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arXiv:2602.19250

Eigenstate-assisted realization of general quantum controlled unitaries with a fixed cost

Carlos Navas-Merlo, Juan Carlos García-Escartín

quant-phSubmitted Feb 22, 2026• Announced Feb 24, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Controlled unitary gates are a basic element in many quantum algorithms. Converting a general unitary $U$ with a known decomposition into its controlled version, controlled-$U$, can introduce a large overhead in terms of the depth of the circuit. We present a general method to take any unitary $U$ into controlled-$U$ using a fixed circuit with 4 CNOT gates and 2 Toffoli gates per qubit. For $n$-qubit unitaries and one control qubit, we require $2n+1$ qubits and a circuit that can generate an eigenstate of $U$, for which there are many cost-effective known algorithms. The method also works for any black block implementation of $U$, achieving a constant-depth realization independent of its decomposition. We illustrate its use in the Hadamard test and discuss applications to variational and quantum machine-learning algorithms.

Comments
6 pages. 2 Figures. Comments welcome

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Controlled unitary gates are a basic element in many quantum algorithms. Converting a general unitary UUU with a known decomposition into its controlled version, controlled-UUU, can introduce a large overhead in terms of the depth of the circuit. We present a general method to take any unitary UUU into controlled-UUU using a fixed circuit with 4 CNOT gates and 2 Toffoli gates per qubit. For nnn-qubit unitaries and one control qubit, we require 2n+12n+12n+1 qubits and a circuit that can generate an eigenstate of UUU, for which there are many cost-effective known algorithms. The method also works for any black block implementation of UUU, achieving a constant-depth realization independent of its decomposition. We illustrate its use in the Hadamard test and discuss applications to variational and quantum machine-learning algorithms.
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Multicontrolled unitary gates have been a subject of interest in quantum computing since their conception and are widely used in quantum algorithms. The current state-of-the-art approach to implementingnnn-qubit multicontrolled gates with a single target without relying on auxiliary qubits or approximate results involves the use of a quadratic number of single-qubit and CNOT gates. However, linear solutions are possible for the case where the controlled gate is special unitary, SU(2). The decomposition of annnn-qubit multicontrolled SU(2) gate requires a circuit with a number of CNOT gates proportional to28n28n28n. In this work, we present a new decomposition ofnnn-qubit multicontrolled SU(2) gates that require a circuit with a number of CNOT gates proportional to20n20n20nand proportional to16n16n16nif the SU(2) gate has at least one real-valued diagonal. The proposed algorithms produce the most efficient known circuits and improve the existing algorithm by reducing the number of CNOT gates and the overall circuit depth. As an application, we show the use of this decomposition for sparse quantum state preparation. Our results are further validated by demonstrating a proof of principle on a quantum device accessed through quantum cloud services.
In this article we study n-qubit quantum gates which may be represented as direct sums of two-dimensional unitary operators. We call this class of gates uniformly controlled one-qubit gates. We present a quantum circuit which implements any gate of this type using 2^{n-1} - 1 controlled-NOT gates, 2^{n-1} one-qubit gates and a single n-qubit diagonal gate. The construction is based on a modified version of the so-called quantum multiplexor circuit. We illustrate the versatility of the uniformly controlled gates by applying them to the decomposition of a general n-qubit gate and an n-qubit state-preparation procedure. Moreover, we study the implementation of these circuits using only nearest-neighbor gates and give the worst-case one-qubit and CNOT gate counts for all of the aforementioned applications. In all four cases, the proposed method either improves or achieves the previously reported upper bounds for the gate counts.
We introduce a scheme for realizing arbitrary controlled-unitary operations in a two-qubit system. If the $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}2$ unitary matrix is special unitary (has unit determinant), the controlled-unitary gate operation can be realized in a single pulse operation. The pulse in our scheme will constitute varying one of the parameters of the system between an arbitrarily maximum and a ``calculated'' minimum value. This parameter will constitute the variable parameter of the system while the other parameters, which include the coupling between the two qubits, will be treated as fixed parameters. The values of the parameters are what we solve for using our approach in order to realize an arbitrary controlled-unitary operation. We further show that the computational complexity of the operation is no greater than that required for a controlled-NOT (CNOT) gate. Since conventional schemes realize a controlled-unitary operation by breaking it into a sequence of single-qubit and CNOT gate operations, our method is an improvement because we not only require less time duration, but also fewer control lines to implement the same operation. To demonstrate improvement over other schemes, we show, as examples, how two controlled-unitary operations, one being the controlled-Hadamard gate, can be realized in a single pulse operation using our scheme. Furthermore, our method can be applied to a wide range of coupling schemes and can be used to realize gate operations between two qubits coupled via Ising, Heisenberg, and anisotropic interactions.
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