PhD Seminar • Institute for Quantum — Quantum Circuit Design Via Path Integrals

Tuesday, March 26, 2019 2:30 pm - 2:30 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Matthew Amy, PhD candidate
D
avid R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

The path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, introduced by Richard Feynman in the '40s, has found applications in computational problems for quantum theory, as well as in quantum complexity theory. In it, the amplitude of a particular transition is not represented as a single complex number, but rather as a weighted sum over all possible paths between the initial and final state.

In this seminar, we will study the representation of discrete quantum circuits as finite path integrals. To show the utility of this approach, we apply it to a number of problems in quantum circuit design, encompassing synthesis, optimization, and verification.