An Updated Experimental Evaluation of Graph Bipartization Methods

We experimentally evaluate the practical state-of-the-art in graph bipartization (Odd Cycle Transversal (OCT)), motivated by the need for good algorithms for embedding problems into near-term quantum computing hardware. We assemble a preprocessing suite of fast input reduction routines from the OCT and Vertex Cover (VC) literature and compare algorithm implementations using Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization problems from the quantum literature. We also generate a corpus of frustrated cluster loop graphs, which have previously been used to benchmark quantum annealing hardware. The diversity of these graphs leads to harder OCT instances than in existing benchmarks. In addition to combinatorial branching algorithms for solving OCT directly, we study various reformulations into other NP-hard problems such as VC and Integer Linear Programming (ILP), enabling the use of solvers such as CPLEX. We find that for heuristic solutions with time constraints under a second, iterative compression routines jump-started with a heuristic solution perform best, after which point using a highly tuned solver like CPLEX is worthwhile. Results on exact solvers are split between using ILP formulations on CPLEX and solving VC formulations with a branch-and-reduce solver. We extend our results with a large corpus of synthetic graphs, establishing robustness and potential to generalize to other domain data. In total, over 8,000 graph instances are evaluated, compared to the previous canonical corpus of 100 graphs. Finally, we provide all code and data in an open source suite, including a Python API for accessing reduction routines and branching algorithms, along with scripts for fully replicating our results.

Low-rank density-matrix evolution for noisy quantum circuits

In this work, we present an efficient rank-compression approach for the classical simulation of Kraus decoherence channels in noisy quantum circuits. The approximation is achieved through iterative compression of the density matrix based on its leading eigenbasis during each simulation step without the need to store, manipulate, or diagonalize the full matrix. We implement this algorithm using an in-house simulator and show that the low-rank algorithm speeds up simulations by more than two orders of magnitude over existing implementations of full-rank simulators, and with negligible error in the noise effect and final observables. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of the low-rank method as applied to representative problems of interest by using the algorithm to speed up noisy simulations of Grover’s search algorithm and quantum chemistry solvers.

A Brief Survey of Fixed-Parameter Parallelism

This paper provides an overview of the field of parameterized parallel complexity by surveying previous work in addition to presenting a few new observations and exploring potential new directions. In particular, we present a general view of how known FPT techniques, such as bounded search trees, color coding, kernelization, and iterative compression, can be modified to produce fixed-parameter parallel algorithms.

A Parametrized Analysis of Algorithms on Hierarchical Graphs

Hierarchical graphs are used in order to describe systems with a sequential composition of sub-systems. A hierarchical graph consists of a vector of subgraphs. Vertices in a subgraph may “call” other subgraphs. The reuse of subgraphs, possibly in a nested way, causes hierarchical graphs to be exponentially more succinct than equivalent flat graphs. Early research on hierarchical graphs and the computational price of their succinctness suggests that there is no strong correlation between the complexity of problems when applied to flat graphs and their complexity in the hierarchical setting. That is, the complexity in the hierarchical setting is higher, but all “jumps” in complexity up to an exponential one are exhibited, including no jumps in some problems. We continue the study of the complexity of algorithms for hierarchical graphs, with the following contributions: (1) In many applications, the subgraphs have a small, often a constant, number of exit vertices, namely vertices from which control returns to the calling subgraph. We offer a parameterized analysis of the complexity and point to problems where the complexity becomes lower when the number of exit vertices is bounded by a constant. (2) We describe a general methodology for algorithms on hierarchical graphs. The methodology is based on an iterative compression of subgraphs in a way that maintains the solution to the problems and results in subgraphs whose size depends only on the number of exit vertices, and (3) we handle labeled hierarchical graphs, where edges are labeled by letters from some alphabet, and the problems refer to the languages of the graphs.