Andrew Childs

Professor and Co-Director

3359 Atlantic Building

(301) 405-2329

Andrew Childs, co-director of QuICS, is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). He is also the director of the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation.

Childs's research interests are in the theory of quantum information processing, especially quantum algorithms. He has explored the computational power of quantum walk, providing an example of exponential speedup, demonstrating computational universality, and constructing algorithms for problems including search and formula evaluation. Childs has also developed fast quantum algorithms for simulating Hamiltonian dynamics. His other areas of interest include quantum query complexity and quantum algorithms for algebraic problems.

Before coming to UMD, Childs was a DuBridge Postdoctoral Scholar at Caltech from 2004-2007 and a faculty member in Combinatorics & Optimization and the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo from 2007-2014. Childs received his doctorate in physics from MIT in 2004.

Courses

Introduction to Quantum Information Processing (CMSC657, Fall 2023)

Introduction to Quantum Information Processing (CMSC657, Fall 2022)

Quantum algorithms (CMSC858Q, Spring 2021)

Introduction to quantum computing (CMSC457/PHYS457, Spring 2019)

Introduction to quantum information processing (CMSC858K, Fall 2017)

Publications

2021

A. M. Childs, Hung, S. - H., and Li, T., “Quantum Query Complexity with Matrix-Vector Products”, 48th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2021), 2021.

A. M. Childs, Su, Y., Tran, M. C., Wiebe, N., and Zhu, S., “Theory of Trotter Error with Commutator Scaling”, Phys. Rev. X, vol. 11, no. 1, p. 49, 2021.

A. M. Childs, Liu, J. - P., and Ostrander, A., “High-precision quantum algorithms for partial differential equations”, Quantum 5, 574, vol. 5, no. 574, 2021.

2020

A. Y. Guo, Tran, M. C., Childs, A. M., Gorshkov, A. V., and Gong, Z. - X., “Signaling and Scrambling with Strongly Long-Range Interactions”, Physical Review A, vol. 102, no. 010401(R), 2020.

M. C. Tran, Chu, S. - K., Su, Y., Childs, A. M., and Gorshkov, A. V., “Destructive Error Interference in Product-Formula Lattice Simulation”, Phys. Rev. Lett. , vol. 124, no. 220502, 2020.

S. Ben-David, Childs, A. M., Gilyen, A., Kretschmer, W., Podder, S., and Wang, D., “Symmetries, graph properties, and quantum speedups”, in Proceedings of the 61st IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2020), pp. 649–660 (2020), 2020.

D. W. Berry, Childs, A. M., Su, Y., Wang, X., and Wiebe, N., “Time-dependent Hamiltonian simulation with L1-norm scaling”, Quantum, vol. 4, no. 254, 2020.

G. Alagic, Childs, A. M., Grilo, A. B., and Hung, S. - H., “Non-interactive classical verification of quantum computation”, Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC), vol. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 12552, pp. 153-180, 2020.

A. Bapat, Schoute, E., Gorshkov, A. V., and Childs, A. M., “Nearly optimal time-independent reversal of a spin chain”, accepted for publication in Physical Review Research, 2020.

S. Arunachalam, Belovs, A., Childs, A. M., Kothari, R., Rosmanis, A., and de Wolf, R., “Quantum Coupon Collector”, Proceedings of the 15th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography (TQC 2020), Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, vol. 158, pp. 10:1-10:17, 2020.

A. M. Childs and Liu, J. - P., “Quantum spectral methods for differential equations”, Commun. Math. Phys. , vol. 375, pp. 1427-1457, 2020.

S. Chakrabarti, Childs, A. M., Li, T., and Wu, X., “Quantum algorithms and lower bounds for convex optimization”, Quantum, vol. 4, no. 221, 2020.

A. M. Childs and Wang, D., “Can graph properties have exponential quantum speedup?”, 2020.

2019

A. M. Childs and Su, Y., “Nearly optimal lattice simulation by product formulas”, Phys. Rev. Lett. , vol. 123, no. 050503, 2019.

A. M. Childs, Ostrander, A., and Su, Y., “Faster quantum simulation by randomization”, Quantum , vol. 3, no. 182, 2019.

M. C. Tran, Guo, A. Y., Su, Y., Garrison, J. R., Eldredge, Z., Foss-Feig, M., Childs, A. M., and Gorshkov, A. V., “Locality and digital quantum simulation of power-law interactions”, Phys. Rev. X 9, 031006, vol. 9, no. 031006, 2019.

A. M. Childs, Schoute, E., and Unsal, C. M., “Circuit Transformations for Quantum Architectures”, Proceedings of TQC 2019, LIPIcs, vol. 135 , no. 3, 2019.

2018

J. Chen, Childs, A. M., and Hung, S. - H., “Quantum algorithm for multivariate polynomial interpolation”, Proceedings of The Royal Society A, vol. 474, no. 2209, 2018.

Y. Nam, Ross, N. J., Su, Y., Childs, A. M., and Maslov, D., “Automated optimization of large quantum circuits with continuous parameters”, npj:Quantum Information, vol. 4, no. 23, 2018.

A. M. Childs, Maslov, D., Nam, Y., Ross, N. J., and Su, Y., “Toward the first quantum simulation with quantum speedup”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 115 , pp. 9456-9461, 2018.