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arXiv:1110.3127 · Physical Review A

Hamilton's turns as a visual tool kit for designing single-qubit unitary gates

B. Neethi Simon, C. M. Chandrashekar, Sudhavathani Simon

Published Feb 17, 2012• 28 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Unitary evolutions of a qubit are traditionally represented geometrically as rotations of the Bloch sphere, but the composition of such evolutions is handled algebraically through matrix multiplication [of SU(2) or SO(3) matrices]. Hamilton's construct, called turns, provides for handling the latter pictorially through the addition of directed great circle arcs on the unit sphere S${}^{2}\ensuremath{\subset}{\mathbb{R}}^{3}$, resulting in a non-Abelian version of the parallelogram law of vector addition of the Euclidean translation group. This construct is developed into a visual tool kit for handling the design of single-qubit unitary gates. As an application, it is shown, in the concrete case wherein the qubit is realized as polarization states of light, that all unitary gates can be realized conveniently through a universal gadget consisting of just two quarter-wave plates (QWP) and one half-wave plate (HWP). The analysis and results easily transcribe to other realizations of the qubit: The case of NMR is obtained by simply substituting $\ensuremath{\pi}/2$ and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulses respectively for QWPs and HWPs, the phases of the pulses playing the role of the orientation of fast axes of these plates.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.85.022323

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Unitary evolutions of a qubit are traditionally represented geometrically as rotations of the Bloch sphere, but the composition of such evolutions is handled algebraically through matrix multiplication [of SU(2) or SO(3) matrices]. Hamilton's construct, called turns, provides for handling the latter pictorially through the addition of directed great circle arcs on the unit sphere S2\ensuremath⊂R3{}^{2}\ensuremath{\subset}{\mathbb{R}}^{3}2\ensuremath⊂R3, resulting in a non-Abelian version of the parallelogram law of vector addition of the Euclidean translation group. This construct is developed into a visual tool kit for handling the design of single-qubit unitary gates. As an application, it is shown, in the concrete case wherein the qubit is realized as polarization states of light, that all unitary gates can be realized conveniently through a universal gadget consisting of just two quarter-wave plates (QWP) and one half-wave plate (HWP). The analysis and results easily transcribe to other realizations of the qubit: The case of NMR is obtained by simply substituting \ensuremathπ/2\ensuremath{\pi}/2\ensuremathπ/2 and \ensuremathπ\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremathπ pulses respectively for QWPs and HWPs, the phases of the pulses playing the role of the orientation of fast axes of these plates.
The Bloch sphere is a familiar and useful geometrical picture of the dynamics of a single spin or two-level system's quantum evolution. The analogous geometrical picture for three-level systems is presented, with several applications. The relevant SU(3) group and su(3) algebra are eight-dimensional objects and are realized in our picture as two four-dimensional manifolds describing the time evolution operator. The first, called the base manifold, is the counterpart of the S^2 Bloch sphere, whereas the second, called the fiber, generalizes the single U(1) phase of a single spin. Now four-dimensional, it breaks down further into smaller objects depending on alternative representations that we discuss. Geometrical phases are also developed and presented for specific applications. Arbitrary time-dependent couplings between three levels or between two spins (qubits) with SU(3) Hamiltonians can be conveniently handled through these geometrical objects.
A two-sphere (``Bloch'' or ``Poincare'') is familiar for describing the dynamics of a spin-1∕21∕21∕2 particle or light polarization. Analogous objects are derived for unitary groups larger than SU(2) through an iterative procedure that constructs evolution operators for higher-dimensional SU(N)\mathrm{SU}(N)SU(N) in terms of lower-dimensional ones. We focus, in particular, on the SU(4) of two qubits which describes all possible logic gates in quantum computation and entangled states in quantum-information sciences. For a general Hamiltonian of SU(4) with 15 parameters, and for Hamiltonians of its various subgroups so that fewer parameters suffice, we derive Bloch-like rotation of unit vectors analogous to the one familiar for a single spin in a magnetic field. The unitary evolution of a quantal spin pair is thereby expressed as rotations of real, many-dimensional vectors. Correspondingly, the manifolds involved are Bloch two-spheres along with higher dimensional manifolds such as a four-sphere for the SO(5) subgroup and an eight-dimensional Grassmannian manifold for the general SU(4). The latter may also be viewed as two, mutually orthogonal, real six-dimensional unit vectors moving on a five-sphere with an additional phase constraint. This geometrical picture for two spins provides the extension and generalization of the Bloch sphere that has proved invaluable for the understanding of the dynamics of a single spin.
Abstract The visualization of qubit states plays a fundamental role in understanding quantum information processing. This study explores the use of the Bloch sphere as a geometrical tool for representing and interpreting single-qubit and two-qubit states. Using the Qiskit framework, we simulate quantum circuits to demonstrate the action of quantum gates and the generation of entangled states, such as Bell states. The effects of various gate operations on qubit orientation are analyzed in the Bloch sphere representation. Furthermore, we examine the matrix formalism of quantum states and provide a statistical analysis of measurement outcomes. This work bridges the gap between theoretical quantum mechanics and experimental simulation, offering insights for both educational and research purposes in quantum computing.
In this paper, methods for performing the Hadamard transform are analyzed to organize quantuminspired computations. The Hadamard transform is illustrated on the Bloch sphere and on the unit circle, both as a direct transformation and as a result of successive rotations of a vector. In addition, the effect of the Hadamard gate on the smoothly changing state of the qubit was investigated and the corresponding graph is presented. The paper proposes a qubit model in the form of a modified unit circle, which combines operations only with real numbers in the standard unit circle and symmetry of the Bloch sphere. This makes it possible to abandon the analysis of the vector phase when analyzing the behavior of the qubit model, that is, to abandon the use of complex numbers (amplitudes) when simulating. The model is oriented towards implementation in FPGA.
The conventional design technique of any n-bit quantum gate is mainly achieved using unitary matrices multiplication, where n >= 2 and 1 <= m <= n-1 for m target qubits and n-m control qubits. These matrices represent quantum rotations by an n-bit quantum gate. For a quantum designer, such a conventional technique requires extensive computational time and effort, which may generate an n-bit quantum gate with a too high quantum cost. The Bloch sphere is only utilized as a visualization tool to verify the conventional design correctness for quantum rotations by a quantum gate. In contrast, this paper introduces a new concept of using the Bloch sphere as a "geometrical design tool" to build cost-effective n-bit quantum gates with lower quantum costs. This concept is termed the "Bloch sphere approach (BSA)". In BSA, a cost-effective n-bit quantum gate is built without using any unitary matrices multiplication. Instead, the quantum rotations for such a gate are visually selected using the geometrical planar intersections of the Bloch sphere. The BSA can efficiently map m targets among n-m controls for an n-bit quantum gate, to satisfy the limited layout connectivity for the physical neighboring qubits of a quantum computer. Experimentally, n-bit quantum gates built using the BSA always have lower quantum costs than those for such gates built using the conventional quantum design techniques.