Rotation gates are widely used in various quantum algorithms. To implement fault-tolerant rotation gates, state distillation or gate synthesis is typically employed. However, the overhead of these schemes scales rapidly with increasing Clifford hierarchy levels and required fidelity, limiting their use in large-scale quantum algorithms. In this letter, we propose a method termed multi-level transversal injection (MLTI) for preparing rotation states at arbitrary Clifford hierarchy levels, which achieves high fidelity while significantly reducing overhead compared to previous methods. Unlike the linear cost scaling of state distillation, the overhead of MLTI drops with Clifford hierarchy levels and then plateaus at higher levels, slashing the required space-time volume by up to several orders of magnitude. Additionally, we introduce a method for eliminating the off-diagonal terms of rotation states without extra overhead, unifying the metrics of infidelity and trace distance. These results render the overhead for high-precision rotation gates no longer prohibitive, and thus bring the broad adoption of large-scale quantum algorithms a critical step closer to reality.

While quantum computing provides an exponential advantage in solving system of linear equations, there is little work to solve system of nonlinear equations with quantum computing. We propose quantum Newton's method (QNM) for solving $N$-dimensional system of nonlinear equations based on Newton's method. In QNM, we solve the system of linear equations in each iteration of Newton's method with quantum linear system solver. We use a specific quantum data structure and $l_{\infty}$ tomography with sample error $\epsilon_s$ to implement the classical-quantum data conversion process between the two iterations of QNM, thereby constructing the whole process of QNM. The complexity of QNM in each iteration is $O(\log^4N/\epsilon_s^2)$. Through numerical simulation, we find that when $\epsilon_s>>1/\sqrt{N}$, QNM is still effective, so the complexity of QNM is sublinear with $N$, which provides quantum advantage compared with the optimal classical algorithm.

The rapid development of quantum computers has enabled demonstrations of quantum advantages on various tasks. However, real quantum systems are always dissipative due to their inevitable interaction with the environment, and the resulting non-unitary dynamics make quantum simulation challenging with only unitary quantum gates. In this work, we present an innovative and scalable method to simulate open quantum systems using quantum computers. We define an adjoint density matrix as a counterpart of the true density matrix, which reduces to a mixed-unitary quantum channel and thus can be effectively sampled using quantum computers. This method has several benefits, including no need for auxiliary qubits and noteworthy scalability. Moreover, some long-time properties like steady states and the thermal equilibrium can also be investigated as the adjoint density matrix and the true dissipated one converge to the same state. Finally, we present deployments of this theory in the dissipative quantum $XY$ model for the evolution of correlation and entropy with short-time dynamics and the disordered Heisenberg model for many-body localization with long-time dynamics. This work promotes the study of real-world many-body dynamics with quantum computers, highlighting the potential to demonstrate practical quantum advantages.

The increasing focus on long-term time series prediction across various fields has been significantly strengthened by advancements in quantum computation. In this paper, we introduce a data-driven method designed for long-term time series prediction with quantum dynamical embedding (QDE). This approach enables a trainable embedding of the data space into an extended state space, allowing for the recursive retrieval of time series information. Based on its independence of time series length, this method achieves depth-efficient quantum circuits that are crucial for near-term quantum computers. Numerical simulations demonstrate the model's improved performance in prediction accuracy and resource efficiency over existing methods, as well as its effective denoising capabilities. We implement this model on the Origin ''Wukong'' superconducting quantum processor with a learnable error-cancellation layer (LECL) for error mitigation, further validating the practical applicability of our approach on near-term quantum devices. Furthermore, the theoretical analysis of the QDE's dynamical properties and its universality enhances its potential for time series prediction. This study establishes a significant step towards the processing of long-term time series on near-term quantum computers, integrating data-driven learning with discrete dynamical embedding for enhanced forecasting capabilities.

Color code is a promising topological code for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Insufficient research on the color code has delayed its practical application. In this work, we address several key issues to facilitate practical fault-tolerant quantum computing based on color codes. First, by introducing decoding graphs with error-rate-related weights, we obtained the threshold of $0.47\%$ of the 6,6,6 triangular color code under the standard circuit-level noise model, narrowing the gap to that of the surface code. Second, our work firstly investigates the circuit-level decoding of color code lattice surgery, and gives an efficient decoding algorithm, which is crucial for performing logical operations in a quantum computer with two-dimensional architectures. Lastly, a new state injection protocol of the triangular color code is proposed, reducing the output magic state error rate in one round of 15 to 1 distillation by two orders of magnitude compared to a previous rough protocol. We have also proven that our protocol offers the lowest logical error rates for state injection among all possible CSS codes.

Fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) is essential for achieving large-scale practical quantum computation. Implementing arbitrary FTQC requires the execution of a universal gate set on logical qubits, which is highly challenging. Particularly, in the superconducting system, two-qubit gates on surface code logical qubits have not been realized. Here, we experimentally implement a logical CNOT gate along with arbitrary single-qubit rotation gates on distance-2 surface codes using the superconducting quantum processor \textit{Wukong}, thereby demonstrating a universal logical gate set. In the experiment, we demonstrate the transversal CNOT gate on a two-dimensional topological processor based on a tailored encoding circuit, at the cost of removing the ancilla qubits required for stabilizer measurements. Furthermore, we fault-tolerantly prepare logical Bell states and observe a violation of CHSH inequality, confirming the entanglement between logical qubits. Using the logical CNOT gate and an ancilla logical state, arbitrary single-qubit rotation gates are realized through gate teleportation. All logical gates are characterized on a complete state set and their fidelities are evaluated by logical Pauli transfer matrices. The demonstration of a universal logical gate set and the entangled logical states highlights significant aspects of FTQC on superconducting quantum processors.

Artificial neural network, consisting of many neurons in different layers, is an important method to simulate humain brain. Usually, one neuron has two operations: one is linear, the other is nonlinear. The linear operation is inner product and the nonlinear operation is represented by an activation function. In this work, we introduce a kind of quantum neuron whose inputs and outputs are quantum states. The inner product and activation operator of the quantum neurons can be realized by quantum circuits. Based on the quantum neuron, we propose a model of quantum neural network in which the weights between neurons are all quantum states. We also construct a quantum circuit to realize this quantum neural network model. A learning algorithm is proposed meanwhile. We show the validity of learning algorithm theoretically and demonstrate the potential of the quantum neural network numerically.

Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are widely applied in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era and are expected to demonstrate quantum advantage. However, training VQAs faces difficulties, one of which is the so-called barren plateaus (BP) phenomenon, where gradients of cost functions vanish exponentially with the number of qubits. In this paper, inspired by transfer learning, where knowledge of pre-solved tasks could be further used in a different but related work with training efficiency improved, we report a parameter initialization method to mitigate BP. In the method, a small-sized task is solved with a VQA. Then the ansatz and its optimum parameters are transferred to tasks with larger sizes. Numerical simulations show that this method could mitigate BP and improve training efficiency. A brief discussion on how this method can work well is also provided. This work provides a reference for mitigating BP, and therefore, VQAs could be applied to more practical problems.

Quantum comparators and modular arithmetic are fundamental in many quantum algorithms. Current research mainly focuses on operations between two quantum states. However, various applications, such as integer factorization, optimization, option pricing, and risk analysis, commonly require one of the inputs to be classical. It requires many ancillary qubits, especially when subsequent computations are involved. In this paper, we propose a quantum-classical comparator based on the quantum Fourier transform (QFT). Then we extend it to compare two quantum integers and modular arithmetic. Proposed operators only require one ancilla qubit, which is optimal for qubit resources. We analyze limitations in the current modular addition circuit and develop it to process arbitrary quantum states in the entire $n$-qubit space. The proposed algorithms reduce computing resources and make them valuable for Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers.

A combination of the digitized shortcut-to-adiabaticity (STA) and the sequential digitized adiabaticity is implemented in a superconducting quantum device to determine electronic states in two example systems, the H2 molecule and the topological Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang (BHZ) model. For H2, a short internuclear distance is chosen as a starting point, at which the ground and excited states are obtained via the digitized STA. From this starting point, a sequence of internuclear distances is built. The eigenstates at each distance are sequentially determined from those at the previous distance via the digitized adiabaticity, leading to the potential energy landscapes of H2. The same approach is applied to the BHZ model, and the valence and conduction bands are excellently obtained along the X-{\Gamma}-X linecut of the first Brillouin zone. Furthermore, a numerical simulation of this method is performed to successfully extract the ground states of hydrogen chains with the lengths of 3 to 6 atoms.

Geometric phases are only dependent on evolution paths but independent of evolution details so that they own some intrinsic noise-resilience features. Based on different geometric phases, various quantum gates have been proposed, such as nonadiabatic geometric gates based on nonadiabatic Abelian geometric phases and nonadiabatic holonomic gates based on nonadiabatic non-Abelian geometric phases. Up to now, nonadiabatic holonomic one-qubit gates have been experimentally demonstrated with the supercondunting transmon, where three lowest levels with cascaded configuration are all applied in the operation. However, the second excited states of transmons have relatively short coherence time, which results in a lessened fidelity of quantum gates. Here, we experimentally realize Abelian-geometric-phase-based nonadiabatic geometric one-qubit gates with a superconducting Xmon qubit. The realization is performed on two lowest levels of an Xmon qubit and thus avoids the influence from the short coherence time of the second excited state. The experimental result indicates that the average fidelities of single-qubit gates can be up to 99.6% and 99.7% characterized by quantum process tomography and randomized benchmarking, respectively.

Quantum machine learning has demonstrated significant potential in solving practical problems, particularly in statistics-focused areas such as data science and finance. However, challenges remain in preparing and learning statistical models on a quantum processor due to issues with trainability and interpretability. In this letter, we utilize the maximum entropy principle to design a statistics-informed parameterized quantum circuit (SI-PQC) for efficiently preparing and training of quantum computational statistical models, including arbitrary distributions and their weighted mixtures. The SI-PQC features a static structure with trainable parameters, enabling in-depth optimized circuit compilation, exponential reductions in resource and time consumption, and improved trainability and interpretability for learning quantum states and classical model parameters simultaneously. As an efficient subroutine for preparing and learning in various quantum algorithms, the SI-PQC addresses the input bottleneck and facilitates the injection of prior knowledge.

A potential approach for demonstrating quantum advantage is using quantum computers to simulate fermionic systems. Quantum algorithms for fermionic system simulation usually involve the Hamiltonian evolution and measurements. However, in the second quantization representation, the number of terms in many fermion-system Hamiltonians, such as molecular Hamiltonians, is substantial, approximately $\mathcal{O}(N^4)$, where $N$ is the number of molecular orbitals. Due to this, the computational resources required for Hamiltonian evolution and expectation value measurements could be excessively large. To address this, we introduce a grouping strategy that partitions these $\mathcal{O}(N^4)$ Hamiltonian terms into $\mathcal{O}(N^2)$ groups, with the terms in each group mutually commuting. Based on this grouping method, we propose a parallel Hamiltonian evolution scheme that reduces the circuit depth of Hamiltonian evolution by a factor of $N$. Moreover, our grouping measurement strategy reduces the number of measurements needed to $\mathcal{O}(N^2)$, whereas the current best grouping measurement schemes require $\mathcal{O}(N^3)$ measurements. Additionally, we find that measuring the expectation value of a group of Hamiltonian terms requires fewer repetitions than measuring a single term individually, thereby reducing the number of quantum circuit executions. Our approach saves a factor of $N^3$ in the overall time for Hamiltonian evolution and measurements, significantly decreasing the time required for quantum computers to simulate fermionic systems.

A quantum eigensolver is designed under a multi-layer cluster mean-field (CMF) algorithm by partitioning a quantum system into spatially-separated clusters. For each cluster, a reduced Hamiltonian is obtained after a partial average over its environment cluster. The products of eigenstates from different clusters construct a compressed Hilbert space, in which an effective Hamiltonian is diagonalized to determine certain eigenstates of the whole Hamiltonian. The CMF method is numerically verified in multi-spin chains and experimentally studied in a fully-connected three-spin network, both yielding an excellent prediction of their ground states.

Large-scale quantum computation requires to be performed in the fault-tolerant manner. One crucial challenge of fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) is reducing the overhead of implementing logical gates. Recently work proposed correlated decoding and ``algorithmic fault tolerance" to achieve constant-time logical gates that enables universal quantum computation. However, for circuits involving mid-circuit measurements and feedback, the previous scheme for constant-time logical gates is incompatible with window-based decoding, which is a scalable approach for handling large-scale circuits. In this work, we propose an architecture that employs delayed fixup circuits and window-based correlated decoding, realizing scalable constant-time logical gates. This design significantly reduces both the frequency and duration of decoding, while maintaining support for constant-time and universal logical gates across a broad class of quantum codes. More importantly, by spatial parallelism of windows, this architecture well adapts to time-optimal FTQC, making it particularly useful for large-scale quantum computation. Using Shor's algorithm as an example, we explore the application of our architecture and reveals the promising potential of using constant-time logical gates to perform large-scale quantum computation with acceptable overhead on physical systems like ion traps.

Hybrid quantum-classical algorithms have drawn much attention because of their potential to realize the "quantum advantage" in noisy, intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. Here we introduce QRunes, a cross-platform quantum language for hybrid programming. QRunes can be compiled to various host backends, allowing the user to write portable quantum subprograms. The hybrid programming is based on the type system, which is used to decide where a statement should be run. We also introduce Qurator, a VSCode plugin that has QRunes language support and two host backends.

Quantum machine learning (QML) models, like their classical counterparts, are vulnerable to adversarial attacks, hindering their secure deployment. Here, we report the first systematic experimental robustness benchmark for 20-qubit quantum neural network (QNN) classifiers executed on a superconducting processor. Our benchmarking framework features an efficient adversarial attack algorithm designed for QNNs, enabling quantitative characterization of adversarial robustness and robustness bounds. From our analysis, we verify that adversarial training reduces sensitivity to targeted perturbations by regularizing input gradients, significantly enhancing QNN's robustness. Additionally, our analysis reveals that QNNs exhibit superior adversarial robustness compared to classical neural networks, an advantage attributed to inherent quantum noise. Furthermore, the empirical upper bound extracted from our attack experiments shows a minimal deviation ($3 \times 10^{-3}$) from the theoretical lower bound, providing strong experimental confirmation of the attack's effectiveness and the tightness of fidelity-based robustness bounds. This work establishes a critical experimental framework for assessing and improving quantum adversarial robustness, paving the way for secure and reliable QML applications.

Applying low-depth quantum neural networks (QNNs), variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) are both promising and challenging in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era: Despite its remarkable progress, criticisms on the efficiency and feasibility issues never stopped. However, whether VQAs can demonstrate quantum advantages is still undetermined till now, which will be investigated in this paper. First, we will prove that there exists a dependency between the parameter number and the gradient-evaluation cost when training QNNs. Noticing there is no such direct dependency when training classical neural networks with the backpropagation algorithm, we argue that such a dependency limits the scalability of VQAs. Second, we estimate the time for running VQAs in ideal cases, i.e., without considering realistic limitations like noise and reachability. We will show that the ideal time cost easily reaches the order of a 1-year wall time. Third, by comparing with the time cost using classical simulation of quantum circuits, we will show that VQAs can only outperform the classical simulation case when the time cost reaches the scaling of $10^0$-$10^2$ years. Finally, based on the above results, we argue that it would be difficult for VQAs to outperform classical cases in view of time scaling, and therefore, demonstrate quantum advantages, with the current workflow. Since VQAs as well as quantum computing are developing rapidly, this work does not aim to deny the potential of VQAs. The analysis in this paper provides directions for optimizing VQAs, and in the long run, seeking more natural hybrid quantum-classical algorithms would be meaningful.