Which gates are universal for quantum computation? Although it is well known that certain gates on two-level quantum systems (qubits), such as the controlled-not, are universal when assisted by arbitrary one-qubit gates, it has only recently become clear precisely what class of two-qubit gates is universal in this sense. We present an elementary proof that any entangling two-qubit gate is universal for quantum computation, when assisted by one-qubit gates. A proof of this result for systems of arbitrary finite dimension has been provided by Brylinski and Brylinski; however, their proof relies on a long argument using advanced mathematics. In contrast, our proof provides a simple constructive procedure which is close to optimal and experimentally practical.
I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii It is known that almost all 2-qubit gates are universal for quantum computing (Lloyd 1995; Deutsch, Barenco, Eckert 1995). However, an explicit characterization of non-universal 2-qubit gates is not known. We consider a closely related problem of characterizing the set of non-universal 2-qubit Hamiltonians. We call a 2-qubit Hamiltonian n-universal if, when applied on different pairs of qubits, it can be used to approximate any unitary operation on n qubits. It follows directly from the results of Lloyd and Deutsch, Barenco, Eckert, that almost any 2-qubit Hamiltonian is 2-universal. Our main result is a complete characterization of 2-non-universal 2-qubit Hamiltonians. There are three cases when a 2-qubit Hamiltonian H is not universal: (1) H shares an eigenvector with the gate that swaps two qubits; (2) H
Probabilistic quantum cloning and identifying machines can be constructed via unitary-reduction processes [Duan and Guo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 4999 (1998)]. Given the cloning (identifying) probabilities, we derive an explicit representation of the unitary evolution and corresponding Hamiltonian to realize probabilistic cloning (identification). The logic networks are obtained by decomposing the unitary representation into universal quantum logic operations. The robustness of the networks is also discussed. Our method is suitable for a k-partite system, such as quantum computer, and may be generalized to general state-dependent cloning and identification.
In this paper, we study the optimal simulation of three-qubit unitary by using two-qubit gates. First, we give a lower bound on the two-qubit gates cost of simulating a multi-qubit gate. Secondly, we completely characterize the two-qubit gate cost of simulating a three-qubit controlled controlled gate by generalizing our result on the cost of Toffoli gate. The function of controlled controlled gate is simply a three-qubit controlled unitary gate and can be intuitively explained as follows: the gate will output the states of the two control qubit directly, and apply the given one-qubit unitary
u on the target qubit only if both the states of the control are
∣1⟩. Previously, it is only known that five two-qubit gates is sufficient for implementing such a gate [Sleator and Weinfurter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 4087 (1995)]. Our result shows that if the determinant of
u is 1, four two-qubit gates is achievable optimal. Otherwise, five is optimal. Thirdly, we show that five two-qubit gates are necessary and sufficient for implementing the Fredkin gate(the controlled swap gate), which settles the open problem introduced in [Smolin and DiVincenzo, Phys. Rev. A, 53, 2855 (1996)]. The Fredkin gate is one of the most important quantum logic gates because it is universal alone for classical reversible computation, and thus with little help, universal for quantum computation. Before our work, a five two-qubit gates decomposition of the Fredkin gate was already known, and numerical evidence of showing five is optimal is found.