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arXiv:2110.11923 · Academia quantum.

Climbing the diagonal Clifford hierarchy

Jingzhen Hu, Qingzhong Liang, Robert Calderbank

Published Oct 21, 2025• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Magic state distillation and the Shor factoring algorithm make essential use of logical diagonal gates. We introduce a method of synthesizing CSS codes that realize a target logical diagonal gate at some level l in the Clifford hierarchy. The method combines three basic operations: concatenation, removal of Z-stabilizers, and addition of X-stabilizers. It explicitly tracks the logical gate induced by a diagonal physical gate that preserves a CSS code. The first step is concatenation, where the input is a CSS code and a physical diagonal gate at level l inducing a logical diagonal gate at the same level. The output is a new code for which a physical diagonal gate at level l + 1 induces the original logical gate. The next step is judicious removal of Z-stabilizers to increase the level of the induced logical operator. We identify three ways of climbing the logical Clifford hierarchy from level l to level l + 1 , each built on a recursive relation on the Pauli coefficients of the induced logical operators. Removal of Z-stabilizers may reduce distance, and the purpose of the third basic operation, addition of X-stabilizers, is to compensate for such losses. The approach to logical gate synthesis taken in prior work focuses on the code states, resulting in sufficient conditions for a CSS code to be fixed by a transversal Z-rotation. In contrast, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions by analyzing the action of a transversal diagonal gate on the stabilizer group that determines the code. The power of our approach to logical gate synthesis is demonstrated by two proofs of concept: the [ [ 2 l + 1 − 2 , 2 , 2 ] ] triorthogonal code family and the [ [ 2 m , m r , 2 min { r , m − r } ] ] quantum Reed–Muller code family.

DOI
10.20935/acadquant7957

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Magic state distillation and the Shor factoring algorithm make essential use of logical diagonal gates. We introduce a method of synthesizing CSS codes that realize a target logical diagonal gate at some level l in the Clifford hierarchy. The method combines three basic operations: concatenation, removal of Z-stabilizers, and addition of X-stabilizers. It explicitly tracks the logical gate induced by a diagonal physical gate that preserves a CSS code. The first step is concatenation, where the input is a CSS code and a physical diagonal gate at level l inducing a logical diagonal gate at the same level. The output is a new code for which a physical diagonal gate at level l + 1 induces the original logical gate. The next step is judicious removal of Z-stabilizers to increase the level of the induced logical operator. We identify three ways of climbing the logical Clifford hierarchy from level l to level l + 1 , each built on a recursive relation on the Pauli coefficients of the induced logical operators. Removal of Z-stabilizers may reduce distance, and the purpose of the third basic operation, addition of X-stabilizers, is to compensate for such losses. The approach to logical gate synthesis taken in prior work focuses on the code states, resulting in sufficient conditions for a CSS code to be fixed by a transversal Z-rotation. In contrast, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions by analyzing the action of a transversal diagonal gate on the stabilizer group that determines the code. The power of our approach to logical gate synthesis is demonstrated by two proofs of concept: the [ [ 2 l + 1 − 2 , 2 , 2 ] ] triorthogonal code family and the [ [ 2 m , m r , 2 min { r , m − r } ] ] quantum Reed–Muller code family.
The challenge of quantum computing is to combine error resilience with universal computation. Diagonal gates such as the transversal T gate play an important role in implementing a universal set of quantum operations. This paper introduces a framework that describes the process of preparing a code state, applying a diagonal physical gate, measuring a code syndrome, and applying a Pauli correction that may depend on the measured syndrome (the average logical channel induced by an arbitrary diagonal gate). It focuses on CSS codes, and describes the interaction of code states and physical gates in terms of generator coefficients determined by the induced logical operator. The interaction of code states and diagonal gates depends very strongly on the signs of Z -stabilizers in the CSS code, and the proposed generator coefficient framework explicitly includes this degree of freedom. The paper derives necessary and sufficient conditions for an arbitrary diagonal gate to preserve the code space of a stabilizer code, and provides an explicit expression of the induced logical operator. When the diagonal gate is a quadratic form diagonal gate (introduced by Rengaswamy et al.), the conditions can be expressed in terms of divisibility of weights in the two classical codes that determine the CSS code. These codes find application in magic state distillation and elsewhere. When all the signs are positive, the paper characterizes all possible CSS codes, invariant under transversal Z -rotation through π/2l , that are constructed from classical Reed-Muller codes by deriving the necessary and sufficient constraints on l . The generator coefficient framework extends to arbitrary stabilizer codes but there is nothing to be gained by considering the more general class of non-degenerate stabilizer codes.
In order to perform universal fault-tolerant quantum computation, one needs to implement a logical non-Clifford gate. Consequently, it is important to understand codes that implement such gates transversally. In this paper, we adopt an algebraic approach to characterize all stabilizer codes for which transversal T and T†gates preserve the codespace. Our Heisenberg perspective reduces this question to a finite geometry problem that translates to the design of certain classical codes. We prove three corollaries of this result: (a) For any non-degenerate [n, k, d] stabilizer code supporting a physical transversal T (which might not be logical T), there exists an [n, k, d]] CSS code with the same property; (b) Triorthogonal codes form the most general family of CSS codes that realize logical transversal T via physical transversal T; (c) Triorthogonality is necessary for physical transversal T on a CSS code to realize the logical identity. The main tool we use is a recent characterization of a particular family of diagonal gates in the Clifford hierarchy that are efficiently described by symmetric matrices over rings of integers [N. Rengaswamy et al., Phys. Rev. A 100, 022304]. We refer to these operations as Quadratic Form Diagonal (QFD) gates. Our framework generalizes all existing stabilizer code constructions that realize logical gates via transversal T. We provide several examples of codes and briefly discuss connections to decreasing monomial codes, pin codes, generalized triorthogonality and quasitransversality. We partially extend these results towards characterizing all stabilizer codes that support transversal π/2ℓZ-rotations. In particular, using Ax's theorem on residue weights of polynomials, we provide an alternate characterization of logical gates induced by transversal π/2ℓZ-rotations on a family of quantum Reed-Muller codes. We also briefly discuss a general approach to analyze QFD gates that might lead to a characterization of all stabilizer codes that support any given physical transversal 1- or 2-local diagonal gate.
Storing quantum information in a quantum error correction code can protect it from errors, but the ability to transform the stored quantum information in a fault tolerant way is equally important. Logical Pauli group operators can be implemented on Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes, a commonly-studied category of codes, by applying a series of physical Pauli X and Z gates. Logical operators of this form are fault-tolerant because each qubit is acted upon by at most one gate, limiting the spread of errors, and are referred to as transversal logical operators. Identifying transversal logical operators outside the Pauli group is less well understood. Pauli operators are the first level of the Clifford hierarchy which is deeply connected to fault-tolerance and universality. In this work, we study transversal logical operators composed of single- and multi-qubit diagonal Clifford hierarchy gates. We demonstrate algorithms for identifying all transversal diagonal logical operators on a CSS code that are more general or have lower computational complexity than previous methods. We also show a method for constructing CSS codes that have a desired diagonal logical Clifford hierarchy operator implemented using single qubit phase gates. Our methods rely on representing operators composed of diagonal Clifford hierarchy gates as diagonal XP operators and this technique may have broader applications.
For each level of the Clifford hierarchy from the third level onward, we construct explicit asymptotically good binary CSS codes for which a strongly transversal diagonal rotation, followed by a correction from the preceding level, implements the corresponding logical rotation. We achieve this using algebraic geometry codes over binary extension fields and performing an alphabet reduction that translates orthogonality conditions over the extension field to binary overlap conditions. In particular, we obtain the first asymptotically good family of binary triorthogonal codes. We also give a stronger construction with worse parameters for which the strongly transversal physical rotation implements the desired logical rotation, with no subsequent correction. Finally, adapting an error-correction-based distillation protocol, our binary TTT-gate families yield direct constant-overhead TTT-state block distillation from noisy TTT-state inputs under sufficiently weak input noise and ideal stabilizer operations.
Finding efficient schemes for non-Clifford logic or magic state preparation is one of the central challenges on the way to fault-tolerant quantum computation. Many of the proposed schemes rely on diagonal non-Clifford logical gates acting on CSS codes in space or decorating CSS-type syndrome-extraction circuits in spacetime. Here we propose and implement efficient algorithms to find all (spacetime) logical gates of a given CSS code (circuit) composed from a prescribed set of ansatz gates. Depending on the choice of ansatz gates, this means finding transversal gates, more general locality-preserving logical circuits, folding gates, or similar. While we focus on qubit diagonal gates in the Clifford hierarchy, we also discuss the generalization to arbitrary diagonal non-hierarchy gates, certain non-diagonal gates, as well as prime and composite-dimensional qudits. Our method works by rephrasing code-space preserving gates as the kernel of the ``pullback'' of the XXX check matrix onto phase functions, which maps between finite abelian 2-groups. We implement a fast ``filtration'' method to find this kernel. The runtime for finding fault-tolerant logical gates in a qLDPC code with O(n)O(n)O(n) qubits or a circuit with O(n)O(n)O(n) gates in a naive dense implementation is O(n3)O(n^3)O(n3), with potential for improvement making use of sparsity.
In this paper, we focus on the problem of computing the set of diagonal transversal gates fixing a CSS code. We determine the logical actions of the gates as well as the groups of transversal gates that induce non-trivial logical gates and logical identities. We explicitly declare the set of equations defining the groups, a key advantage and differentiator of our approach. We compute the complete set of transversal stabilizers and transversal gates for any CSS code arising from monomial codes, a family that includes decreasing monomial codes and polar codes. As a consequence, we recover and extend some results in the literature on CSS-T codes, triorthogonal codes, and divisible codes.