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arXiv:2602.09873 · Leibniz international proceedings in informatics

A Complete Equational Presentation of Qudit Circuits via Polycontrolled PROPs

Colin Blake

quant-phcs.LOSubmitted Feb 10, 2026• Announced Feb 11, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Jun 25, 2026 (v3)

v1 · Feb 10, 2026 v2 · May 4, 2026 v3 · Jun 25, 2026

Abstract

High-dimensional quantum computation needs a native circuit-level equational theory for qudits. We give the first finite schematic equational theory that is sound and complete for exact unitary qudit circuits in every finite dimension at least two. Circuits are built from local gates, sequential and parallel composition, and value-controls; equality is derivable exactly when the standard unitary denotations agree. For each dimension, a finite list of local bounded-arity axiom schemata presents the theory, and the diagrammatic shapes do not depend on d. Primitive value-control makes control on a chosen basis value part of the language, so local rules generate the internal algebra of controlled operations within the circuit PROP. This gives a finite, dimension-uniform basis for exact equational reasoning about qudit circuits.

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2026.6

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High-dimensional quantum computation needs a native circuit-level equational theory for qudits. We give the first finite schematic equational theory that is sound and complete for exact unitary qudit circuits in every finite dimension at least two. Circuits are built from local gates, sequential and parallel composition, and value-controls; equality is derivable exactly when the standard unitary denotations agree. For each dimension, a finite list of local bounded-arity axiom schemata presents the theory, and the diagrammatic shapes do not depend on d. Primitive value-control makes control on a chosen basis value part of the language, so local rules generate the internal algebra of controlled operations within the circuit PROP. This gives a finite, dimension-uniform basis for exact equational reasoning about qudit circuits.

Control is a fundamental concept in quantum and reversible computational models. It enables the conditional application of a transformation to a system, depending on the state of another system. We introduce a general framework for diagrammatic reasoning featuring control as a constructor. To this end, we provide an elementary axiomatization of control functors, extending the standard formalism of PROPs to controlled PROPs. As an application, we show that controlled PROPs facilitate diagrammatic reasoning for quantum circuits. In particular, they admit a simple and complete axiomatization involving at most three qubits, whereas in the standard PROP setting, completeness necessarily requires axioms involving arbitrarily many qubits.

Quantum computing offers advantages over classical computation, yet the precise features that set the two apart remain unclear. In the standard quantum circuit model, adding a 1-qubit basis-changing gate—commonly chosen to be the Hadamard gate—to a universal set of classical reversible gates yields computationally universal quantum computation. However, the computational behaviours enabled by this addition are not fully characterised. We give such a characterisation by introducing a small quantum programming language extending the universal classical reversible programming language Π with a single primitive corresponding to the Hadamard gate. The language comes equipped with a sound and complete categorical semantics that is specified by a purely equational theory. Completeness is shown by means of a novel finite presentation, and a corresponding synthesis algorithm, for the groups of orthogonal matrices with entries in the ring z [ 1 2 ] .

Equational reasoning is central to quantum circuit optimisation and verification: one replaces subcircuits by provably equivalent ones using a fixed set of rewrite rules viewed as equations. A finite rule set is most informative when it separates the genuine algebra of a circuit fragment from the structural treatment of wires. This paper gives six near-Clifford fragments a common PROP treatment, where wire permutations are structural: qubit Clifford, real Clifford, Clifford+T (up to two qubits), Clifford+CS (up to three qubits), CNOT-dihedral, and qutrit Clifford. Starting from prior completeness theorems, we transfer completeness into this setting and remove redundant non-structural rules, then check minimality by separating interpretations tailored to individual axioms; the resulting presentations are minimal in all arities for qubit Clifford, real Clifford, and CNOT-dihedral, minimal in bounded ranges for the remaining fragments, and comparable by one transfer-and-separation pattern.