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 .
Claims 1-21, as originally, filed, are currently pending and have been considered below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Under Step 1, claim 1 recites a machine (i.e., "a concrete thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices and combination of devices"), claim 11 recites a process (i.e., an act or step, or a series of acts or steps), claim 20 recites a manufacture ("an article that is given a new form, quality, property, or combination through man-made or artificial means.") Thus, each of the claims fall within one of the four statutory categories.
Under Step 2A - Prong 1: Identify Judicial Exception(s).
Independent claims 1, 12, 19 and 20 recites an abstract idea.
Claims 1 and 19 recite:
“computing…a classical shadow of the trial wavefunction using the data representing the results of the one or more measurements”
“performing…imaginary time propagation for a sequence of imaginary time steps…using a Hamiltonian”
“updating the wavefunction for the previous imaginary time step using the classical shadow of the trial wavefunction”.
These are fundamental mathematical concepts: 1) the imaginary time propagation algorithm is a mathematical procedure, 2) computing classical shadows, inner products, and wavefunction updates are mathematical calculations, and 3) describes mathematical relationships between wavefunctions, Hamiltonians, and measurement results
Thus, claim 1 recites judicial exceptions: primarily an abstract idea (mathematical algorithms: classical shadow computation, imaginary time propagation, wavefunction updating).
Claims 12 and 20 recite:
“performing…measurement operations on transformations of the multiple copies of the trial wavefunctions”
“transmitting…data representing results of the measurement operations, wherein the classical computer performs imaginary time propagation”
The claim as drafted under the broadest reasonable interpretation recite mathematical operations of: 1) Transforming trial wavefunctions (mathematical operation), 2) Performing measurements (quantum mechanical operation, but the results are abstract data), and 3) Imaginary time propagation (mathematical algorithm) which are mathematical concepts and algorithms.
Under Step 2A, Prong 2: Integration into a Practical Application.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because: Claims 1, 12, 19 and 20 recites routine quantum computing operations (preparing wavefunctions, performing measurements), generic “one or more computers”, and generic “one or more computer-readable media”. Thus, does not integrate into practical application; all of the independent claims recite generic hardware and generic computers and media performing abstract operations without specifying particular machines or configurations. Further, the independent claims involve only quantum state manipulation and data processing, no transformation of a physical article. The recited operations (state preparation, measurement, data transmission, classical computation) are routine quantum and classical computing operations.
Step 2B: The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The additional elements "storing a record "providing the records..." do not seem to impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea, do not add specific limitation other than what is well-understood, routine, conventional activities in the field when they are claimed in a merely generic manner. (See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II) (iv).
Dependent claims 2-11 further recite an abstract idea.
All of these claims depend from Claim 1 and add specific algorithmic details or parameters. While these claims add more specific algorithmic steps, they do not cure the fundamental § 101 deficiency. They recite:
Claim 2: Walker wavefunctions and weights (specific algorithm steps)
Claim 4: Projectors and expectation values (specific algorithm steps)
Claim 5: Stabilizer states (specific mathematical construct)
Claim 6: Computational basis states with Hamming weight (specific mathematical construct)
Claim 7: Unitary operators randomly sampled from tomographically complete ensemble (specific algorithm parameter)
Claim 8: Clifford circuits (specific mathematical construct)
Claim 9: Energy estimator (specific algorithm step)
Claim 10: Tensor product of Clifford gates (specific mathematical construct)
Claim 11: Quantum computer preparation and measurement (routine quantum computing operations)
All of these are well-known mathematical constructs or algorithms and routine applications of known techniques, specific instantiations of the abstract algorithm recited in Claim 1.
While claims 13-18, 21 add more specific algorithmic steps, they do not cure the fundamental § 101 deficiency. They recite:
Claim 13: Randomly sampling unitary operators, applying them to wavefunctions, measuring in computational basis (specific algorithm steps)
Claim 14: Clifford circuits, tensor products (specific mathematical constructs)
Claim 15: Projector QMC or Auxiliary-field QMC (specific algorithm variants)
Claims 16, 21: NISQ device (specific hardware type, but still generic)
Claim 17: Generalized valence bond perfect-pairing wavefunction ansatz (specific mathematical construct)
Claim 18: Density-density product terms and hopping terms (specific mathematical constructs)
All of these are well-known mathematical constructs or algorithms and routine applications of known techniques (See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II) (iv)).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-21 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this Office Action.
As per independent claims 12 and 20, the closest prior art US 20210011748 Lee et al. discloses a computer implemented method and system for performing a Quantum Monte Carlo simulation of a fermionic quantum system to compute a target wavefunction of the fermionic quantum system, the method comprising: preparing, by a quantum computer, multiple copies of a trial wavefunctions, wherein the trial wavefunction approximates the target wavefunction; performing, by the quantum computer, measurement operations on transformations of the multiple copies of the trial wavefunctions;
As per independent claims 1, 12, 19 and 20, the closest prior art US 20230020166 A1 Elfving et al. discloses a computer implemented method for performing a Quantum Monte Carlo simulation of a fermionic quantum system to compute a target wavefunction of the fermionic quantum system, [0011], [0012], [0053]-[0055] comprising: preparing, by a quantum computer, multiple copies of a trial wavefunction, wherein the trial wavefunction approximates the target wavefunction ([0012], [0054]-[0057], [0075]-[0077] prepare a trial wavefunction on a quantum computer as the starting point for simulation); performing, by the quantum computer, measurement operations on transformations of the multiple copies of the trial wavefunction [0064]-[0065], [0075]-[0077] performs measurements in three fixed basis groups (Z/ZZ, XX, YY); and transmitting, by the quantum computer and to a classical computer, data representing results of the measurement operations ([0054]-[0057], [0075]-[0077] via transmit quantum measurement results to a classical computer for further processing). However, the closest prior art fails to explicitly disclose, a classical shadow of the trial wavefunction using the data representing the results of the one or more measurements of the trial wavefunction; and
performing, by the classical computer, imaginary time propagation for a sequence of imaginary time steps of an initial wavefunction using a Hamiltonian that characterizes the fermionic quantum system, wherein: the imaginary time propagation is performed until predetermined convergence criteria are met; and performing each imaginary time step of the imaginary time propagation comprises updating the wavefunction for the previous imaginary time step using the classical shadow of the trial wavefunction to obtain a wavefunction for the current imaginary time step, as recited in the independent claims.
The other prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Zhang et al., A Constrained Path Monte Carlo Method for Fermion Ground States (1996) discloses a proposed quantum Monte Carlo algorithm to compute the ground-state properties of various systems of interacting fermions. Zhang et al. uses importance sampling and constraining based on overlap with a classical trial wavefunction, but not via shadow-based updates.
US 11,169,801 Cao discloses a hybrid quantum classical (HQC) computer, which includes both a classical computer component and a quantum computer component, solving linear systems.
US 20230368064 O’Brien et al. discloses a methods, systems, and apparatus for gradient-based quantum assisted Hamiltonian learning. It includes obtaining, by a classical processor, multiple experimental data points, wherein each experimental data point is generated according to a Hamiltonian comprising parameters with unknown values; learning, by the classical processor, values of the parameters, comprising iteratively adjusting, by the classical processor and until predetermined completion criteria are met, estimated values of the parameters to minimize a cost function, wherein the cost function is dependent on the multiple experimental data points and at each iteration derivatives of the cost function with respect to respective estimated values of the parameters for the previous iteration are computed using a quantum computer.
US 11,106,993 B1 Dallaire-Demers et al. A quantum computer or a hybrid quantum-classical (HQC) computer leverages the power of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) superconducting quantum processors at and/or beyond the supremacy regime to evaluate the ground state energy of an electronic structure Hamiltonian.
Conclusion
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/LYNDA JASMIN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3629
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