New algorithms beat existing methods for quantum circuits

Mark Webster, Stergios Koutsioumpas, and Dan E Browne University College London have developed new algorithms that reduce the number of two-qubit gates needed for quantum circuits. The team benchmarked optimal, A*, and greedy algorithms against existing methods, and show that their approach results in circuits with lower two-qubit gate count. Their approach surpasses previous results achieved using reinforcement learning, even discovering a circuit for the 23-qubit Golay code with a lower two-qubit gate count than previously known. The algorithms are available as an open-source Python package for use by the classical and quantum computing community. The Golay code, an important component in quantum…