How to utilize a Grover search in general programming

Abstract

It is widely believed that quantum computers (if realized) will be more powerful than today’s computers from the viewpoint of computational complexity. However, it is not obvious how to utilize quantum computers in practical situations. For practical purposes, a Grover search may be one of the most promising quantum algorithms known so far. Thus, in this paper, we propose an efficient framework where we can use Grover search for general programming. Our framework has the following steps. (1) A programmer writes a program by using standard C++ programming language. (2) Some if expressions within for loops in the C++ source code are chosen as candidates to be performed as a Grover search on a quantum computer. (3) The framework automatically generates a corresponding quantum circuit for each Grover search chosen in (2). Unlike the existing quantum circuit design methods, we can treat large problems in our quantum circuit design. (4) By evaluating the number of primitive quantum gates in the quantum circuit generated in (3), the framework determines whether the processing time of the quantum circuit is faster than the processing time of the corresponding if expression on a classical computer. If the framework determines that the quantum circuit is faster, it generates some interface source codes for a classical computer. Thus, in our framework, a programmer can use a Grover search with almost no effort.