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  • Open Access

Quantum circuits for simulating linear interferometers

Hudson Leone

Peter S. Turner*

Simon Devitt†

  • Centre for Quantum Software and Information—University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computing and Communication Technology (CQC2T), Sydney 2000, Australia

  • School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia and Sydney Quantum Academy, 1 Eddy Avenue, Sydney, New South Wales 2000, Australia

  • *Contact author: peter.turner@mq.edu.au
  • †Contact author: simon.devitt@uts.edu.au
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013190 – Published 20 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/z5l3-z2dr

Abstract

Motivated by recent proposals for quantum proof of work protocols, we investigate approaches for simulating linear optical interferometers using digital quantum circuits. We focus on a second quantization approach, where the quantum computer's registers represent optical modes. We can then use standard quantum optical techniques to decompose the unitary matrix describing an interferometer into an array of 2×2 unitaries, which are subsequently synthesized into quantum circuits and stitched together to complete the circuit. For an m-mode interferometer with n identical photons, this method requires approximately O(mlog(n)) qubits and a circuit depth of O(mn4log2(n)polylog(n4/ε)). We present a software package aquinas (a quantum interferometer assembler) that uses this approach to generate such quantum circuits. For reference, an arbitrary five-mode interferometer with two identical photons is compiled to a ten-qubit quantum circuit with a depth of 1972.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013190– Published 20 February, 2026
  • Received 4 May 2025
  • Accepted 10 November 2025
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