Quantum Computer Visualization without Wavefunctions - Lemmygrad
The math behind quantum computing looks pretty similar to classical
probabilistic computing. The only real difference is that the vector you evolve,
Ď, is made up of complex-valued probability amplitudes rather than just being a
vector of real-valued probabilities. I have been trying to bring them closer
together and make quantum computing look more similar to probabilistic
computing. The update rule for probabilistic computing is the following: - pââ =
Îpâ Where pâ is your probability vector, Î is a stochastic matrix describing the
probabilistic logic gate, and pââ is the updated probability vector after the
probabilistic logical operation is applied. Now, if you take Ď and break it up
into two real-valued vectors such that xâ=â(Ď) and yâ=â(Ď) and then transform xâ
and yâ from Cartesian coordinates to polar coordinates, you get two new vectors:
pâ and Ďâ. Notice how we have pâ. This very much interested me, so I tried to
write down an update rule for this pâ directly, without going back to the
original Ď formalism, and, interestingly, the rule ends up looking like this. -
pââ = Îpâ + f(Ďâ) It looks identical to the probabilistic computing update rule
plus an additional non-linear term that depends upon Ďâ. I didnât realize this
until later, but apparently pilot wave theory does a similar thing, by putting Ď
into polar form it gets a classically evolving probability distribution + an
additional non-linear term called the quantum potential. Itâs more similar to
probabilistic computing, but now I need to give some way to make sense of Ďâ.
This problem is easier than making sense of Ď since Ďâ doesnât carry information
that looks like possible paths as pâ does, so, regardless of the interpretation,
we have already bypassed the problem of devolving into multiverse woo. I found
that a good way to visualize such that Ďâ is a property of the system is to
treat it as a âconnectiveâ property. Imagine plotting each bit in a quantum
computer as a node on a hypergraph. Inside the node holds the bitâs âintrinsicâ
property, that being a bit value of either 0 or 1. Then, you draw all the edges
on the hypergraph and place numbers on each edge, each ranging from -2Ď to 2Ď.
These numbers are weighted connections and represent the connective properties
of the system. Below is an illustration using 3 qubits.
[https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/1cd0a3a0-0646-4fcb-8eaa-ef0b3e9b5f2c.png]
Note that the entire ontic state of the system (the intrinsic and connective
properties) are all real-valued. This is the key distinction between
probabilistic and quantum computing: quantum computing also has a
deterministically evolving set of connective properties between the bits, which
I refer to as the phase network, that you have to keep track of, and the state
of this network can alter the behavior of logic gates, meaning that the same
logic gate could have different stochastic behavior on the bits if it is in a
different state. What is particularly interesting is that if you represent it in
this form, then there is no longer a âcollapse of the wavefunction.â Measurement
can just be represented as a Bayesian update on pâ since pâ is epistemic. Since
Ďâ is ontic, you do not need to touch it when you make a measurement. We thus
reduce the âcollapse of the wavefunctionâ to a classical knowledge update just
like in probabilistic computing. Of course, we all know that systems behave
differently if you measure them vs if you donât. But in this framework, this
becomes explained slightly differently. It is not that, if you measure
something, you immediately âcollapseâ anything. Rather, you can demonstrate that
if particle A interacts with particle B such that the interaction is entirely
passive on A but has the effect of recording Aâs value onto B, then it will
influence the future nomology of A. By nomology I mean, the intrinsic properties
of A do not immediately change as a result of this, but its behavior in a future
interaction can change. I refer to this as the âinformation sharing principleâ
(ISP), that even if an interaction is passive, if it shares information about a
systemâs state, then the stochastic laws can lead to a different future
evolution of the system. Hence, in something like the Mach-Zehnder
interferometer, the measurement of the which-way information can be said to
passively reveal the location of the photon on a particular arm of the
interferometer, but by sharing its information with the measuring device, it
will alter how it later is affected by the second beam splitter. You thus do not
need to explain this âobserver effectâ with an immediately perturbing
interaction, as if you physically âcollapsedâ something by looking at it. To
actually fully illustrate the evolution of the ontic states, however, I would
need some method of computing transitional probabilities. Transitional
probabilities are a form of conditional probabilities where we condition on the
immediate state before. For example, rather than asking the probabilities that
the qubits are in a particular state at time t=4, we ask what are the
probabilities that the qubits are in a particular state at time t=4 while
conditioning on knowledge of the qubit values at time t=3. In traditional
quantum mechanics, if I were to ask what are the transitional probabilities, the
question doesnât even make sense, because it denies that systems have real
values when you are not looking, and so it has no values at t=3. Of course, if
you tried to measure those values at time t=3, you would alter the behavior of
the computer due to the ISP, and it wouldnât be the same algorithm anymore. If
quantum computing really is a kind of probabilistic computing, then we should be
able to imagine that if we were Laplaceâs demon and could observe the qubits at
time t=3, that we could then condition on them without altering the future
evolution of the system via the ISP and then condition on that to update our
probabilities for the state that the system will be in at time t=4. It turns out
we can, indeed, do this, and it was first figured out by John Bell who showed
that you can fit QFT to a stochastic process. The neat thing about transitional
probabilities is once we have a way to compute them, then we can evolve the
system stochastically such that at each set of logic gates applied to the
qubits, we compute the transitional probabilities, then choose a new
configuration of the qubits weighted by those transitional probabilities. The
system will then evolve such that it has a definite bit value at every step of
the algorithm, but if you ran the algorithm over and over again, each
intermediate step would correspond to the intermediate Born rule statistics. I
have put this all together with a website. In the website, there is a simulator
for a 3-qubit quantum computer and a drag-and-drop interface to place quantum
logic gates onto the tracks, and you can press Play to run them. On the
left-hand side is the âepistemic stateâ which is pâ, the statistical
distribution for the bits at that moment in the algorithm. On the right-hand
side is the âontic state,â which is both Ďâ (the connective properties
represented by edges on the hypergarph) and the bit values of the qubits (the
intrinsic properties represented by a bit value of 0 or 1 within the node).
[https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/23d4b9c2-944a-4363-9290-1cc9a88ee944.png] As
you will notice if you play around with the drag-and-drop interface and make
different circuits, you will see that the qubits always possess an ontic state,
a measurement is just a Bayesian knowledge update on the epistemic state and
does not affect the ontic state in the moment of measurement, you get correct
transitional probabilities, The link is at: - https://www.stochasticnetwork.com/
[https://www.stochasticnetwork.com/] Please click the âEXPLANATIONâ button on
the top-right if you want to see a technical explanation of all the equations
and such I am using. I do not use Ď at all in the entire code of the simulator.
It only evolves it directly using pâ and Ďâ. The proper equations for that are
in the document you can find in âEXPLANATIONâ if you want to see them. Note that
if you have any questions/concerns it is probably already addressed in that
document.