on the quantum communication complexity for distributed quantum simulations with respect to evolution time and the number of distributed quantum processing units. Additionally, our distributed techniques go beyond quantum simulation and are applied to distributed versions of Grover's algorithms and quantum phase estimation. Our work not only paves the way for achieving a practical quantum advantage by scalable quantum simulation but also enlightens the design of more general distributed architectures across various physical systems for quantum computation.