Investigation of quantum pigeonhole effect in IBM quantum computer

Abstract

Quantum pigeonhole principle states that if there are three pigeons and two boxes then there are instances where no two pigeons are in the same box which seems to defy classical pigeonhole counting principle. Here, we investigate the quantum pigeonhole effect on the ibmqx2 superconducting chip with five physical qubits. We also observe the same effect in a proposed non-local circuit which avoid any direct physical interactions between the qubits which may lead to some unknown local effects. We use the standard quantum gate operations and measurement to construct the required quantum circuits on IBM quantum experience platform. We perform the experiment and simulation which illustrates the fact that no two qubits (pigeons) are in the same quantum state (boxes). The experimental results obtained using IBM quantum computer are in good agreement with theoretical predictions.