Low-Depth Random Unitaries without Ancillae

Zhenyu Du, Siyuan Cheng, Xiongfeng Ma (Sep 09 2026).

Abstract: Random unitaries are fundamental to quantum information and many-body physics, with widespread applications ranging from quantum learning and metrology to device benchmarking. A central pursuit is to minimize the space and circuit depth required to generate them. However, existing methods for generating low-depth random unitaries rely heavily on an extensive number of ancillary qubits, imposing severe spatial overhead. In this work, we prove that random unitaries can be generated in optimal depth without ancillae. For multiplicative-error approximate $k$-designs on $n$ qubits, our circuits achieve a depth of $\widetilde{O} (k) (\log n)^{1/\delta}$ on $\delta$-dimensional architectures and $\widetilde{O}(k) \log \log n$ with all-to-all connectivity. Furthermore, by introducing a general exactification lemma, we lift our construction to optimal-depth exact $k$-designs, yielding an exponential resource reduction over state-of-the-art exact constructions. Our results minimize the space-time costs for a wide range of quantum protocols.

Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06528