Number-Theoretic Characterizations of Some Restricted Clifford+T Circuits

Kliuchnikov, Maslov, and Mosca proved in 2012 that a $2\times 2$ unitary matrix $V$ can be exactly represented by a single-qubit Clifford+$T$ circuit if and only if the entries of $V$ belong to the ring $\mathbb{Z}[1/\sqrt{2},i]$. Later that year, Giles and Selinger showed that the same restriction...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Matthew Amy, Andrew N. Glaudell, Neil J. Ross
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Verein zur Förderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften 2020-04-01
Series:Quantum
Online Access:https://quantum-journal.org/papers/q-2020-04-06-252/pdf/
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Summary:Kliuchnikov, Maslov, and Mosca proved in 2012 that a $2\times 2$ unitary matrix $V$ can be exactly represented by a single-qubit Clifford+$T$ circuit if and only if the entries of $V$ belong to the ring $\mathbb{Z}[1/\sqrt{2},i]$. Later that year, Giles and Selinger showed that the same restriction applies to matrices that can be exactly represented by a multi-qubit Clifford+$T$ circuit. These number-theoretic characterizations shed new light upon the structure of Clifford+$T$ circuits and led to remarkable developments in the field of quantum compiling. In the present paper, we provide number-theoretic characterizations for certain restricted Clifford+$T$ circuits by considering unitary matrices over subrings of $\mathbb{Z}[1/\sqrt{2},i]$. We focus on the subrings $\mathbb{Z}[1/2]$, $\mathbb{Z}[1/\sqrt{2}]$, $\mathbb{Z}[1/i\sqrt{2}]$, and $\mathbb{Z}[1/2,i]$, and we prove that unitary matrices with entries in these rings correspond to circuits over well-known universal gate sets. In each case, the desired gate set is obtained by extending the set of classical reversible gates $\{X, CX, CCX\}$ with an analogue of the Hadamard gate and an optional phase gate.
ISSN:2521-327X