Research Articles (Physics)

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Demonstration of Shor’s factoring algorithm for N = 21 on IBM quantum processors
(Nature, 2021-08-16) Skosana, Unathi; Tame, Mark
We report a proof-of-concept demonstration of a quantum order-finding algorithm for factoring the integer 21. Our demonstration involves the use of a compiled version of the quantum phase estimation routine, and builds upon a previous demonstration. We go beyond this work by using a configuration of approximate Toffoli gates with residual phase shifts, which preserves the functional correctness and allows us to achieve a complete factoring of N=21 . We implemented the algorithm on IBM quantum processors using only five qubits and successfully verified the presence of entanglement between the control and work register qubits, which is a necessary condition for the algorithm’s speedup in general. The techniques we employ may be useful in carrying out Shor’s algorithm for larger integers, or other algorithms in systems with a limited number of noisy qubits.