Quantum Chaos and Quantum Computing

Abstract

We show that in an isolated model of quantum computer the residual short-range inter-qubit couplings and fluctuations in individual qubit energies can lead to quantum chaos and quantum ergodicity of eigenstates. The onset of chaos results in the interaction induced dynamical thermalization and the occupation numbers well described by the Fermi–Dirac distribution. This thermalization destroys the noninteracting qubit structure and sets serious requirements for the quantum computer operability. We also show that a quantum computer operating with a small number of qubits can simulate the dynamical localization of classical chaos in a system described by the quantum sawtooth map model. The dynamics of the system is computed efficiently up to a time t ≥ l , and then the localization length l can be obtained with accuracy ν by means of order 1/ν 2 computer runs, followed by coarse grained projective measurements on the computational basis.