The representation theory of the Clifford group is playing an increasingly prominent role in quantum information theory, including in such diverse use cases as the construction of protocols for quantum system certification, quantum simulation, and quantum cryptography. In these applications, the tensor powers of the defining representation seem particularly important. The representation theory of these tensor powers is understood in two regimes. 1. For odd qudits in the case where the power t is not larger than the number of systems n: Here, a duality theory between the Clifford group and certain discrete orthogonal groups can be used to make fairly explicit statements about the occurring irreps (this theory is related to Howe duality and the η-correspondence). 2. For qubits: Tensor powers up to t = 4 have been analyzed on a case-by-case basis. In this paper, we provide a unified framework for the duality approach that also covers qubit systems. To this end, we translate the notion of rank of symplectic representations to representations of the qubit Clifford group, and generalize the η correspondence between symplectic and orthogonal groups to a correspondence between the Clifford and certain orthogonal-stochastic groups. As a sample application, we provide a protocol to efficiently implement the complex conjugate of a black-box Clifford unitary evolution.
Abstract Schur–Weyl duality is a ubiquitous tool in quantum information. At its heart is the statement that the space of operators that commute with the t -fold tensor powers
U⊗t U ⊗ t of all unitaries
U∈U(d) U ∈ U ( d ) is spanned by the permutations of the t tensor factors. In this work, we describe a similar duality theory for tensor powers of Clifford unitaries . The Clifford group is a central object in many subfields of quantum information, most prominently in the theory of fault-tolerance. The duality theory has a simple and clean description in terms of finite geometries. We demonstrate its effectiveness in several applications: We resolve an open problem in quantum property testing by showing that “stabilizerness” is efficiently testable: There is a protocol that, given access to six copies of an unknown state, can determine whether it is a stabilizer state, or whether it is far away from the set of stabilizer states. We give a related membership test for the Clifford group. We find that tensor powers of stabilizer states have an increased symmetry group. Conversely, we provide corresponding de Finetti theorems , showing that the reductions of arbitrary states with this symmetry are well-approximated by mixtures of stabilizer tensor powers (in some cases, exponentially well). We show that the distance of a pure state to the set of stabilizers can be lower-bounded in terms of the sum-negativity of its Wigner function. This gives a new quantitative meaning to the sum-negativity (and the related mana ) – a measure relevant to fault-tolerant quantum computation. The result constitutes a robust generalization of the discrete Hudson theorem . We show that complex projective designs of arbitrary order can be obtained from a finite number (independent of the number of qudits) of Clifford orbits. To prove this result, we give explicit formulas for arbitrary moments of random stabilizer states.
The Clifford group plays a central role in quantum information science. It is the building block for many error-correcting schemes and matches the first three moments of the Haar measure over the unitary group-a property that is essential for a broad range of quantum algorithms, with applications in pseudorandomness, learning theory, benchmarking, and entanglement distillation. At the heart of understanding many properties of the Clifford group lies the Clifford commutant: the set of operators that commute with k -fold tensor powers of Clifford unitaries. Previous understanding of this commutant has been limited to relatively small values of k , constrained by the number of qubits n . In this work, we develop a complete theory of the Clifford commutant. Our first result provides an explicit orthogonal basis for the commutant and computes its dimension for arbitrary n and k . We also introduce an alternative and easy-to-manipulate basis formed by isotropic sums of Pauli operators. We show that this basis is generated by products of permutations, which generate the unitary group commutant, and at most three other operators. Additionally, we develop a graphical calculus allowing a diagrammatic manipulation of elements of this basis. These results enable a wealth of applications: among others, we characterize all measurable magic measures and identify optimal strategies for stabilizer property testing, whose success probability also offers an operational interpretation to stabilizer entropies. Finally, we show that these results also generalize to multi-qudit systems with prime local dimension.
The Clifford hierarchy of unitary operators is a foundational concept for universal quantum computation. It was introduced to show that universal quantum computation can be realized via quantum teleportation, given access to certain standard resources. While the full structure of the hierarchy is still not understood, Cui et al. [S. X. Cui et al., Phys. Rev. A 95, 012329 (2017)] recently described the structure of diagonal unitaries in the hierarchy. They considered diagonal unitaries whose action on a computational basis qudit state is described by a
2kth root of unity raised to some polynomial function of the state, and they established the level of such unitaries in the hierarchy as a function of
k and the degree of the polynomial. For qubit systems, we consider
kth-level diagonal unitaries that can be described just by quadratic forms of the state over the ring
Z2k of integers modulo
2k. The quadratic forms involve symmetric matrices over
Z2k that can be used to efficiently describe all two-local and certain higher locality diagonal gates in the hierarchy. We also provide explicit algebraic descriptions of their action on Pauli matrices, which establishes a natural recursion to diagonal unitaries from lower levels. The result involves symplectic matrices over
Z2k and hence our perspective unifies a subgroup of diagonal gates in the Clifford hierarchy with the binary symplectic framework for gates in the Clifford group. We augment our description with simple examples for certain standard gates. In addition to demonstrating structure, these formulas might prove useful in applications such as (i) classical simulation of quantum circuits, especially via the stabilizer rank approach, (ii) synthesis of logical non-Clifford unitaries, specifically alternatives to expensive magic state distillation, and (iii) decomposition of arbitrary unitaries beyond the
Clifford+T set of gates, perhaps leading to shorter depth circuits. Our results suggest that some nondiagonal gates in the hierarchy might also be understood by generalizing other binary symplectic matrices to integer rings.
Based on a presentation of Cn and the help of [The GAP Group 2022, https://www.gap-system.org] we construct the character table of the Clifford group Cn for n = 1, 2, 3. As an application, we can efficiently decompose the (higher power of) tensor product of the matrix representation in those cases. Our results recover some known results in Helsen et al. [J. Math. Phys. 59, 072201 (2018)] and Wallman and Flammia [New J. Phys. 16(10), 103032 (2014)] and reveal some new phenomena. We prove that when n ≥ 3, (1) the trivial character is the only linear character for Cn and hence Cn equals to its commutator subgroup, (2) the n-qubit Pauli group Pn is the only proper non-trivial normal subgroup of Cn, (3) the matrix representation M2n is a faithful representation for Cn. As a byproduct, we give a presentation of the finite symplectic group Sp(2n, 2) in terms of generators and relations.
The n-qubit Pauli group and its normalizer, the n-qubit Clifford group, have applications in quantum error correction and device characterization. Recent applications have used the representation theory of the Clifford group. We apply the tools of (the coincidentally named) Clifford theory to examine the representation theory of the Clifford group using the much simpler representation theory of the Pauli group. We find an unexpected correspondence between irreducible characters of the n-qubit Clifford group and those of the (n+1)-qubit Clifford group.
Understanding the dynamical properties of quantum systems is an essential task in quantum computing, quantum control, and many-body physics. Tools such as representation theory and Lie theory provide crucial information on reachability and computational power. However, this information can be difficult to access exactly or compute efficiently for arbitrary generating sets. Here we focus on the setting of Pauli strings, which satisfy numerous exceptional properties that simplify the problem. We find deep connections between Pauli Lie algebras and certain subgroups of the Clifford group generated by transvections, through the symplectic properties of the Pauli strings. This allows us to give an invariant-based perspective on these objects and their reachability, in the language of Pauli orbits, symmetries, and invariant subspaces. The invariant-based approach provides efficient algorithms for identifying Lie algebras and orbits, as well as a simple framework for analyzing structured Pauli generating sets. We also show in an elementary way that Clifford subgroups generated by transvections provide 3-designs for the corresponding Pauli Lie groups. We illustrate the framework through structured examples from variational quantum algorithms, restricted quantum computation, many-body systems, and random circuits.