Measurement-based Quantum Computation as a Tangram Puzzle

Measurement-Based Quantum Computing (MBQC) achieves quantum computation by performing a series of adaptive single-qubit measurements on an entangled cluster state. Our project is aimed at introducing MBQC to a wide audience ranging from high school students to quantum computing researchers through a Tangram puzzle with a modified set of rules, played on an applet. The rules can be understood without any background in quantum computing. The player is provided a quantum circuit, shown using gates from a universal gate set, which the player must map correctly to a playing board using polyominos. Polyominos, or `puzzle blocks' are the building blocks of our game. They consist of square tiles joined edge-to-edge to form different colored shapes. Each tile represents a single-qubit measurement basis, differentiated by its color. Polyominos rest on a square-grid playing board, which signifies a cluster state. We show that mapping a quantum circuit to MBQC is equivalent to arranging a set of polyominos---each corresponding to a gate in the circuit—on the playing board---subject to certain rules, which involve rotating and deforming polyominos. The player has to place polyominos on the playing board conforming to the rules. Any correct solution creates a valid realization of the quantum circuit in MBQC. A higher-scoring correct solution fills up less space on the board, resulting in a lower-overhead embedding of the circuit in MBQC, an open and challenging research problem.