DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Style
In this action unitalicized bold is used for claim language, while italicized bold is used for emphasis.
Information Disclosure Statement
All information disclosure statements are incompliance with the provisions of 37 C.F.R. § 1.97. Accordingly, they have been considered.
Applicant Reply
“The claims may be amended by canceling particular claims, by presenting new claims, or by rewriting particular claims as indicated in 37 CFR 1.121(c). The requirements of 37 CFR 1.111(b) must be complied with by pointing out the specific distinctions believed to render the claims patentable over the references in presenting arguments in support of new claims and amendments. . . . The prompt development of a clear issue requires that the replies of the applicant meet the objections to and rejections of the claims. Applicant should also specifically point out the support for any amendments made to the disclosure. See MPEP § 2163.06. . . . An amendment which does not comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.121(b), (c), (d), and (h) may be held not fully responsive. See MPEP § 714.” MPEP § 714.02. Generic statements or listing of numerous paragraphs do not “specifically point out the support for” claim amendments. “With respect to newly added or amended claims, applicant should show support in the original disclosure for the new or amended claims. See, e.g., Hyatt v. Dudas, 492 F.3d 1365, 1370, n.4, 83 USPQ2d 1373, 1376, n.4 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citing MPEP § 2163.04 which provides that a ‘simple statement such as ‘applicant has not pointed out where the new (or amended) claim is supported, nor does there appear to be a written description of the claim limitation ‘___’ in the application as filed’ may be sufficient where the claim is a new or amended claim, the support for the limitation is not apparent, and applicant has not pointed out where the limitation is supported.’)” MPEP § 2163(II)(A).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim 1, 3-7, 9-11, 13-16, 18-21, and 23-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hamamura (Efficient evaluation of quantum observables using entangled measurements; 2019) and Yirka (Qubit-efficient entanglement spectroscopy using qubit resets, Aug 2021)
1. A system, comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory that stores executable instructions that, when exexuted by the at least one processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising (Hamamura teaches “In this paper, we focus on variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), which is a quantum-classical hybrid algorithm proposed by Peruzzo et al.8 to compute eigenvalues and eigenvectors of matrices such as Hamiltonians. VQE has been applied in various fields such as quantum chemistry and is extensively being studied because NISQ computers can handle only short-depth circuits and it is necessary to combine them with classical computers.” Hamamura P. 1, Col. 1-2. “We ran MCQD on Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPU with a 1-hour time limit and were able to observe the maximum cliques for all Pauli graphs except NH3 Parity and Bravyi–Kitaev.” Hamamura P. 3-4. The person of ordinary skill in the art would understand the “classical computers” of Hamamura as referencing a standard computer including a processor to execute code stored in memory.) generating quantum circuits configured to perform entangled measurements corresponding to Pauli strings of a Hamiltonian within a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, (Hamamura teaches “A qubit Hamiltonian can be written as a linear combination of tensor products of Pauli operators including the identity operator; i.e., A =Pn i=1 aiPi, where the tensor product of Pauli operators Pi ∈ { σx, σy, σz, I }⊗N is referred to as Pauli string.” Hamamura p.1 col. 2. “The first phase is to choose entangled measurements (e.g., Bell measurements and omega measurements). We would present details of the Bell measurements in the Method section and present other two-qubit entangled measurements in Appendix B of the Supplementary Information. One constructs quantum circuits corresponding to the entangled measurements. This task can be done by using simultaneous diagonalization as a preprocessing technique. We can alternatively use other methods based on Clifford gates, which was proposed recently. Because quantum circuits can be generated in advance in this phase, therefore, the cost of circuit construction in the next phase can be reduced.” Hamamura P. 3 col. 1. Hamamura teaches: “In this paper, we show that entangled measurements enhance the efficiency of evaluation of observables, both theoretically and experimentally by taking into account the covariance effect, which may affect the quality of evaluation of observables.” Hamamura P. 1, Abstract. “We introduce a new grouping approach for Pauli strings that uses not only TPB but also entangled measurements such as Bell measurements to reduce the number of measurements. For instance, the expectation values of σxσx, σyσy, and σzσz cannot be obtained simultaneously from TPB measurements. It requires three types of measurements to compute the expectation values of σxσx, σyσy, and σzσz; however, these Pauli strings can be measured jointly using Bell measurement (see the Methods section for details). Simultaneous diagonalization provides a joint measurement using entangled observables.” Hamamura P. 3. While parallel measurements reads on measuring of more than one “entangled” states, note that Hamamura expressly teaches measuring Pauli strings jointly using bell measurements.) wherein the generating comprises configuring at least one quantum circuit to: execute a mid-circuit measurement operation that measures at least one qubit during execution of the at least one quantum circuit; execute a mid-circuit reset operation after the mid-circuit measurement operation that reinitializes the at least one qubit into a reinitialized qubit during the execution of the at least one quantum circuit; and perform at least one of the entangled measurements after the mid-circuit reset operation using the reinitialized qubit during the execution of the at least one quantum circuit. (As shown above, Hamamura teaches entangled measurements.
The previously cited art does not teach a mid-circuit operation.
Yirka teaches “Our second algorithm comes from the observation that in the 4k qe-HT, the third register stays idle after the first state preparation. So, instead of preparing two copies simultaneously, we modify the algorithm to prepare one copy, reset the qubits associated with sub system B, and reuse them to prepare successive copies. This saves k qubits.” Yirka P. 6 “Our first qubit-efficient variant is given in Fig. 6. The circuit width is 6k qubits, so we refer to this algorithm as the 6k qe-TCT. . . . To further reduce the number of qubits, we observe that it is unnecessary to simultaneously prepare both copies needed by the current one. For example, after preparing |v1> it is sufficient to first prepare |v’1>, interact the B subsystems of those copies, and then prepare |vn> and interact the A subsystems. The register containing the B subsystem of |v’1> can be measured, reset, and reused to prepare |vn>. In this way, four such registers is sufficient.” Yirka pp.6-7. (Note that some symbols in the document do not lend well to OCR. See original document for clarity.) As explained under Figure 4, “[a] break in a while followed by a new |0> indicates a reset.” Together with figures 6 and 7, the citation above teaches iterations of measurements and resets. While Hamamura teaches entangled measurements, note that the connections shown in Figures 6 and 7 using CNOT and Hadamard gates indicate several of the adjacent bits are entangled before measurement. Figure 6 and 7 are included below for clarity.
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It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to combine the teaching of Yirka because this is part of a technique for mitigating errors caused by noise on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. See Yirka Abstract.
3. The system of claim 1, the operations further comprising: executing a grouping algorithm to sort the Pauli strings into a plurality of groups and assigning the entangled measurements to the plurality of groups. (“If Pauli strings are commutative, it implies they are compatible; i.e., they are jointly measurable. McClean et al.25 suggested a grouping of jointly measurable Pauli strings by using sequential measurements and pointed out the covariance effect. Bravyi et al.26 introduced the notion of grouping based on a tensor product basis (TPB). . . . Incompatibility by TPB can be represented by a graph called Pauli graph. It has been known that the grouping of Pauli strings can be reduced to the coloring problem of the Pauli graph.” Hamamura P. 2, col. 1. “Measurements by TPB are separable measurements. We propose taking advantage of entangled measurements. We introduce a new grouping approach for Pauli strings that uses not only TPB but also entangled measurements such as Bell measurements to reduce the number of measurements.” Hamamura P. 3, col. 1. “It consists of two phases: choosing a set of entangled observables and grouping of Pauli strings with TPB and the set of entangled observables.” Hamamura P. 3 col. 1.)
4. The system of claim 3, wherein the entangled measurements comprise at least one member selected from the group consisting of a Bell basis entangled measurement and an omega basis entangled measurement. (“The first phase is to choose entangled measurements (e.g., Bell measurements and omega measurements).” Hamamura P. 3, col. 1.)
5. The system of claim 3, the operations further comprising: generating a quantum sub-circuit configured to perform one or more of the entangled measurements, wherein the generating the quantumsub-circuit is based on a measurement basis of a quantum computer applicable to execute the quantum circuits and a qubit connectivity graph that characterizes a qubit topology of the quantum computer. (As best understood, the claimed “qubit connectivity graph that characterizes a qubit topology of the quantum computer” refers to some portion of the representation of the quantum circuit. The Specification does not include any drawings of the claimed “qubit connectivity graph,” only shown the claim element as black box 306 of Figure 3. Further, the Specification explains the qubit connectivity graph consistent with the graphical representations of Figure 2. See Spec. ¶54 (“For instance, the one or more qubit connectivity graphs 306 can describe the physical qubits comprised within the one or more quantum computers 108 and/or the qubit connectivity employed by the one or more quantum computers 108. For instance, qubits of the one or more quantum computers 108 can be represented as nodes within the one or more qubit connectivity graphs 306, with lines between nodes representing qubit connections. In various embodiments, the one or more qubit connectivity graphs 306 can be entered into the system 100 via the one or more input devices 106 and/or the quantum computers 108.”) See also Spec. ¶56. See Hamamura Fig. 2 showing the CNOT and Hadamard gates on lines representing bits |00>. Figure 2 of Hamamura further shows measurements of the entangled states. The claimed “sub-circuit” reads on any sub-part of the graph in Figure 2 of Hamamura.)
6. The system of claim 5, the operations further comprising: generating the quantum circuits based on the plurality of groups, the measurement basis, (The Specification only describes “the measurement basis” as using two-bit measurements with entangled measurements. See Spec. ¶56. See also ¶¶57, 62 and 63 describing a “two qubit measurement basis.” Hamamura teaches “One constructs quantum circuits corresponding to the entangled measurements.” Hamamura P. 3, col. 1. “It consists of two phases: choosing a set of entangled observables and grouping of Pauli strings with TPB and the set of entangled observables.” Hamamura P. 3 col. 1. “TPB, TPB+BELL, TPB+2Q, and ALL denote the groupings using TPB, TPB and Bell measurements, TPB and all two-qubit entangled measurements, and all measurements, respectively.” Hamamura P. 4, col. 1. “We observed that the entangled measurements are effective in reducing the number of measurements of Pauli strings. However, there exist various errors in using NISQ computers, especially the two-qubit gate error that is generally much larger than a one-qubit error. In the next section, we discuss the effects of additional CNOT gates introduced in entangled measurements. . . . Effect of additional CNOT gates . . . Entangled measurements require additional two-qubit gates. We evaluate the effect of additional CNOT gates for a Bell measurement in one of the simplest models, two-qubit antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model[.]” Hamamura P. 4 col. 1-2. Note here that different gates are used for entangled measurements.) the qubit connectivity graph, (See Algorithm 1 of Hamamura.) and an injective map that characterizes a relationship between logical qubits of the quantum circuits and physical qubits of the quantum computer, (The claimed “injective map that characterizes a relationship between logical qubits and physical qubits” is not shown in the figures or described in the Specification. An “injective map,” refers to an image of what is commonly called a “one to one” relationship. In other words, this language refers to generating a quantum circuit based on a relationship between a single physical qubit and its corresponding logical representation. See Hamamura Fig. 2 showing a logical representation of a quantum circuit representing at least part of a generated physical circuit used in the experiments described in the paper.) wherein the quantum sub-circuit is included in at least one of the quantum circuits. (Absent some structural limitation on the claimed “sub-circuit” this term reads on any part of the quantum circuit of Hamamura Fig. 2.)
For rejections of claims 7, 11, 16, and 21, see rejection of claim 1. With respect to claims 11 and 16, note that Yirka teaches several iterations of measuring and resetting entangled bits as shown in the art cited in the rejection of claim 1.
For rejections of claims 9, 13, 18, and 23, see rejection of claim 3.
For rejections of claims 10 and 25, see the combination of rejections under claims 5 and 6.
For rejections of claim 14, 19, and 24, see rejection of claim 5.
For rejections of claims 15 and 20, see rejection of claim 6.
Claims 2, 8, 12, 17, and 22 are cancelled.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 08/20/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Rejections under §§ 112a and 112b; including rejections based on interpretation under § 112f
All rejections under these sections from the previous action are withdrawn in response to claim amendments.
Rejections under § 103:
The amended claims read on the teaching of art that is new to this action. See rejection above.
Conclusion
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PAUL M. KNIGHTExaminerArt Unit 2148
/PAUL M KNIGHT/Examiner, Art Unit 2148