Quantumania

Inspiration

After spending an entire day brainstorming potential hackathon projects, we realized we wanted to shed light on overlooked techniques in quantum computing. During a discussion with Professor Mark Saffman, he introduced us to the Procrustean Distillation technique. Intrigued, we delved deeper into the topic and found it fascinating. However, we aimed to apply it to a meaningful problem. This led us to explore Ekert91, Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)--a highly relevant topic in the quantum world today. To summarize, we took an underutilized method in quantum computing and applied it to address one of the field's most exciting and current problems.

What it does

(1) Demonstrates the procrustean distillation technique using Qiskit, (2) a method to convert successfully distilled entangled qubits into singlets for use in the Ekert91 protocol, (3) proof that for a given number of required perfect singlet states, the Procrustean distillation protocol can generate these with high-fidelity states that closely approximate ideal singlets, and (4) the potential to preserve entanglement in practical implementations of Ekert91 (QKD).

How we built it

Our project was inspired by Professor Mark Saffman, who introduced us to the concept of Procrustean Distillation. We relied heavily on numerous textbooks for definitions, derivations, and knowledge. From there, we did a lot of the physics to prove what we did worked and then we turned the physics into code using a lot of Qiskit libraries and Python commands.

Challenges we ran into

One of the major challenges we faced was achieving both high fidelity for the 500 successfully distilled pairs and a high success rate.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Completing this project, the creativity and complexity of our code, and the fact that we were able to solve something--however small-- that contributed to the field of quantum computing, were all significant achievements to us.

What we learned

We learned so much. This project showed us what it truly means to be in the field of quantum computing, solving problems, and what to do when encountering setbacks. The whole process of looking for a solvable problem, planning out the steps to solve it, executing the code, presenting and making these topics understandable to the judges was a big learning curve for us--one we are very thankful for. We learned a lot about Qiskit in general, Quantum computing concepts through physics, sophisticated derivations and the ins and outs of QKD, specifically in Ekert91.