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arXiv:1510.02769 · Quantum Information and Computation

The Clifford group forms a unitary 3-design

Zak Webb

Published Nov 1, 2016• 159 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Unitary k-designs are finite ensembles of unitary matrices that approximate the Haar distribution over unitary matrices. Several ensembles are known to be 2-designs, including the uniform distribution over the Clifford group, but no family of ensembles was previously known to form a 3-design. We prove that the Clifford group is a 3-design, showing that it is a better approximation to Haar-random unitaries than previously expected. Our proof strategy works for any distribution of unitaries satisfying a property we call Pauli 2-mixing and proceeds without the use of heavy mathematical machinery. We also show that the Clifford group does not form a 4-design, thus characterizing how well random Clifford elements approximate Haar-random unitaries. Additionally, we show that the generalized Clifford group for qudits is not a 3-design unless the dimension of the qudit is a power of 2.

DOI
10.26421/qic16.15-16-8

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Unitary k-designs are finite ensembles of unitary matrices that approximate the Haar distribution over unitary matrices. Several ensembles are known to be 2-designs, including the uniform distribution over the Clifford group, but no family of ensembles was previously known to form a 3-design. We prove that the Clifford group is a 3-design, showing that it is a better approximation to Haar-random unitaries than previously expected. Our proof strategy works for any distribution of unitaries satisfying a property we call Pauli 2-mixing and proceeds without the use of heavy mathematical machinery. We also show that the Clifford group does not form a 4-design, thus characterizing how well random Clifford elements approximate Haar-random unitaries. Additionally, we show that the generalized Clifford group for qudits is not a 3-design unless the dimension of the qudit is a power of 2.
Abstract Many quantum information protocols require the implementation of random unitaries. Because it takes exponential resources to produce Haar-random unitaries drawn from the full n -qubit group, one often resorts to t -designs. Unitary t -designs mimic the Haar-measure up to t -th moments. It is known that Clifford operations can implement at most 3-designs. In this work, we quantify the non-Clifford resources required to break this barrier. We find that it suffices to inject O(t4log⁡2(t)log⁡(1/ε))O(t^{4}\log ^{2}(t)\log (1/\varepsilon ))O(t4log2(t)log(1/ε)) O ( t 4 log 2 ( t ) log ( 1 / ε ) ) many non-Clifford gates into a polynomial-depth random Clifford circuit to obtain an ε\varepsilon ε ε -approximate t -design. Strikingly, the number of non-Clifford gates required is independent of the system size – asymptotically, the density of non-Clifford gates is allowed to tend to zero. We also derive novel bounds on the convergence time of random Clifford circuits to the t -th moment of the uniform distribution on the Clifford group. Our proofs exploit a recently developed variant of Schur-Weyl duality for the Clifford group, as well as bounds on restricted spectral gaps of averaging operators.
Unitary t-designs are some of the most versatile tools in quantum information theory. Their applications range from randomized benchmarking and shadow tomography, to more fundamental ones such as emulating quantum chaos and establishing exponential separations between classical and quantum query complexity. While unitary designs originating from a group structure, such as the Clifford group, have proven to be incredibly useful for qubit systems, unfortunately, this is no longer true for qudits. In fact, the classification of finite-group representations rules out the existence of unitary 2-designs for arbitrary qudit dimensions. This severely limits the applicability of standard quantum information primitives when it comes to qudit systems. We overcome these limitations with a three-fold contribution. First, we introduce a general technique to construct families of weighted state t-designs in arbitrary qudit dimensions. These weighted state-designs generalize classical shadow tomography protocol from qubits to qudits. Second, we introduce a Clifford character RB that allows us to benchmark the qudit Clifford group in any dimension, including non-prime-power dimensions. And third, we establish bounds on the quantum circuit complexity of generating approximate unitary-designs from native gates in existing quantum hardware such as high-spin and cavity-QED qudits. Our work further highlights the analogy between spin and optical coherent states by proving that spin-GKP codewords form a state 2-design while spin coherent states do not; in direct analogy with the optical case. This work is structured as a pedagogical and self-contained introduction to unitary designs and their applications to qudit systems.
We have generalized the well-known statement that the Clifford group is a unitary 3-design into symmetric cases by extending the notion of unitary design.Concretely, we have proven that a symmetric Clifford group is a symmetric unitary 3-design if and only if the symmetry constraint is described by some Pauli subgroup.We have also found a complete and unique construction method of symmetric Clifford groups with simple quantum gates for Pauli symmetries.For the overall understanding, we have also considered physically relevant U(1) and SU(2) symmetry constraints, which cannot be described by a Pauli subgroup, and have proven that the symmetric Clifford group is a symmetric unitary 1-design but not a 2-design under those symmetries.Our findings are numerically verified by computing the frame potentials, which measure the difference in randomness between the uniform ensemble on the symmetric group of interest and the symmetric unitary group.This work will open a new perspective into quantum information processing, such as randomized benchmarking, and give a deep understanding to many-body systems, such as monitored random circuits.
We define the unitary design strength of a finite unitary ensemble to be the maximal integer ttt for which its ttt-th statistical moment is identical to that of the unitary group. In the presence of physical symmetry, not all operators of an ensemble are symmetry-compatible. This motivates us to define the symmetric design strength of a finite unitary ensemble to be the maximal integer ttt for which the ttt-th moments of its symmetry-compatible sub-ensemble match those of the group of symmetry-compatible unitaries. We show that in sufficiently high dimension and for a broad family of symmetries, which includes the global on-site U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) and SU(d)\mathrm{SU}(d)SU(d) symmetries, there exist finite unitary ensembles of arbitrarily high design strength whose symmetric design strength is strictly higher. Ensembles with this property may be more versatile under symmetry constraints for protocols that rely on unitary randomization than they are without symmetry. Our results extend the previous work [Mitsuhashi and Yoshioka, PRX Quantum 4.4 (Nov. 2023)] showing that the symmetric design strength of the Clifford group is strictly upper bounded by its unitary design strength for symmetries that do not trivialize the symmetry-compatible unitaries. Due to the special significance of unitary designs with a group structure, we also derive a variety of bounds on the unitary and symmetric design strengths of finite unitary ensembles whose operators form a group. In particular, we provide a simple proof that an arbitrary ensemble of operators forming a finite group must have a symmetric design strength of at most two under the global on-site U(1)\mathrm{U}(1)U(1) and SU(d)\mathrm{SU}(d)SU(d) symmetries. Along the way, we show that there exist uniformly weighted groups of arbitrarily high symmetric design strength in arbitrary dimension and analyze their structure.
A unitary t-design is a set of unitaries that is "evenly distributed" in the sense that the average of any t-th order polynomial over the design equals the average over the entire unitary group. In various fields -- e.g. quantum information theory -- one frequently encounters constructions that rely on matrices drawn uniformly at random from the unitary group. Often, it suffices to sample these matrices from a unitary t-design, for sufficiently high t. This results in more explicit, derandomized constructions. The most prominent unitary t-design considered in quantum information is the multi-qubit Clifford group. It is known to be a unitary 3-design, but, unfortunately, not a 4-design. Here, we give a simple, explicit characterization of the way in which the Clifford group fails to constitute a 4-design. Our results show that for various applications in quantum information theory and in the theory of convex signal recovery, Clifford orbits perform almost as well as those of true 4-designs. Technically, it turns out that in a precise sense, the 4th tensor power of the Clifford group affords only one more invariant subspace than the 4th tensor power of the unitary group. That additional subspace is a stabilizer code -- a structure extensively studied in the field of quantum error correction codes. The action of the Clifford group on this stabilizer code can be decomposed explicitly into previously known irreps of the discrete symplectic group. We give various constructions of exact complex projective 4-designs or approximate 4-designs of arbitrarily high precision from Clifford orbits. Building on results from coding theory, we give strong evidence suggesting that these orbits actually constitute complex projective 5-designs.