Success-or-Draw: A Strategy Allowing Repeat-Until-Success in Quantum Computation

Abstract

The repeat-until-success strategy is a standard method to obtain success with a probability that grows exponentially with the number of iterations. However, since quantum systems are disturbed after a quantum measurement, how to perform repeat-until-success strategies in certain quantum algorithms is not straightforward. In this Letter, we propose a new structure for probabilistic higher-order transformation named success-or-draw, which allows a repeat-until-success implementation. For that we provide a universal construction of success-or-draw structure that works for any probabilistic higher-order transformation on unitary operations. We then present a semidefinite programming approach to obtain optimal success-or-draw protocols and analyze in detail the problem of inverting a general unitary operation.