Inexact Quantum Square Root Circuit for NISQ Devices

Noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers face significant reliability challenges because they are vulnerable to quantum noise, which severely limits their fidelity in quantum applications. In particular, deep circuits with a large number of quantum gates are susceptible to errors as they are more likely to lose their states in a deep circuit. In this paper, we propose a quantum circuit for square root operation that generates correct results on NISQ devices. The square root operation is used in many applications such as complex number computations, computer graphics, etc. While there have been limited studies on quantum square root circuits, none of them can be implemented on NISQ devices. In this work, we simplify the structure of an exact quantum square root circuit and reduce the number of quantum gates. The proposed design reduces the complexity of the square root circuit while maintaining the same level of precision in outputs. In addition, we exploit approximate computing to simplify the circuit further and run it on a real quantum computer. Approximate computing is used in classical computers to enhance the power and/or performance in exchange for accuracy. We exploit approximate computing for a different purpose, which is reducing the depth as well as the number of quantum gates in the square root circuit. To validate the effectiveness of our approach, we conduct experiments on an IBM quantum computer, where our circuit produces meaningful results. Furthermore, we present examples of error-resilient applications to demonstrate the validity of our approximate circuit.