Automating quantum circuit transformations for optimisation and fault-tolerance
This project, funded by the Airforce Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), aims to develop new techniques for automatically transforming quantum circuits into improved versions of themselves that consume fewer resources and are more robust to noise. It builds on the theoretical basis of the ZX-calculus, a mathematical theory which exposes the underlying algebraic relationships between certain kinds of quantum mechanical processes. This algebraic structure gives a novel way to represent and transform quantum circuits, which will be exploited to develop new circuit optimisation techniques and combine these with new and existing techniques in quantum error correction and fault-tolerant quantum computation. We will provide tools that perform these circuit transformations automatically, which will not only produce the transformed circuits, but also independently-verifiable proofs that this transformation has been done correctly, without introducing bugs in the process.