We show a significant reduction of the number of quantum operations and the improvement of the circuit depth for the realization of the Toffoli gate by using qudits. This is done by establishing a general relation between the dimensionality of qudits and their topology of connections for a scalable multiqudit processor, where higher qudit levels are used for substituting ancillas. The suggested model is of importance for the realization of quantum algorithms and as a method of quantum error correction codes for single-qubit operations.

The problem of finding efficient decompositions of multiqubit gates is of importance for quantum computing, especially, in application to existing noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices, whose resources are substantially limited. Here we propose a decomposition scheme for a generalized $N$-qubit Toffoli gate with the use of $2N-3$ two-qutrit gates for arbitrary connectivity. The fixed number of the required additional levels (the choice of qutrits is optimal) and the use of the iSWAP gate as a native operation make our approach directly applicable for ongoing experiments with superconducting quantum processors. Specifically, we present a blueprint of the realization of the proposed scheme for the Aspen-9 processor supporting quantum operations with qutrits.

We demonstrate a quantum processor based on a 3D linear Paul trap that uses ${}^{171}\mathrm{Yb}^{+}$ ions with eight individually controllable four-level qudits (ququarts), which is computationally equivalent to a sixteen-qubit quantum processor. The design of the developed ion trap provides high secular frequencies and a low heating rate, which, together with individual addressing and readout optical systems, allows executing quantum algorithms. In each of the eight ions, we use four electronic levels coupled by E2 optical transition at 435 nm for qudit encoding. We present the results of single- and two-qubit operations benchmarking and realizing basic quantum algorithms, including the Bernstein–Vazirani and Grover’s search algorithms as well as H₂ and LiH molecular simulations. Our results pave the way to scalable qudit-based quantum processors using trapped ions.

Scalable quantum computers hold the promise to solve hard computational problems, such as prime factorization, combinatorial optimization, simulation of many-body physics, and quantum chemistry. While being key to understanding many real-world phenomena, simulation of nonconservative quantum dynamics presents a challenge for unitary quantum computation. In this work, we focus on simulating nonunitary parity-time-symmetric systems, which exhibit a distinctive symmetry-breaking phase transition as well as other unique features that have no counterpart in closed systems. We show that a qutrit, a three-level quantum system, is capable of realizing this nonequilibrium phase transition. By using two physical platforms, an array of trapped ions and a superconducting transmon, and by controlling their three energy levels in a digital manner, we experimentally simulate the parity-time-symmetry-breaking phase transition. Our results indicate the potential advantage of multilevel (qudit) processors in simulating physical effects, where additional accessible levels can play the role of a controlled environment.

Qubits, which are the quantum counterparts of classical bits, are used as basic information units for quantum information processing, whereas underlying physical information carriers, e.g., (artificial) atoms or ions, admit encoding of more complex multilevel states—qudits. Recently, significant attention has been paid to the idea of using qudit encoding as a way for further scaling quantum processors. In this work, we present an efficient decomposition of the generalized Toffoli gate on five-level quantum systems—so-called ququints—that use ququints’ space as the space of two qubits with a joint ancillary state. The basic two-qubit operation we use is a version of the controlled-phase gate. The proposed N-qubit Toffoli gate decomposition has $O\left(N\right)$ asymptotic depth and does not use ancillary qubits. We then apply our results for Grover’s algorithm, where we indicate on the sizable advantage of using the qudit-based approach with the proposed decomposition in comparison to the standard qubit case. We expect that our results are applicable for quantum processors based on various physical platforms, such as trapped ions, neutral atoms, protonic systems, superconducting circuits, and others.