On the Computational Power of Quantum Circuits with Clifford and π/8 Gates

M. Gregorič, N. S. Mankoč Borštnik

Adam Bouland, Joseph F. Fitzsimons, Dax Enshan Koh

Clifford circuits - i.e. circuits composed of only CNOT, Hadamard, and pi/4 phase gates - play a central role in the study of quantum computation. However, their computational power is limited: a well-known result of Gottesman and Knill states that Clifford circuits are efficiently classically simulable. We show that in contrast, "conjugated Clifford circuits" (CCCs) - where one additionally conjugates every qubit by the same one-qubit gate U - can perform hard sampling tasks. In particular, we fully classify the computational power of CCCs by showing that essentially any non-Clifford conjugating unitary U can give rise to sampling tasks which cannot be efficiently classically simulated to constant multiplicative error, unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses. Furthermore, by standard techniques, this hardness result can be extended to allow for the more realistic model of constant additive error, under a plausible complexity-theoretic conjecture. This work can be seen as progress towards classifying the computational power of all restricted quantum gate sets.

Wuming Li

Shiyu Zhou, Zhi-Cheng Yang, Alioscia Hamma +1 more

Clifford circuits are insufficient for universal quantum computation or creating t t -designs with t\ge 4 t ≥ 4 . While the entanglement entropy is not a telltale of this insufficiency, the entanglement spectrum of a time evolved random product state is: the entanglement levels are Poisson-distributed for circuits restricted to the Clifford gate-set, while the levels follow Wigner-Dyson statistics when universal gates are used. In this paper we show, using finite-size scaling analysis of different measures of level spacing statistics, that in the thermodynamic limit, inserting a single T (\pi/8) ( π / 8 ) gate in the middle of a random Clifford circuit is sufficient to alter the entanglement spectrum from a Poisson to a Wigner-Dyson distribution.

Naga Dileep Varikuti, Soumik Bandyopadhyay, Philipp Hauke

Non-stabilizerness, alongside entanglement, is a crucial ingredient for fault-tolerant quantum computation and achieving a genuine quantum advantage. Despite recent progress, a complete understanding of the generation and thermalization of non-stabilizerness in circuits that mix Clifford and non-Clifford operations remains elusive. While Clifford operations do not generate non-stabilizerness, their interplay with non-Clifford gates can strongly impact the overall non-stabilizing dynamics of generic quantum circuits. In this work, we establish a direct relationship between the final non-stabilizing power and the individual powers of the non-Clifford gates, in circuits where these gates are interspersed with random Clifford operations. By leveraging this result, we unveil the thermalization of non-stabilizing power to its Haar-averaged value in generic circuits. As a precursor, we analyze two-qubit gates and illustrate this thermalization in analytically tractable systems. Extending this, we explore the operator-space non-stabilizing power and demonstrate its behavior in physical models. Finally, we examine the role of non-stabilizing power in the emergence of quantum chaos in brick-wall quantum circuits. Our work elucidates how non-stabilizing dynamics evolve and thermalize in quantum circuits and thus contributes to a better understanding of quantum computational resources and of their role in quantum chaos.

Yasuhiro Takahashi