# Building a QPU simulator in Julia - Part 4

June 17, 2019
seven minutes.

Recall that Deutsch’s algorithm can be represented by the following circuit:

We want something like this, remembering that Julia is 1-index based:

deutch(Uf) = register(ZERO, ONE) |>
gate(H, H) |>
gate(Uf) |>
gate(H, eye) |>
measure(1)


We already have most of the machinery to make this work. We need an overloaded register function to create a register with the given states. This is straightforward and very similar to the gate function we defined in the last post.

register(x...) = foldl(kron, x)


Next a pipeable measure function that takes the bit k that we want to measure (1-indexed).

measure(n, k) = (qubits) -> measure!(n, k, qubits)[1][k]


To avoid having to pass in the size of the register, we can calculate it from the length of the qubits vector. We know that the length, $l$, of the vector is $l=2^{n}$ so $n=\lfloor log_{2}(l) \rfloor$. In code that becomes:

size(qubits) = Int(floor(log2(length(qubits))))
measure(k) = (qubits) -> measure!(size(qubits), k, qubits)[1][k]


All that remains is to define the oracle $U_{f}$. For 2-bit inputs there are four possible functions:

$x$   $f_1(x)=0$ $f_2(x)=x$ $f_3(x)=\bar{x}$ $f_4(x)=1$
0   0 0 1 1
1   0 1 0 1
constant balanced balanced constant

The transformation we need for the oracle is from $\ket{x}\ket{y}$ to $\ket{x}\ket{y⊕f(x)}$ which we can write out explicitly.

$x$ $y$   $y⊕f_1(x)$ $y⊕f_2(x)$ $y⊕f_3(x)$ $y⊕f_4(x)$
0 0   0 0 1 1
0 1   1 1 0 0
1 0   0 1 0 1
1 1   1 0 1 0

Reading off the columns we have:

 $y⊕f_1(x)$ y I $y⊕f_2(x)$ x?~y:y Controlled NOT $y⊕f_3(x)$ y?~x:x Reversed Controlled NOT $y⊕f_4(x)$ ~y NOT

The matrices that do those transformations can be written as direct sums,which is available in Julia as the blockdiag function:

Uf1 = blockdiag(eye, eye) # I
Uf2 = blockdiag(eye, NOT) # C-NOT
Uf3 = blockdiag(NOT, eye) # Reversed C-NOT
Uf4 = blockdiag(NOT, NOT) # NOT


If the function, $f$, is balanced then the measurement will always be true, if constant then the measurement will always be false. Let’s evaluate them all together:

julia> map(deutch, [Uf1, Uf2, Uf3, Uf4])
Bool[false, true, true, false]


We can see that this is exactly the result we expect.

Extending to multiple bits, the generalised quantum circuit in this case is:

This is known as the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm. The wikipedia article has much more information about how this works. In our Julia DSL we can easily extend to 2-bit functions:

deutchJosza(Uf) = register(ZERO, ZERO, ONE) |>
gate(H, H, H) |>
gate(Uf) |>
gate(H, H, eye) |>
measure(1:2)


We could determine the transformations $U_f$ like before by writing them out explicitly but new we have 8 possible permutations. Rather than writing them out let’s write a function to do it for us:

oracle(n::Int, f) = begin
perm = Dict{Int,Int}()
for x in 0:2^n-1
for y in 0:1
xy = (x << n) + y      # |x>|y>
fxy = y ⊻ f(x)         # |y⊕f(x)>
xfxy = (x << n) + fxy  # |x>|y⊕f(x)>
perm[xy+1] = xfxy+1    # mapping (1-index based)
end
end
permmat(map((it) -> perm[it], 1:2^(n+1)))
end

permmat(π) = sparse(1:length(π), π, 1)


This function goes through the $2^n$ possible values of $\ket{x}$ and the two possible values of $\ket{y} \in (0,1)$ and builds a transformation table, perm, of the values $\ket{x}\ket{y}$ to $\ket{x}\ket{y⊕f(x)}$. This table is then used to create a (sparse) permutation matrix for the transformation, e.g. $U_f$. This is a very brutish way of doing it but it gets the job done.

Finally we can run the algorithm and check it works

deutchJosza(Uf) = register(ZERO, ZERO, ONE) |>
gate(H, H, H) |>
gate(Uf) |>
gate(H, H, eye) |>
measure(1:2) |>
(y) -> reinterpret(Int, y.chunks)[1] != 0

Uf1 = oracle(2, 1, (x, y) -> y ⊻ 0)
Uf2 = oracle(2, 1, (x, y) -> y ⊻ (x & 1))
Uf3 = oracle(2, 1, (x, y) -> y ⊻ (x & 1 ⊻ 1))
Uf4 = oracle(2, 1, (x, y) -> y ⊻ 1)

@test map(deutchJosza, [Uf1, Uf2, Uf3, Uf4]) == [false, true, true, false]


The line reinterpret(Int, y.chunks)[1] != 0 converts the binary result to an integer and checks if it’s different from 0.

That’s the Deutch-Jozsa algorithm complete. Next one will be Grover’s algorithm, then Simon’s algorithm before we get into the QFT and finally Shor’s famous factoring algorithm.

Building a QPU simulator in Julia - Part 4 - June 17, 2019 - John Hearn