Testing Quantum Mechanics using Noisy Quantum Computers

Abstract

We outline a proposal to test quantum mechanics in the high-complexity regime using noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. The procedure involves simulating a non-Clifford random circuit, followed by its inverse, and then checking that the resulting state is the same as the initial state. We are motivated by the hypothesis that quantum mechanics is not fundamental, but instead emerges from a theory with less computational power, such as classical mechanics. This emergent quantum mechanics (EmQM) hypothesis makes the prediction that quantum computers will not be capable of sufficiently complex quantum computations. We show that quantum mechanics predicts that the fidelity of our procedure decays exponentially with circuit depth (due to noise in NISQ devices), while EmQM predicts that the fidelity will decay significantly more rapidly for sufficiently deep circuits, which is the experimental signature that we propose to search for. We estimate rough bounds for when possible signals of EmQM should be expected. Furthermore, we find that highly informative experiments should require only thousands qubits.