Quantum circuits for simulating linear interferometers

Abstract: Motivated by recent proposals for quantum proof of work protocols, we investigate approaches for simulating linear optical interferometers using digital quantum circuits. We focus on a second quantisation approach, where the quantum computer's registers represent optical modes. We can then use standard quantum optical techniques to decompose the unitary matrix describing an interferometer into an array of $2\times 2$ unitaries, which are subsequently synthesised into quantum circuits and stitched together to complete the circuit. For an $m$ mode interferometer with $n$ identical photons, this method requires approximately $\mathcal{O}(m \log(n))$ qubits and a circuit depth of $\mathcal{O}(m n^4 \log_2(n) : \textrm{polylog}(n^4 / \epsilon))$. We present a software package Aquinas (A QUantum INterferometer ASsembler) that uses this approach to generate such quantum circuits. For reference, an arbitrary five mode interferometer with two identical photons is compiled to a 10 qubit quantum circuit with a depth of 1972.