Finite group extensions offer a natural language to quantum computing. In a nutshell, one roughly describes the action of a quantum computer as consisting of two finite groups of gates: error gates from the general Pauli group and stabilizing gates within an extension group . In this communication we explore the nice adequacy between group theoretical concepts such as commutators, normal subgroups, groups of automorphisms, short exact sequences, wreath products etc. and the coherent quantum computational primitives. The structure of the single-qubit and two-qubit Clifford groups is analyzed in detail. As a byproduct, we discover that M 20 , the smallest perfect group for which the commutator subgroup departs from the set of commutators, underlies quantum coherence of the two-qubit system. We recover similar results by looking at the automorphisms of a complete set of mutually unbiased bases.
Finite group extensions offer a natural language to quantum computing. In a nutshell, one roughly describes the action of a quantum computer as consisting of two finite groups of gates: error gates from the general Pauli group and stabilizing gates within an extension group . In this communication we explore the nice adequacy between group theoretical concepts such as commutators, normal subgroups, groups of automorphisms, short exact sequences, wreath products etc. and the coherent quantum computational primitives. The structure of the single-qubit and two-qubit Clifford groups is analyzed in detail. As a byproduct, we discover that M 20 , the smallest perfect group for which the commutator subgroup departs from the set of commutators, underlies quantum coherence of the two-qubit system. We recover similar results by looking at the automorphisms of a complete set of mutually unbiased bases.
One learned from Gottesman-Knill theorem that the Clifford model of quantum computing \cite{Clark07} may be generated from a few quantum gates, the Hadamard, Phase and Controlled-Z gates, and efficiently simulated on a classical computer. We employ the group theoretical package GAP\cite{GAP} for simulating the two qubit Clifford group C2. We already found that the symmetric group S(6), aka the automorphism group of the generalized quadrangle W(2), controls the geometry of the two-qubit Pauli graph \cite{Pauligraphs}. Now we find that the {\it inner} group Inn(C2)=C2/Center(C2) exactly contains two normal subgroups, one isomorphic to Z2×4 (of order 16), and the second isomorphic to the parent A′(6) (of order 5760) of the alternating group A(6). The group A′(6) stabilizes an {\it hexad} in the Steiner system S(3,6,22) attached to the Mathieu group M(22). Both groups A(6) and A′(6) have an {\it outer} automorphism group Z2×Z2, a feature we associate to two-qubit quantum entanglement.
(Abridged abstract.) In this thesis we introduce new models of quantum computation to study the emergence of quantum speed-up in quantum computer algorithms. Our first contribution is a formalism of restricted quantum operations, named normalizer circuit formalism, based on algebraic extensions of the qubit Clifford gates (CNOT, Hadamard and π/4-phase gates): a normalizer circuit consists of quantum Fourier transforms (QFTs), automorphism gates and quadratic phase gates associated to a set G, which is either an abelian group or abelian hypergroup. Though Clifford circuits are efficiently classically simulable, we show that normalizer circuit models encompass Shor's celebrated factoring algorithm and the quantum algorithms for abelian Hidden Subgroup Problems. We develop classical-simulation techniques to characterize under which scenarios normalizer circuits provide quantum speed-ups. Finally, we devise new quantum algorithms for finding hidden hyperstructures. The results offer new insights into the source of quantum speed-ups for several algebraic problems. Our second contribution is an algebraic (group- and hypergroup-theoretic) framework for describing quantum many-body states and classically simulating quantum circuits. Our framework extends Gottesman's Pauli Stabilizer Formalism (PSF), wherein quantum states are written as joint eigenspaces of stabilizer groups of commuting Pauli operators: while the PSF is valid for qubit/qudit systems, our formalism can be applied to discrete- and continuous-variable systems, hybrid settings, and anyonic systems. These results enlarge the known families of quantum processes that can be efficiently classically simulated. This thesis also establishes a precise connection between Shor's quantum algorithm and the stabilizer formalism, revealing a common mathematical structure in several quantum speed-ups and error-correcting codes.
Quantum computation is, at bottom, a branch of applied algebra and functional analysis: the state of a quantum register is a unit vector in a finite-dimensional complex Hilbert space, computation is the action of the unitary group on that space, and the structure of the most important quantum algorithms is dictated by the representation theory of finite and continuous groups. This paper develops the mathematical scaffolding of the field from first principles and uses it to explain why quantum computers can outperform classical ones. We review complex inner-product spaces, self-adjoint and unitary operators, the spectral theorem, and the tensor-product construction that gives rise to entanglement and the exponential dimension of the state space. We then describe the qubit and its geometry, the group-theoretic classification of quantum gates (the special unitary groups, the Pauli and Clifford groups, and their Lie-algebraic generators), and the universality results that justify finite gate sets together with the Solovay–Kitaev theorem. With this apparatus we analyse the quantum Fourier transform, phase estimation, and the hidden subgroup problem, showing how Shor’s factoring algorithm, Grover’s search, and the quantum linear-systems algorithm arise as instances of a small number of algebraic templates. Finally we treat the stabilizer formalism of quantum error correction—where finite abelian groups over GF(2) play the central role—and the variational, near-term (NISQ) algorithms that dominate current practice. Throughout, the emphasis is on the algebraic invariants that make quantum speed-ups possible.
The first theme of this book-quantum error correction-has now been pre sented. We carry on in this chapter with a discussion of fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC), which is our second theme. The discussion will take place in the context of quantum stabilizer codes and is based on Refs. [1-6]. See also Refs. [7,8]. Section 5.1 introduces the idea of fault-tolerance and makes ba sic definitions, while Section 5.2 presents a procedure for doing fault-tolerant quantum error correction. The theory of FTQC is then taken up in the fol lowing five sections. Section 5.3 examines the action of unitary operators on a quantum stabilizer code. It introduces two important groups: (i) the normalizer of the stabilizer S whose elements are encoded unitary operations; and (ii) the Clifford group which is generated by the Hadamard, phase, and CNOT gates. The discussion focuses on unitary operations that belong to the inter section of these two groups. By combining measurements on ancilla qubits (Section 5.4) with a four-qubit unitary operation introduced in Section 5.5, it will be possible to fault-tolerantly implement these gates on encoded data for stabilizer codes that encode a single qubit. Section 5.6 presents an extension of this approach that works for stabilizer codes encoding multiple qubits, and Section 5.7 completes the theoretical development by showing how a faulttolerant encoded Toffoli gate can be constructed for any quantum stabilizer code. By this point a theoretical framework is in place that can construct a set of fault-tolerant encoded quantum gates that is capable of universal quan tum computation using any quantum stabilizer code. The final two sections illustrate the theory by applying it to the [5,1,3] and [4,2,2] stabilizer codes. A brief summary of universal sets of quantum gates is given in Appendix C.
We present a complete classification of quantum stabilizer gates in terms of the functions they generate assuming the ability to swap qubits and use ancillary workspace. Because we view these stabilizer circuits as subroutines of some general quantum computation, we insist that any ancilla qubits used during the computation must not change in an input-dependent manner. This is the first attempt at a quantum extension of the classification of reversible classical gates introduced by Aaronson et al., another part of an ambitious program to classify all quantum gate sets.
The classification uses, at its center, a reinterpretation of the tableau representation of stabilizer gates to give circuit decompositions, from which elementary generators can easily be extracted. There are a total of 57 different stabilizer classes generated in this way, 30 of which arise from the single-qubit subgroups of the Clifford group. At a high level, the remaining classes are arranged according to the bases they preserve. For instance, the CNOT gate preserves the X and Z bases because it maps X-basis elements to X-basis elements and Z-basis elements to Z-basis elements. The remaining classes are characterized by more subtle tableau invariants; for instance, the T_4 and phase gate generate a proper subclass of Z-preserving gates.