Supervised by Dr Earl Campbell (Department of Physics, Sheffield University, see https://earltcampbell.com/)
Co-supervised by Prof. Simon Benjamin (Oxford Materials, see QTechTheory.org)

Circuit compilers for near-term quantum computers

Summary: The number of elementary gates in a quantum computation determines the runtime of the quantum computer. It is clearly advantageous to have faster computations that use fewer gates and "circuit compilation" is the art of optimizing and automating this process. For near-term quantum computers (without error correction) effective compilation is especially important because these devices will be noisy and this imposes a practical limit on the number of gates before an error becomes inevitable. Therefore, compilation protocols and software are crucial to whether we will be able to demonstrate a quantum advantage before full-blown error-corrected devices are available. This PhD project will develop compilation methods exploring random compilers and simulation of fermionic and bosonic interacting systems. This is a joint project between the University of Sheffield and Oxford University.

The studentship is fully funded for UK students with funding provided by NQIT, the UK national hub for quantum computing and Networked Quantum Information Technologies. As such, the student will have the opportunity to collaborate and contribute towards the UK's largest quantum computing effort.

The project is a joint collaboration between the groups of Simon Benjamin in Oxford, and Earl Campbell in Sheffield. The project and student could be based at either university, according to the preference of the successful candidate. The studentship will be held at the chosen university and the student will be registered for a doctoral degree of the chosen university.

We are looking for an enthusiastic student with a physics, mathematics or computer science degree. The award should be a minimum of a UK upper second class honours degree (2:1). The student should also have some of the following desirable skills: a good undergraduate-level understanding of quantum mechanics, a strong mathematical background and/or experience programming and running numerical simulations (e.g. in C).

Informal inquiries can be made to: e.campbell@sheffield.ac.uk or simon.benjamin@materials.ox.ac.uk)
Formal applications can be made either to Sheffield via https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgradapplication/
or to Oxford University http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/postgraduate_courses/apply/index.html.