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Optimal Design of Reversible Circuits in the Strict NCT Library

GEORGE PAPAKONSTANTINOU

Published Feb 16, 2026• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The synthesis of reversible logic circuits is a fundamental step in the design of fault-tolerant quantum arithmetic. Existing literature frequently minimizes Quantum Cost (QC) by utilizing the NCV library, which permits controlled-V and Vdagger gates. However, in the context of Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC), the strict NCT library (NOT, CNOT, Toffoli) is often preferred due to the high cost of distilling non-Clifford states required for arbitrary V-gates. Moreover, in the classical design of reversible circuits, only the NCT library can be used as V-gates are not available. In this paper, a new design method for reversible circuits is proposed, based on Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) within the Strict NCT Library. By formulating the problem as an MINLP model in GAMS, we successfully automated the optimization of five prominent reversible primitives (TSG, MKG, MIG, SAYEM, and URG) within the strict NCT library. Comparative analysis with the NCV costs found in the literature shows that the costs within the NCT library are comparable or better.

DOI
10.36227/techrxiv.176827280.05224615/v2

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The synthesis of reversible logic circuits is a fundamental step in the design of fault-tolerant quantum arithmetic. Existing literature frequently minimizes Quantum Cost (QC) by utilizing the NCV library, which permits controlled-V and Vdagger gates. However, in the context of Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC), the strict NCT library (NOT, CNOT, Toffoli) is often preferred due to the high cost of distilling non-Clifford states required for arbitrary V-gates. Moreover, in the classical design of reversible circuits, only the NCT library can be used as V-gates are not available. In this paper, a new design method for reversible circuits is proposed, based on Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) within the Strict NCT Library. By formulating the problem as an MINLP model in GAMS, we successfully automated the optimization of five prominent reversible primitives (TSG, MKG, MIG, SAYEM, and URG) within the strict NCT library. Comparative analysis with the NCV costs found in the literature shows that the costs within the NCT library are comparable or better.
The synthesis of reversible logic circuits is a fundamental step in the design of fault-tolerant quantum arithmetic. Existing literature frequently minimizes Quantum Cost (QC) by utilizing the NCV library, which permits controlled-V and Vdagger gates. However, in the context of Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC), the strict NCT library (NOT, CNOT, Toffoli) is often preferred due to the high cost of distilling non-Clifford states required for arbitrary V-gates. Moreover, in the classical design of reversible circuits, only the NCT library can be used as V-gates are not available. In this paper, a new design method for reversible circuits is proposed, based on Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) within the Strict NCT Library. By formulating the problem as an MINLP model in GAMS, we successfully automated the optimization of five prominent reversible primitives (TSG, MKG, MIG, SAYEM, and URG) within the strict NCT library. Comparative analysis with the NCV costs found in the literature shows that the costs within the NCT library are comparable or better.
The synthesis of efficient reversible logic circuits is critical for fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC). The primary motivation of this work is to overcome the inherent disadvantages of existing synthesis techniques: approximate heuristic methods often miss optimal solutions, while pure exact computational methods suffer from combinatorial explosion on deep circuits. While the strict NCT library (NOT, CNOT, Toffoli) is often preferred due to the high cost of distilling non-Clifford states required for arbitrary gates, standard physical implementations frequently utilize the broader NCV library (NOT, CNOT, V, V-dagger), requiring the decomposition of Toffoli gates into five elementary operations. To bridge this gap, this paper presents a unified, highly scalable methodology for the optimal design of reversible circuits across both libraries. First, a Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) formulation, linearized for the high-performance IBM ILOG CPLEX solver, is introduced to automate the exact generation of globally optimal strict NCT topologies. Second, a systematic four-phase optimization framework is proposed to reduce NCV costs. By replacing Toffoli gates with specific NCV decompositions, permuting control lines to match subsequent linear gates, and applying exact local searches via an extended MINLP solver on bounded sliding windows, significant gate cancellations are achieved. Applying this methodology to prominent primitives (MIG, SAYEM, URG, TSG, and MKG), we match global NCT optimality constraints and achieve highly optimized NCV Quantum Costs of 7, 14, and 12 for the MIG, TSG, and MKG gates, respectively, establishing best-known upper bounds that significantly outperform heuristic literature benchmarks.
The synthesis of efficient reversible logic circuits is critical for fault-tolerant quantum computing. While standard libraries often treat the Toffoli gate as an atomic unit, its realization in the NCV library requires decomposition into 5 elementary gates. In this work, we propose a novel, systematic four-phase optimization methodology. First, we generate an optimal circuit in the strict NCT library (NOT, CNOT, Toffoli) using automated synthesis. Second, we replace each Toffoli gate with a specific NCV decomposition, permuting the control lines such that the final internal CNOT gate matches the subsequent linear gate in the circuit, allowing us to apply a cancellation rule (X ·X = I). Finally, post-synthesis local searches are applied using Mixed- Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) techniques to further reduce the total gate count. Applying this method to the MIG, TSG, and MKG gates, we achieve Quantum Costs of 7, 14, and 12 respectively, matching or beating the best-known literature benchmarks.
The synthesis and optimization of quantum circuits are essential for the construction of quantum computers. This paper proposes two methods to reduce the quantum cost of 3-bit reversible circuits. The first method utilizes basic building blocks of gate pairs using different Toffoli decompositions. These gate pairs are used to reconstruct the quantum circuits where further optimization rules will be applied to synthesize the optimized circuit. The second method suggests using a new universal library, which provides better quantum cost when compared with previous work in both cost015 and cost115 metrics; this proposed new universal library “Negative NCT” uses gates that operate on the target qubit only when the control qubit’s state is zero. A combination of the proposed basic building blocks of pairs of gates and the proposed Negative NCT library is used in this work for synthesis and optimization, where the Negative NCT library showed better quantum cost after optimization compared with the NCT library despite having the same circuit size. The reversible circuits over three bits form a permutation group of size 40,320 (23!), which is a subset of the symmetric group, where the NCT library is considered as the generators of the permutation group.
Quantum computing is the latest computing concept that can substantially reduce the computational burden of some difficult NP problems. Boolean reversible logic is frequently used as a key component in many quantum algorithms. This study proposes an approach based on a mixed integer programming model for reversible circuit synthesis. The proposed optimization model maps a given reversible function into a multiple-control Toffoli (MCT) circuit with minimum quantum costs. Our model exploits the relationship between MCT gate patterns and the operations on qubit states. We also report our experience in computational experiments on the circuit synthesis of reversible benchmark problems.
In recent years, quantum computing has gained a lot of importance due to its property of increasing computational power exponentially. In the current literature, it has observed that the quantum computing has potential to solve many complex problems with less complexity based on the theoretical analysis. But in contrast to hardware implementation of quantum technology, it expands in a linear way. Moreover, there is a close relation between quantum computing and reversible computing. More precisely, quantum computing operations are reversible. In this paper, we propose an extended approach of mapping flow for describing reversible circuits to its equivalent quantum circuits. Here, we consider the reversible circuits of n-inputs and n-outputs with NCT and GT library, which is mapped to the quantum circuits with the NCV-|v1〉 library. Finally, we provide our experimental results in terms of quantum costs for mapping the reversible circuits to quantum circuits.