Noise resilience and entanglement evolution in two non-equivalent classes of quantum algorithms

C. Di Franco, M. Paternostro, M. S. Kim

Published 2007-01-27, updated 2007-05-15Version 2

The speed-up provided by quantum algorithms with respect to their classical counterparts is at the origin of scientific interest in quantum computation. However, the fundamental reasons for such a speed-up are not yet completely understood and deserve further attention. In this context, the classical simulation of quantum algorithms is a useful tool that can help us in gaining insight. Starting from the study of general conditions for classical simulation, we highlight several important differences between two non-equivalent classes of quantum algorithms. We investigate their performance under realistic conditions by quantitatively studying their resilience with respect to static noise. This latter refers to errors affecting the inital preparation of the register used to run an algorithm. We also compare the evolution of the entanglement involved in the different computational processes.