Exploiting Arbitrary Paths for the Simulation of Quantum Circuits with Decision Diagrams
Lukas Burgholzer1,a, Alexander Ploier1,b and Robert Wille1,2,c
1Institute for Integrated Circuits, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
alukas.burgholzer@jku.at
balexander.ploier@jku.at
2Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH (SCCH), Austria
crobert.wille@jku.at
ABSTRACT
The classical simulation of quantum circuits is essential in the development and testing of quantum algorithms. Methods based on tensor networks or decision diagrams have proven to alleviate the inevitable exponential growth of the underlying complexity in many cases. But the complexity of these methods is very sensitive to so-called contraction plans or simulation paths, respectively, which define the order in which respective operations are applied. While, for tensor networks, a plethora of strategies has been developed, simulation based on decision diagrams is mostly conducted in a straight-forward fashion thus far. In this work, we envision a flow that allows to translate strategies from the domain of tensor networks to decision diagrams. Preliminary results indicate that a substantial advantage may be gained by employing suitable simulation paths—motivating a thorough consideration.
