It is believed that quantum computers would be able to solve complex problems more quickly than any other deterministic or probabilistic computer. Quantum computers basically exploit the rules of quantum mechanics for speeding up computations. However, building a quantum computer remains a daunting task. A quantum computer, as in any quantum mechanical system, is susceptible to decohorence of quantum bits resulting from interaction of the stored information with the environment. Error correction is then required to restore a quantum bit, which has changed due to interaction with external state, to a previous non-erroneous state in the coding subspace. Until now the methods for quantum error correction were mostly based on stabilizer codes over finite fields. The aim of this thesis is to construct quantum error correcting codes over finite Frobenius rings. We introduce stabilizer codes over quadratic algebra, which allows one to use the hamming distance rather than some less known notion of distance. We also develop propagation rules to build new codes from existing codes. Non binary codes have been realized as a gray image of linear Z4 code, hence the most natural class of ring that is suitable for coding theory is given by finite Frobenius rings as it allow to formulate the dual code similar to finite fields. At the end we show some examples of code construction along with various results of quantum codes over finite Frobenius rings, especially codes over Zm.

In the Kane silicon-based electron-mediated nuclear spin quantum computer architecture, phosphorus is doped at precise positions in a silicon lattice, and the P donor nuclear spins act as qubits. Logical operations on the nuclear spins are performed using externally applied magnetic and electric fields. There are two important interactions: the hyperfine and exchange interactions, crucial for logical qubit operations. Single qubit operations are performed by applying radio frequency magnetic fields resonant with targeted nuclear spin transition frequencies, tuned by the gate-controlled hyperfine interaction. Two qubit operations are mediated through the exchange interaction between adjacent donor electrons. It is important to examine how these two interactions vary as functions of experimental parameters. Here we provide such an investigation. First, we examine the effects of varying several experimental parameters: gate voltage, magnetic field strength, inter donor separation, donor depth below the silicon oxide interface and back gate depth, to explore how these variables affect the donor electron density. Second, we calculate the hyperfine interaction and the exchange coupling as a function of these parameters. These calculations were performed using various levels of effective mass theory. In the first part of this thesis we use a multi-valley effective mass approach where we incorporate the full Si crystal Bloch structure in calculating the donor electron energy in the bulk silicon. Including the detailed Bloch structure is very computationally intensive, thus when we considered the effect of the externally applied fields in the second and third part, we employ an approach where we focus on the smooth donor-modulated envelope function to determine the response of the donor electron to the applied electric and magnetic fields and qubit position in the lattice. The electric field potential was obtained using Technology Computer Aided Design software, and the interfaces were modelled as a barrier using a step function. One of the critical results of this theoretical study was finding that there exist two regimes for the behaviour of the donor electron in response to the applied gate voltage, dependent on donor distance from the gate. When the qubit is in close proximity to the gate the electron transfer to the gate is gradual. However if the qubit is located far enough from the gate, we found that the donor electron is ionised toward the gate for gate voltages above a certain threshold. Another significant development we have made is in our calculations of the exchange coupling between two adjacent donor electrons. We extended our original Heitler-London basis to describe the two-electron system, and adopted a molecular orbital method where we included a a basis of 78 singlet and 66 triplet two-electron states. In addition to calculating a more accurate exchange coupling, we also evaluated the energy spectrum of the two electron double donor system. We aim to provide relevant information for the experimental design of these devices and highlight the significance of environmental factors other than gate potential that affect the donor electron.

This thesis reports high-fidelity near-field spatial microwave addressing of long-lived ⁴³Ca⁺ "atomic clock" qubits performed in a two-zone single-layer surface-electrode ion trap. Addressing is implemented by using two of the trap's integrated microwave electrodes, one in each zone, to drive single-qubit rotations in the zone we choose to address whilst interferometrically cancelling the microwave field at the neighbour (non-addressed) zone. Using this field-nulling scheme, we measure a Rabi frequency ratio between addressed and non-addressed zones of up to 1400, from which we calculate an addressing error (or a spin-flip probability on the qubit transition) of 1e-6. Off-resonant excitation out of the qubit state is a more significant source of error in this experiment, but we also demonstrate polarisation control of the microwave field at an error level of 2e-5, which, if combined with individual-ion addressing, would be sufficient to suppress off-resonant excitation errors to the 1e-9 level. Further, this thesis presents preliminary results obtained with a micron-scale coupled-microstrip differential antenna probe that can be scanned over an ion-trap chip to map microwave magnetic near fields. The probe is designed to enable the measurement of fields at tens of microns above electrode surfaces and to act as an effective characterisation tool, speeding up design-fabrication-characterisation cycles in the production of new prototype microwave ion-trap chips. Finally, a new multi-layer design for an ion-trap chip which displays, in simulations, a 100-fold improvement in addressing performance, is presented. The chip electrode structure is designed to use the cancelling effect of microwave return currents to produce Rabi frequency ratios of order 1000 between trap zones using a single microwave electrode (i.e. without the need for nulling fields). If realised, this chip could be used to drive individually addressed single-qubit operations on arrays of memory qubits in parallel and with high fidelity.

Quantum networks lie at the heart of distributed quantum computing and secure quantum communication - research areas that have seen a strong increase of interest over the last decade. Their basic architecture consist of stationary nodes composed of quantum processors which are linked via photonic channels. The key requirement, and at the same time the most demanding challenge, is the efficient distribution of entanglement between distant nodes. The two ground states of single spins confined in self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots provide an effective two-level system for the implementation of quantum bits. Moreover, they offer strong transition dipole moments with outstanding photonic properties allowing for the realisation of close to ideal, high-bandwidth spin-photon interfaces. These properties are combined with the benefits of working in the solid state, such as scalability and integrability of devices, to form a promising candidate for the implementation of fast entanglement distribution. In this dissertation we provide the first implementation of a unit cell of a quantum network based on single electron spins in InGaAs. We use a probabilistic scheme based on spin-photon entanglement and the erasure of which path information to project the two distant spins into a maximally entangled Bell state. The successful generation of entanglement is verified through a reconstruction of the final two-spin state and we achieve an average fidelity of $61.6\pm2.3\%$ at a record-high generation rate of $5.8\,\mathrm{kHz}$. One of the main constraints to the achieved fidelity is the limited coherence of the electron spin. We show that it can be extended by three orders of magnitude through decoupling techniques and develop a new measurement technique, allowing us to investigate the origins of the decoherence which has previously been obscured by nuclear feedback processes. Our results evidence that further extension of coherence is ultimately limited by intrinsic mechanisms closely related to local strain due to the growth method of self-assembled quantum dots. After establishing the intrinsic limits to the electron coherence we investigate the coherence properties of the single hole spin as an alternative two-level system with the potential for higher coherence times. We show that the hole spin coherence is indeed superior to the one of the electron and realise the first successful dynamic decoupling scheme implemented in these systems. We find that the decoherence at low external magnetic fields is still governed by coupling to the nuclear spins whereas it is dominated by electrical noise for fields exceeding a few Tesla. This noise source is extrinsic to the quantum dots and a better understanding offers the potential for further improvement of the coherence time. The findings of this work present a complete study of the coherence of the charge carriers in self-assembled quantum dots and provide the knowledge needed to improve the implementation of a quantum-dot based quantum network. In particular, the combination of spin-spin entanglement and the hole coherence times enable further research towards multidimensional photonic cluster states.

Graphical languages offer intuitive and rigorous formalisms for quantum physics. They can be used to simplify expressions, derive equalities, and do computations. Yet in order to replace conventional formalisms, rigour alone is not sufficient: the new formalisms also need to have equivalent deductive power. This requirement is captured by the property of completeness, which means that any equality that can be derived using some standard formalism can also be derived graphically. In this thesis, I consider the ZX-calculus, a graphical language for pure state qubit quantum mechanics. I show that it is complete for pure state stabilizer quantum mechanics, so any problem within this fragment of quantum theory can be fully analysed using graphical methods. This includes questions of central importance in areas such as error-correcting codes or measurement-based quantum computation. Furthermore, I show that the ZX-calculus is complete for the single-qubit Clifford+T group, which is approximately universal: any single-qubit unitary can be approximated to arbitrary accuracy using only Clifford gates and the T-gate. In experimental realisations of quantum computers, operations have to be approximated using some such finite gate set. Therefore this result implies that a wide range of realistic scenarios in quantum computation can be analysed graphically without loss of deductive power. Lastly, I extend the use of rigorous graphical languages outside quantum theory to Spekkens' toy theory, a local hidden variable model that nevertheless exhibits some features commonly associated with quantum mechanics. The toy theory for the simplest possible underlying system closely resembles stabilizer quantum mechanics, which is non-local; it thus offers insights into the similarities and differences between classical and quantum theories. I develop a graphical calculus similar to the ZX-calculus that fully describes Spekkens' toy theory, and show that it is complete. Hence, stabilizer quantum mechanics and Spekkens' toy theory can be fully analysed and compared using graphical formalisms. Intuitive graphical languages can replace conventional formalisms for the analysis of many questions in quantum computation and foundations without loss of mathematical rigour or deductive power.

Quantum information brings together theories of physics and computer science. This synthesis challenges the basic intuitions of both fields. In this thesis, we show that adopting a unified and general language for process theories advances foundations and practical applications of quantum information. Our first set of results analyze quantum algorithms with a process theoretic structure. We contribute new constructions of the Fourier transform and Pontryagin duality in dagger symmetric monoidal categories. We then use this setting to study generalized unitary oracles and give a new quantum blackbox algorithm for the identification of group homomorphisms, solving the GROUPHOMID problem. In the remaining section, we construct a novel model of quantum blackbox algorithms in non-deterministic classical computation. Our second set of results concerns quantum foundations. We complete work begun by Coecke et al., definitively connecting the Mermin non-locality of a process theory with a simple algebraic condition on that theory's phase groups. This result allows us to offer new experimental tests for Mermin non-locality and new protocols for quantum secret sharing. In our final chapter, we exploit the shared process theoretic structure of quantum information and distributional compositional linguistics. We propose a quantum algorithm adapted from Weibe et al. to classify sentences by meaning. The clarity of the process theoretic setting allows us to recover a speedup that is lost in the naive application of the algorithm. The main mathematical tools used in this thesis are group theory (esp. Fourier theory on finite groups), monoidal category theory, and categorical algebra.

A Computação Quântica é uma área de pesquisa científica onde a teoria da Mecânica Quântica é usada para descrever um conceito mais geral que o da Máquina Universal de Turing clássica. esta abordagem permite o desenvolvimento de algoritmos que podem ser consideravelmente mais rápidos que suas contrapartidas clássicas. Todos os algoritmos quânticos conhecidos até hoje que são exponencialmente mais rápidos que seus correspondentes clássicos utilizam a transformada de Fourier Quântica (QFT) em alguma parte. Nesta dissertação, as versões exata e aproximada da QFT são construídas usando uma abordagem que generaliza o resultado fundamental de Coppersmith. O processo inicia com a representação matricial genérica da Transformada de Fourier Rápida (FFT) clássica, como descrita por Knuth, seguida por sua decomposição em termos de operadores quânticos universais. Tal decomposição também é alcançada por meio de uma abordagem recursiva. A simulação de computadores quânticos também é discutida. Experimentos computacionais são realizados com o objetivo de simular a QFT Aproximada sobre estados da base computacional e gatos de Schrödinger, e com diferentes níveis de aproximação. A qualidade das soluções e a complexidade computacional são estudadas, levando a resultados consistentes com a teoria.

Caminhos aleatórios clássicos são essenciais para a Física, a Matemática, a Ciência da Computação e muitas outras áreas. Há uma grande expectativa que a sua versão quântica seja ainda mais poderosa, uma vez que o caminhante quântico se espalha quadraticamente mais rápido que o seu análogo clássico. Neste trabalho, estudamos o comportamento do caminhante quântico em uma e duas dimensões, além de generalizarmos o formalismo de ligações interrompidas para duas ou mais dimensões. Em uma dimensão, analisamos o comportamento do caminhante quântico, que além das duas possibilidades de deslocamento usuais, direita e esquerda, também permanece na posição atual. Em duas dimensões, apresentamos um estudo detalhado do comportamento do caminhante no plano e quando há descoerência gerada pela quebra aleatória das ligações para as posições vizinhas com uma certa probabilidade para cada uma das direções. Quando essa probabilidade de quebra é diferente nas duas direções encontramos um resultado não trivial que representa uma transição do caso 2-D descorente para o caso 1-D coerente. Também utilizamos o formalismo de ligações interrompidas para modelar o comportamento de um caminhante quântico que passa por uma e por duas fendas. Realizamos simulações com com as principais moedas e observamos conclusivamente os padrões de interferência e difração.

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul / With the approaching end of Moore’s Law, where will not be possible to improve the capacity of silicon based processors, the quantum computing appear to be a good choice to provide a new era of computation. Quantum computing can be understood as the art of transform information encoded in the state of a quantum physical system. This encoding is through the quantum bits (qubits), which can be on superposition or entangled states, enabling to explore the property called quantum parallelism. In this work is discussed the creation of a quantum programming language implementing the object-oriented paradigm (OO), allowing manipulation of classes and objects, where the quantum effects are handled through a monadic approach, extending the Featherweight Java (FJ) proposal. This language is formally defined through the operational semantics, which allow the implementation in any language that provides closures. That language formalization enables us to create an interpreter, implementing the steps of lexical, syntactic and semantic analysis, focusing in the type system to embedded quantum computing concepts in a classical language. Several examples are provided in the text, showing ways to handle the monadic layer in order to perform transformations in quantum information. / Com a aproximação do fim da Lei de Moore, onde não será possível melhorar a capacidade dos processadores baseados em silício, a computação quântica aparece como uma boa escolha para prover uma nova era da computação. A computação quântica pode ser entendida como a arte de transformar informação codificada no estado físico quântico. Esta codificação se dá através de bits quânticos (qubits), que podem estar em estados de superposição ou emaranhados, permitindo explorar uma propriedade conhecida como paralelismo quântico. Nesta dissertação é discutida a criação de uma linguagem de programação quântica que utiliza-se do paradigma da orientação a objetos (OO), fornecendo a possibilidade de manipular classes e objetos, onde os dados e os efeitos quânticos são manipulados através de uma abordagem monádica, sendo modelada como uma extensão da proposta Featherweight Java (FJ). Esta extensão é definida formalmente através da apresentação de sua semântica operacional, a qual é passível de implementação em qualquer linguagem de programação que forneça o mecanismo de closures. A formalização desta linguagem permitiu a criação de um interpretador, que implementa as fases de análise léxica, sintática e semântica, com foco especial no tratamento do sistema de tipos para embutir conceitos de computação quântica em uma linguagem clássica. Vários exemplos são fornecidos no decorrer do texto, mostrando formas de manipular a camada monádica para realizar transformações em informações quânticas.

Quantum computing is a young but intriguing field of science. It combines quantum mechanics with information theory and computer science to potentially solve certain formerly computationally expensive tasks more efficiently. Classical computers are based on bits that can take on the value zero or one. The values are distinguished by voltage differences in transistors. Quantum computers are instead based on quantum bits, or qubits, that are represented physically by something that exhibits quantum properties, like for example electrons. Qubits also take on the value zero or one, which could correspond to spin up and spin down of an electron. However, qubits can also be in a superposition state between the quantum states corresponding to the value zero and one. This property is what causes quantum computers to be able to outperform classical computers at certain tasks. One of these tasks is searching through an unstructured database. Whereas a classical computer in the worst case has to search through the whole database in order to find the sought element, i.e. the computation time is proportional to the size of the problem, it can be shown that a quantum computer can find the solution in a time proportional to the square root of the size of the problem. This report aims to illustrate the advantages of quantum computing by explicitly solving the classical Windows game Minesweeper, which can be reduced to a problem resembling the unstructured database search problem. It is shown that solving Minesweeper with a quantum algorithm gives a quadratic speedup compared to solving it with a classical algorithm. The report also covers introductory material to quantum mechanics, quantum gates, the particular quantum algorithm Grover's algorithm and complexity classes, which is necessary to grasp in order to understand how Minesweeper can be solved on a quantum computer.