Graph states, and the entanglement they posses, are central to modern quantum computing and communications architectures. Local complementation – the graph operation that links all local-Clifford equivalent graph states – allows us to classify all stabiliser states by their entanglement. Here, we study the structure of the orbits generated by local complementation, mapping them up to 9 qubits and revealing a rich hidden structure. We provide programs to compute these orbits, along with our data for each of the 587 orbits up to 9 qubits and a means to visualise them. We find direct links between the connectivity of certain orbits with the entanglement properties of their component graph states. Furthermore, we observe the correlations between graph-theoretical orbit properties, such as diameter and colourability, with Schmidt measure and preparation complexity and suggest potential applications. It is well known that graph theory and quantum entanglement have strong interplay – our exploration deepens this relationship, providing new tools with which to probe the nature of entanglement.
Graph states, and the entanglement they posses, are central to modern quantum computing and communications architectures. Local complementation – the graph operation that links all local-Clifford equivalent graph states – allows us to classify all stabiliser states by their entanglement. Here, we study the structure of the orbits generated by local complementation, mapping them up to 9 qubits and revealing a rich hidden structure. We provide programs to compute these orbits, along with our data for each of the 587 orbits up to 9 qubits and a means to visualise them. We find direct links between the connectivity of certain orbits with the entanglement properties of their component graph states. Furthermore, we observe the correlations between graph-theoretical orbit properties, such as diameter and colourability, with Schmidt measure and preparation complexity and suggest potential applications. It is well known that graph theory and quantum entanglement have strong interplay – our exploration deepens this relationship, providing new tools with which to probe the nature of entanglement.
Graph states and their entanglement properties are pivotal for the development of quantum computing and technologies. For qubits, local complementation, a graphical rule that connects all the equivalent states under Local Clifford (LC) operations, was used for the complete characterization of all the LC equivalence classes up until 12 particles, assisting applications in quantum error correction and state preparation protocols optimization. This concept has been extended for qudits. In this work, we provide a complete characterization of the entanglement classes up until 7 qutrits, mapping each class into an orbit. The graph-theoretic properties of the orbits are studied, illuminating the rich structure they have. Clear connections between the connectivity of the orbits and the entanglement properties are observed. The correlations between the graph-theoretic properties and the Schmidt measure provide useful insights regarding qudit state preparation and fault-tolerance. This work is accompanied by a repository consisting of the code to extract the orbits and perform the presented statistical analysis. The strong interplay between quantum theory and graph theory is well-known and extensively studied for qubits. Our work provides practical tools and results to assist this endeavor for the qudit case.
Graph states form a large family of quantum states that are in one-to-one correspondence with mathematical graphs. Graph states are used in many applications, such as measurement-based quantum computation, as multipartite entangled resources. It is thus crucial to understand when two such states have the same entanglement, i.e. when they can be transformed into each other using only local operations. In this case, we say that the graph states are LU-equivalent (local unitary). If the local operations are restricted to the so-called Clifford group, we say that the graph states are LC-equivalent (local Clifford). Interestingly, a simple graph rule called local complementation fully captures LC-equivalence, in the sense that two graph states are LC-equivalent if and only if the underlying graphs are related by a sequence of local complementations. While it was once conjectured that two LU-equivalent graph states are always LC-equivalent, counterexamples do exist and local complementation fails to fully capture the entanglement of graph states. We introduce in this thesis a generalization of local complementation that does fully capture LU-equivalence. Using this characterization, we prove the existence of an infinite strict hierarchy of local equivalences between LC- and LU-equivalence. This also leads to the design of a quasi-polynomial algorithm for deciding whether two graph states are LU-equivalent, and to a proof that two LU-equivalent graph states are LC-equivalent if they are defined on at most 19 qubits. Furthermore, we study graph states that are universal in the sense that any smaller graph state, defined on any small enough set of qubits, can be induced using only local operations. We provide bounds and an optimal, probabilistic construction.
Graph states form a large family of quantum states that are in one-to-one correspondence with mathematical graphs. Graph states are used in many applications, such as measurement-based quantum computation, as multipartite entangled resources. It is thus crucial to understand when two such states have the same entanglement, i.e. when they can be transformed into each other using only local operations. In this case, we say that the graph states are LU-equivalent (local unitary). If the local operations are restricted to the so-called Clifford group, we say that the graph states are LC-equivalent (local Clifford). Interestingly, a simple graph rule called local complementation fully captures LC-equivalence, in the sense that two graph states are LC-equivalent if and only if the underlying graphs are related by a sequence of local complementations. While it was once conjectured that two LU-equivalent graph states are always LC-equivalent, counterexamples do exist and local complementation fails to fully capture the entanglement of graph states. We introduce in this manuscript a generalization of local complementation that does fully capture LU-equivalence. Using this characterization, we prove the existence of an infinite strict hierarchy of local equivalences between LC- and LU-equivalence. This also leads to the design of a quasi-polynomial algorithm for deciding whether two graph states are LU-equivalent, and to a proof that two LU-equivalent graph states are LC-equivalent if they are defined on at most 19 qubits. Furthermore, we study graph states that are universal in the sense that any smaller graph state, defined on any small enough set of qubits, can be induced using only local operations. We provide bounds and an optimal, probabilistic construction.
Graph states form a broad class of multipartite entangled states underlying measurement-based quantum computation, quantum networks, and stabilizer codes. However, systematic entanglement distillation for arbitrary graph states remains challenging because the circuit design space grows rapidly with the number of parties. We introduce a group of Clifford operations that we call "factorized graph-preserving". It enables us to efficiently enumerate and optimize graph-state purification circuits at finite size for realistic noisy hardware. These operations map products of graph-basis states to products of graph-basis states, so their action can be represented as permutations of graph-basis labels. Moreover, this useful gate set admits a compact factorized description determined by simple graph-theoretic features. This structure also allows, after some initial cached precomputation, drastically lower computational complexity for simulating a gate. We further organize these operations over local-complementation (LC) orbits using minimum-edge representatives (MERs), which let us design purification circuits that apply to all locally equivalent graph states (up to a basis change). Using this framework, we optimize noisy finite-size multipartite distillation circuits for several graph-state families. Numerical results show that the resulting graph-preserving circuits can outperform standard recurrence-based purification protocols under realistic gate and measurement noise. Our results establish LC-orbit structure and factorized graph-preserving operations as practical tools for scalable, topology-aware and hardware-constrained graph-state distillation protocol design. Our work can also be interpreted as a graph-based heuristic for finding transversal gates.
Stabilizer states form a ubiquitous family of quantum states that can be graphically represented through the graph state formalism. A fundamental property of graph states is that applying a local complementation - a well-known and extensively studied graph transformation - results in a graph that represents the same entanglement as the original. In other words, the corresponding graph states are LU-equivalent. This property served as the cornerstone for capturing non-trivial quantum properties in a simple graphical manner, in the study of quantum entanglement but also for developing protocols and models based on graph states and stabilizer states, such as measurement-based quantum computing, secret sharing, error correction, entanglement distribution... However, local complementation fails short to fully characterise entanglement: there exist pairs of graph states that are LU-equivalent but cannot be transformed one into the other using local complementations. Only few is known about the equivalence of graph states beyond local complementation. We introduce a generalisation of local complementation which graphically characterises the LU-equivalence of graph states. We use this characterisation to show the existence of a strict infinite hierarchy of equivalences of graph states. Our approach is based on minimal local sets, which are subsets of vertices that are known to cover any graph, and to be invariant under local complementation and even LU-equivalence. We use these structures to provide a type to each vertex of a graph, leading to a natural standard form in which the LU-equivalence can be exhibited and captured by means of generalised local complementation.
Circle graph states are a structurally important family of graph states. The family's entanglement is a priori high enough to allow for universal measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC); however, MBQC on circle graph states is actually efficiently classically simulable. In this work, we paint a detailed picture of the local equivalence of circle graph states. First, we consider the class of all graph states that are local unitary (LU)-equivalent to circle graph states. In graph-theoretical terms, this LU-equivalence class is the set of all graphs reachable from the family of circle graphs by applying r-local complementations. We prove that the only graph states that are LU-equivalent to circle graph states are circle graph states themselves: circle graphs are closed under r-local complementation. Second, we show that bipartite circle graph states, i.e., 2-colorable circle graph states, are in one-to-one correspondence with planar code states, on which MBQC is known to be efficiently classically simulable. Leveraging this correspondence, we present alternative, simple proofs that (1) if a planar code state is LU-equivalent to a stabilizer state, they are in fact local Clifford (LC)-equivalent to it and that (2) MBQC on all circle graph states is efficiently classically simulable. Third and finally, we demonstrate that the problem of counting the number of graph states LU-equivalent to a given graph state is #P-hard.