Distribution of controlled unitary quantum gates towards factoring large numbers on today’s small-register devices

Factoring a 2048-bit number using Shor’s algorithm, when accounting for error correction, reportedly requires 400,000 qubits. However, it is well known that there is yet much time before we will have this many qubits in the same local system. This is why we propose a protocol for distributed quantum computation applicable to small register devices, specifically for the distribution of controlled unitary gates, the key element in the construction of every quantum computation algorithm. We leverage quantum sharing of partial results to obtain a parallel processing scheme, allowing for the first time the quantum distribution of very large gates with thousands of inputs using only small register devices with tens of qubits. In this way, we improve all previous controlled unitary gate distribution approaches, obtaining surprising results. The impact is quantified for recent milestone hardware realizations of quantum processors.