We propose two Clifford+
T synthesis algorithms that are optimal with respect to
T-count. The first algorithm, called deterministic synthesis, approximates any single-qubit unitary by a single-qubit Clifford+
T circuit with the minimum
T-count. The second algorithm, called probabilistic synthesis, approximates any single-qubit unitary by a probabilistic mixture of single-qubit Clifford+
T circuits with the minimum
T-count. For most of single-qubit unitaries, the runtimes of deterministic synthesis and probabilistic synthesis are
ε−1/2−o(1) and
ε−1/4−o(1), respectively, for an approximation error
ε. Although this complexity is exponential in the input size, we demonstrate that our algorithms run in practical time at
ε≈10−15 and
ε≈10−22, respectively. Furthermore, we show that, for most single-qubit unitaries, the deterministic synthesis algorithm requires at most
3log2(1/ε)+o(log2(1/ε)) T-gates, and the probabilistic synthesis algorithm requires at most
1.5log2(1/ε)+o(log2(1/ε)) T-gates. Remarkably, complexity analyses in this work do not rely on any numerical or number-theoretic conjectures.
Resource-efficient and high-precision approximate synthesis of quantum circuits expressed in the Clifford+T gate set is vital for Fault-Tolerant quantum computing.Efficient optimal methods are known for single-qubit R Z unitaries, otherwise the problem is generally intractable.Search-based methods, like simulated annealing, empirically generate low resource cost approximate implementations of general multi-qubit unitaries so long as low precision (Hilbert-Schmidt distances of ε ≥ 10 -2 ) can be tolerated.These algorithms build up circuits that directly invert target unitaries.We instead leverage search-based methods to first approximately diagonalize a unitary, then perform the inversion analytically.This lets difficult continuous rotations be bypassed and handled in a postprocessing step.Our approach improves both the implementation precision and run time of synthesis algorithms by orders of magnitude when evaluated on unitaries from real quantum algorithms.On benchmarks previously synthesizable only with analytical techniques like the Quantum Shannon Decomposition, diagonalization uses an average of 95% fewer non-Clifford gates.
We show how to directly and efficiently approximate arbitrary one-qubit unitaries, bypassing the Euler decomposition and the magnitude approximation problem, at the cost of one ancillary qubit. Our technique also applies to approximating unitaries with multi-qubit gate sets such as Clifford and CS, or Clifford and CCZ, as well as to approximating orthogonal matrices using multi-qubit gate sets such as Real Clifford and CCZ. The key tools are repeat-until-success circuits, lattice-based exact synthesis algorithms, integer point enumeration in convex sets, and relative norm equations.
This paper focuses on exact synthesis of two-qubit unitaries using Clifford and
T gates. We propose an ancilla-free synthesis algorithm (i) which uses
T gates no more than ten times the minimum possible number of
T gates, also known as the
T count, and (ii) whose time complexity is linear with the
T count and thus instance optimal. Our synthesis algorithm relies on a characterization of the
T count of two-qubit unitaries based on Lie group homomorphism, which may be interest of its own. Precisely, we show that for any two-qubit unitary generated by Clifford and
T gates, its
T count is equivalent to the least denominator exponent of its SO(6) representation up to a factor of at most 10.
Optimal circuit synthesis is the problem of finding the shortest-depth circuit representation of a given functionality with respect to a pre-specified elementary gate set. This is a central problem in both quantum and classical hardware design. While the classical version is very well understood -- both in terms of heuristics and rigorous hardness assertions -- much less is known about optimal quantum circuit synthesis.
We focus on optimal Clifford circuit synthesis, for which various heuristics are known, e.g. via reduction to 3-SAT. Our main result supplies a matching hardness result: a variant of optimal Clifford synthesis is NP-hard. The proof proceeds in two parts: (i) reduce 3-edge colorability on 3-regular graphs to a circuit synthesis problem that only involves CZ gates, (ii) prove that the availability of additional elementary Clifford gates -- most notably: Hadamard, phase and CNOT -- cannot lead to further improvements of the optimal circuit depth. Our work sharpens the complexity-theoretic understanding of Clifford circuits: simulation and equivalence checking are in P, whereas deciding whether a Clifford unitary admits an implementation within a prescribed depth is NP-complete.
Abstract In quantum computing there are quite a few universal gate sets, each having their own characteristics. In this paper we study the Clifford+CS universal fault-tolerant gate set. The CS gate is used is many applications and this gate set is an important alternative to Clifford+T. We introduce a generating set in order to represent any unitary implementable by this gate set and with this we derive a bound on the CS-count of arbitrary multi-qubit unitaries. Analysing the channel representation of the generating set elements, we infer
JnCS⊂JnT J n CS ⊂ J n T , where
JnCS J n CS and
JnT J n T are the set of unitaries exactly implementable by the Clifford+CS and Clifford+T gate sets, respectively. We develop CS-count optimal synthesis algorithms for both approximately and exactly implementable multi-qubit unitaries. With the help of these we derive a CS-count-optimal circuit for Toffoli, implying
JnTof=JnCS J n Tof = J n CS , where
JnTof J n Tof is the set of unitaries exactly implementable by the Clifford+Toffoli gate set. Such conclusions can have an important impact on resource estimates of quantum algorithms.