We study the classical simulatability of constant-depth polynomial-size quantum circuits followed by only one single-qubit measurement, where the circuits consist of universal gates on at most two qubits and additional gates on an unbounded number of qubits. First, we consider unbounded Toffoli gates as additional gates and deal with the weak simulation, i.e., sampling the output probability distribution. We show that there exists a constant-depth quantum circuit with only one unbounded Toffoli gate that is not weakly simulatable, unless $\bqp \subseteq \postbpp \cap \am$. Then, we consider unbounded fan-out gates as additional gates and deal with the strong simulation, i.e., computing the output probability. We show that there exists a constant-depth quantum circuit with only two unbounded fan-out gates that is not strongly simulatable, unless $\p = \pp$. These results are in contrast to the fact that any constant-depth quantum circuit without additional gates on an unbounded number of qubits is strongly and weakly simulatable.
We study the classical simulatability of constant-depth polynomial-size quantum circuits followed by only one single-qubit measurement, where the circuits consist of universal gates on at most two qubits and additional gates on an unbounded number of qubits. First, we consider unbounded Toffoli gates as additional gates and deal with the weak simulation, i.e., sampling the output probability distribution. We show that there exists a constant-depth quantum circuit with only one unbounded Toffoli gate that is not weakly simulatable, unless \bqp⊆\postbpp∩\am. Then, we consider unbounded fan-out gates as additional gates and deal with the strong simulation, i.e., computing the output probability. We show that there exists a constant-depth quantum circuit with only two unbounded fan-out gates that is not strongly simulatable, unless \p=\pp. These results are in contrast to the fact that any constant-depth quantum circuit without additional gates on an unbounded number of qubits is strongly and weakly simulatable.
Classical circuits with unbounded fan-in can compute any Boolean function in constant depth when their size is unrestricted. We ask whether removing the restrictions on circuit size and ancillary qubits also allows quantum circuits built from arbitrary single-qubit gates and generalised Toffoli gates to implement every unitary in constant depth.
We give exact constant-depth constructions for arbitrary permutations of computational basis states, diagonal unitaries and the preparation of arbitrary pure states. These connect quantum state preparation to reversible classical computation and the preparation of probability distributions. With fanout in the gate set, they use exponentially many gates and ancillary qubits and return all ancillary qubits to zero. Replacing fanout by an exact circuit over the original gate set preserves constant depth, although the size bounds can become doubly exponential.
The implementation of arbitrary unitaries in constant depth remains open. We give equivalent formulations in terms of copying the vectors of a specified orthonormal basis, extracting their labels and implementing restricted families of unitaries. We also reduce arbitrary unitary implementation to that of traceless unitary involutions using one additional clean qubit. With adaptive measurements, gate teleportation gives depth proportional to the level of a gate in the Clifford hierarchy.
Towards arbitrary unitary implementation in constant depth, we use port-based teleportation: for input dimension d and M≥d2−1 ports, we construct a unitary circuit of depth O(d), independent of M and including resource preparation and port selection, with entanglement fidelity at least (1−(d2−1)/(2M))2. Thus, at fixed d, the approximation can be made arbitrarily accurate without increasing depth. Whether the dependence on d can also be removed remains open.
The relevance of shallow-depth quantum circuits has recently increased, mainly due to their applicability to near-term devices. In this context, one of the main goals of quantum circuit complexity is to find problems that can be solved by quantum shallow circuits but require more computational resources classically. Our first contribution in this work is to prove new separations between classical and quantum constant-depth circuits. Firstly, we show a separation between constant-depth quantum circuits with quantum advice QNC0/qpoly , and AC0[p] , which is the class of classical constant-depth circuits with unbounded-fan in and MODp gates. Additionally, we show a separation between QAC0 , the circuit class containing Toffoli gates with unbounded control, and AC0[p] , when QAC0 is augmented with additional mid-circuit measurements and classical fanout. This establishes the first such separation for a shallow-depth quantum class that does not involve quantum fanout gates, while relying solely on finite quantum gate sets. Equivalently, this yields a separation between AC0[p] and [QNC0,AC0]2 , i.e., shallow quantum circuits interleaved with simple classical computation. Secondly, we consider QNC0 circuits with infinite-size gate sets. We show that these circuits, along with quantum prime modular gates or classical prime modular gates in combination with classical fanout, can implement threshold gates, showing that QNC0[p]=QTC0 . Finally, we also show that in the infinite-size gate set case, these quantum circuit classes for higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces do not offer any advantage to standard qubit implementations.
We consider quantum circuits consisting of d layers of nearest-neighbor two-qubit gates acting on n qubits arranged on a line, where every qubit is independently depolarized with a constant probability before each layer. We describe a randomized parallel algorithm which samples from the output distribution of any such circuit to within total variation error δ, with parallel runtime 2O(d)loglog(n/δ) and n2O(d) elementary real-arithmetic operations. Without noise, the same approach gives an exact sampler with parallel runtime O(logn). For constant depth, we further show that the input/output behavior of the noisy quantum circuit is reproduced up to a constant error by a randomized AC0-circuit, that is, a Boolean circuit of polynomial size and constant depth with unbounded fan-in AND and OR gates and NOT gates. Consequently, every relation problem solved by a noisy constant-depth quantum circuit in one dimension is also solved, with essentially the same success probability, by a randomized AC0-circuit. This rules out, for noisy circuits in one dimension, the unconditional quantum advantage established for noisy shallow circuits in two and three dimensions, where polynomial-size classical circuits over the same gate set require depth Ω(logn/loglogn). Our algorithm exploits the fact that depolarizing noise cuts a one-dimensional circuit into independent pieces of logarithmic width, each of which can be sampled exactly in parallel.
We achieve the first constant-depth circuit for arbitrary single-qubit gate synthesis. Unlike prior approaches, the construction is fully unitary and requires no pre-supplied catalyst. For any constant δ>0, it ε-approximates an arbitrary single-qubit gate using O(log1+δ(1/ε)) clean ancillae, Hadamard and T single-qubit gates, O(log(1/ε))-width generalized Toffoli gates, and sublogarithmic-width Fan-Out gates. We further eliminate Fan-Out entirely, showing that Hadamard, T, and generalized Toffoli gates alone suffice for constant-depth synthesis. When restricted to the standard bounded-width gate model, our construction has depth O(loglog(1/ε)), and we prove a matching Ω(loglog(1/ε))-depth lower bound. Overall, we establish that Θ(loglog(1/ε))-depth is unavoidable with only bounded-width gates, yet allowing even logarithmic-width multi-qubit gates suffices to achieve constant-depth synthesis.
These results also reveal new structure in shallow quantum circuit complexity. We give a depth-preserving real simulation of bounded-error decision computation, showing that every depth-d QAC circuit can be simulated in depth O(d) using only Hadamard, X, and generalized Toffoli gates. Thus arbitrary single-qubit rotations and complex amplitudes do not increase the bounded-error decision power of QAC, even at constant depth. In particular, this reduces the long-standing conjecture Parity∈/QAC0 to proving a Parity lower bound against circuits consisting only of Hadamard, X, and generalized Toffoli gates. More generally, this real normal form exposes a direct correspondence between the standard shallow-depth quantum circuit hierarchy and a hierarchy of Forrelation circuits with restricted oracle families.
We study the computational power of shallow quantum circuits with n input qubits, one output qubit, and two types of ancillary qubits: O(logn) initialized and O(poly(n)) uninitialized qubits. The initial state of the uninitialized ancillary qubits is arbitrary, and we have to return their state into the initial one at the end of the computation. First, to show the strengths of such circuits, we consider a class of symmetric functions on n bits, including those (such as threshold functions) for which it is not known whether there exist shallow quantum circuits with only O(logn) initialized ancillary qubits. We show that there exists an O(log2n)-depth quantum circuit for any function in the class with O(logn) initialized and O(nlog2n) uninitialized ancillary qubits. Its existence shows the possibility that augmenting uninitialized ancillary qubits increases the computational power of shallow quantum circuits. The depth decreases to O(logn) when we use unbounded fan-out gates and unbounded Toffoli gates. Then, we consider the limitations of shallow quantum circuits with uninitialized ancillary qubits, which include unbounded fan-out gates and unbounded Toffoli gates. We show that, when the number of qubits on which unbounded fan-out gates act is O(poly(logn)), for any constant 0≤δ<1, there does not exist an O(logδn)-depth quantum circuit for the parity function on n bits with O(logn) initialized and O(poly(n)) uninitialized ancillary qubits.