Hybrid scheme for factorisation: Factoring 551 using a 3-qubit NMR quantum adiabatic processor

Abstract

Quantum processors are potentially superior to their classical counterparts for many computational tasks including factorisation. Circuit methods as well as adiabatic methods have already been proposed and implemented for finding the factors of a given composite number. The main challenge in scaling it to larger numbers is the unavailability of large number of qubits. Here, we propose a hybrid scheme that involves both classical and quantum computation, based on the previous work of Peng et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101(22), 220405 (2008), which reduces the number of qubits required for factorisation. The classical part involves setting up and partially simplifying a set of bit-wise factoring equations and the quantum part involves solving these coupled equations using a quantum adiabatic process. We demonstrate the hybrid scheme by factoring 551 using a 3-qubit NMR quantum register.