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arXiv:1706.09877

A universal completion of the ZX-calculus

Kang Feng Ng, Quanlong Wang

Published Jun 29, 2017• 46 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this paper, we give a universal completion of the ZX-calculus for the whole of pure qubit quantum mechanics. This proof is based on the completeness of another graphical language: the ZW-calculus, with direct translations between these two graphical systems.
DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1706.09877

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The ZX-calculus is a graphical calculus for reasoning about quantum systems and processes. It is known to be universal for pure state qubit quantum mechanics (QM), meaning any pure state, unitary operation and post-selected pure projective measurement can be expressed in the ZX-calculus. The calculus is also sound , i.e. any equality that can be derived graphically can also be derived using matrix mechanics. Here, we show that the ZX-calculus is complete for pure qubit stabilizer QM, meaning any equality that can be derived using matrices can also be derived pictorially. The proof relies on bringing diagrams into a normal form based on graph states and local Clifford operations.
Recent developments in the ZX-Calculus have resulted in complete axiomatisations first for an approximately universal restriction of the language, and then for the whole language. The main drawbacks were that the axioms that were added to achieve completeness were numerous, tedious to manipulate and lacked a physical interpretation. We present in this paper two complete axiomatisations for the general ZX-Calculus, that we believe are optimal, in that all their equations are necessary and moreover have a nice physical interpretation.
The ZX-calculus is a universal graphical language for qubit quantum computation, meaning that every linear map between qubits can be expressed in the ZX-calculus. Furthermore, it is a complete graphical rewrite system: any equation involving linear maps that is derivable in the Hilbert space formalism for quantum theory can also be derived in the calculus by rewriting. It has widespread usage within quantum industry and academia for a variety of tasks such as quantum circuit optimisation, error-correction, and education.The ZW-calculus is an alternative universal graphical language that is also complete for qubit quantum computing. In fact, its completeness was used to prove that the ZX-calculus is universally complete. This calculus has advanced how quantum circuits are compiled into photonic hardware architectures in the industry.Recently, by combining these two calculi, a new calculus has emerged for qubit quantum computation, the ZXW-calculus. Using this calculus, graphical-differentiation, -integration, and -exponentiation were made possible, thus enabling the development of novel techniques in the domains of quantum machine learning and quantum chemistry.Here, we generalise the ZXW-calculus to arbitrary finite dimensions, that is, to qudits. Moreover, we prove that this graphical rewrite system is complete for any finite dimension. This is the first completeness result for any universal graphical language beyond qubits.
ZW-calculus is a useful graphical language for pure qubit quantum computing. It is via the translation of the completeness of ZW-calculus that the first proof of completeness of ZX-calculus was obtained. A d-level generalisation of qubit ZW-calculus (anyonic qudit ZW-calculus) has been given in [Hadzihasanovic 2017] which is universal for pure qudit quantum computing. However, the interpretation of the W spider in this type of ZW-calculus has so-called q-binomial coefficients involved, thus makes computation quite complicated. In this paper, we give a new type of qudit ZW-calculus which has generators and rewriting rules similar to that of the qubit ZW-calculus. Especially, the Z spider is exactly the same as that of the qudit ZX-calculus as given in [Wang 2021], and the new W spider has much simpler interpretation as a linear map. Furthermore, we establish a translation between this qudit ZW-calculus and the qudit ZX-calculus which is universal as shown in [Wang 2021], therefore this qudit ZW-calculus is also universal for pure qudit quantum computing.
The ZX calculus is a graphical language for reasoning about quantum processes. In this paper, we develop a minimal pure-qubit ZX calculus based on the work of Vilmart [arXiv:1812.09114], Backens, Perdrix, and Wang [arXiv:1709.08903], and Stoltz [arXiv:2606.12383]. This resolves a problem that has remained open for nearly a decade, since completeness was first proved. Specifically, we show that (Ir)(I_r)(Ir​) is derivable and establish the necessity of (B)(B)(B) and (Ig)(I_g)(Ig​), yielding two complete and minimal rulesets.
Recent developments in the ZX-Calculus have resulted in complete axiomatisations first for an approximately universal restriction of the language, and then for the whole language. The main drawbacks were that the axioms that were added to achieve completeness were numerous, tedious to manipulate and lacking a physical interpretation. We present in this paper two complete axiomatisations for the general ZX-Calculus, that we believe are optimal, in that all their equations are necessary and moreover have a nice physical interpretation. To do so, we introduce the singular-value decomposition of a ZX-diagram, and use it to show that all the rules of the former axiomatisation are provable with the new one.