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Universality in composite quantum systems

Alejandro Borda Kuhlmann

Published Dec 2, 2025• 0 citations

Abstract

Qudits are the natural generalization of qubits, that is, the basic unit of information in quantum computation. This generalization allows for quantum states to be represented with the same cyclic nature present in qubits, while also permitting the basic unit of information to be stored in d-level systems. In this document, we are concerned with studying universality over qudits on arbitrary dimension d. The question of single-qudit universality of a set of operators can be reduced to studying the adjoint representation of the set and determining whether or not its generated group is finite. Thus, we set out to find universal sets of operators in quantum computation over qudits, for any possible value of d. Moreover, we focus on finding “Clifford + T-like” universal sets of operators in arbitrary dimensions, in the hopes of maintaining a strong analog to the qubits case and its most studied universal set. We accomplish this goal by studying how the Clifford group behaves on arbitrary dimensions, and how this behavior relates to the typical Clifford group in prime dimensions. Furthermore, we find that the Clifford group on arbitrary dimension splits as the typical Clifford group on each of the coprime factors of d, which leads to a fundamental difference between the study of universality on prime power dimensions and arbitrary dimensions containing co-prime factors. Then, we focus on studying the structure of universal sets in dimension d, for any d containing at least two co-prime factors. Thus, after studying which T-like gates drive the single-qudit Clifford group to universality on prime power dimensions; that is, guaranteeing the irreducibility of the adjoint representation and an infinite generated group, we combine these two approaches to obtain “Clifford + T-like” universal sets on all possible dimensions.

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Milo Moses, Jacek Horecki, Konrad Deka +1 more

Abstract Associated to every finite abelian group G , there is a generalization of qubit Clifford group associated to G . We demonstrate that every G -Clifford gate can be decomposed into some distinguished elementary types: Fourier transforms, quadratic phase gates, and automorphism gates. Combined with earlier results on classical simulation of normalizer circuits, this implies a generalized Gottesman-Knill-type result. We additionally provide circuits for a universal quantum computing scheme based on local two-qudit G -Clifford gates and magic states.

Quantum Information and Computation•Mar 1, 2026•0 citations

Qudits are the natural generalization of qubits, that is, the basic unit of information in quantum computation. This generalization allows for quantum states to be represented with the same cyclic nature present in qubits, while also permitting the basic unit of information to be stored in d-level systems. In this document, we are concerned with studying universality over qudits on arbitrary dimension d. The question of single-qudit universality of a set of operators can be reduced to studying the adjoint representation of the set and determining whether or not its generated group is finite. Thus, we set out to find universal sets of operators in quantum computation over qudits, for any possible value of d. Moreover, we focus on finding “Clifford + T-like” universal sets of operators in arbitrary dimensions, in the hopes of maintaining a strong analog to the qubits case and its most studied universal set. We accomplish this goal by studying how the Clifford group behaves on arbitrary dimensions, and how this behavior relates to the typical Clifford group in prime dimensions. Furthermore, we find that the Clifford group on arbitrary dimension splits as the typical Clifford group on each of the coprime factors of d, which leads to a fundamental difference between the study of universality on prime power dimensions and arbitrary dimensions containing co-prime factors. Then, we focus on studying the structure of universal sets in dimension d, for any d containing at least two co-prime factors. Thus, after studying which T-like gates drive the single-qudit Clifford group to universality on prime power dimensions; that is, guaranteeing the irreducibility of the adjoint representation and an infinite generated group, we combine these two approaches to obtain “Clifford + T-like” universal sets on all possible dimensions.

We show that single-qudit universality in Clifford-based gate sets follows a trichotomy determined by the prime factorization of the local dimension

d

. For prime

d

, any gate outside the Clifford group is universal. For prime-power dimensions

d=p^m

with

m\ge 2

, not every non-Clifford gate is universal, but it can be achieved by suitable members of a family of diagonal phase gates, generalizing the qubit

T

gate, as well as by permutations as simple as swapping

|0\rangle

and

|1\rangle

while leaving all other basis states unchanged. When

d

decomposes into pairwise coprime prime powers, generalized CNOT-type gates between the corresponding factors already suffice for universality. In this composite case, universality can be obtained without introducing an explicit diagonal magic gate. Our results split non-Clifford resources for high-dimensional systems into two broad mechanisms: CNOT-type (permutations) or

T

-type (diagonal phases) gates.

Unitary t-designs are some of the most versatile tools in quantum information theory. Their applications range from randomized benchmarking and shadow tomography, to more fundamental ones such as emulating quantum chaos and establishing exponential separations between classical and quantum query complexity. While unitary designs originating from a group structure, such as the Clifford group, have proven to be incredibly useful for qubit systems, unfortunately, this is no longer true for qudits. In fact, the classification of finite-group representations rules out the existence of unitary 2-designs for arbitrary qudit dimensions. This severely limits the applicability of standard quantum information primitives when it comes to qudit systems. We overcome these limitations with a three-fold contribution. First, we introduce a general technique to construct families of weighted state t-designs in arbitrary qudit dimensions. These weighted state-designs generalize classical shadow tomography protocol from qubits to qudits. Second, we introduce a Clifford character RB that allows us to benchmark the qudit Clifford group in any dimension, including non-prime-power dimensions. And third, we establish bounds on the quantum circuit complexity of generating approximate unitary-designs from native gates in existing quantum hardware such as high-spin and cavity-QED qudits. Our work further highlights the analogy between spin and optical coherent states by proving that spin-GKP codewords form a state 2-design while spin coherent states do not; in direct analogy with the optical case. This work is structured as a pedagogical and self-contained introduction to unitary designs and their applications to qudit systems.

This note presents a simple and unified formulation of the most fundamental structures used in quantum information with qubits, arbitrary dimension qudits, and quantum continuous variables. This \emph{general quantum variables} construction provides a succinct language for formulating many results in quantum computation and information so that they are applicable in all dimensions. The structures included within this formalism include: a generalization to arbitrary dimension of the three Pauli operators, and the associated mutually unbiased bases; the Pauli and Clifford groups; many important quantum gates; standard sets of generators for the Clifford group; and simple universal gate sets. This formalism provides a convenient, intuitive and extensible language for easily generalizing results that were originally derived for a single type of system (often qubits or quantum continuous variables), and that rely on only those structures listed above, to apply in all dimensions.

An important question in quantum information theory asks whether every gate in the Clifford hierarchy is semi-Clifford or not, as such gates admit resource-efficient implementations via gate teleportation. Extending recent results for prime dimensions~\cite{silva_clifford_2025}, we prove that every hierarchy gate on a single qudit of dimension

d

is semi-Clifford, if and only if

d

is square-free. In composite dimensions,

\mathbb{Z}_d^2

is a symplectic module rather than a vector space, motivating a distinction between four types of gates. Semi-Clifford gates (

\mathcal{SC}

) are the ones that become diagonal under left and right multiplication by Clifford gates, while a broader class

\mathcal{N}

admits a permutation diagonal form, under left and right multiplication by Cliffords. Lagrangian semi-Clifford gates (

\mathcal{LSC}

) conjugate some maximal abelian Pauli subgroup to another, whereas generalized semi-Clifford gates (

\mathcal{GSC}

) map some maximal abelian Pauli subalgebra to another under conjugation. In square-free dimensions, we have

\mathcal{SC}=\mathcal{LSC}

and

\mathcal{N}=\mathcal{GSC}

, but when

d

is not square-free, these equivalences can fail, as Lagrangian submodules can become non-free. We also show that every third-level gate of the one-qudit Clifford hierarchy is a generalized semi-Clifford in arbitrary dimensions.

Abstract We aim to establish a scalable scheme for characterising diagonal non-Clifford gates for single- and multi-qudit systems; d is a prime-power integer. By employing cyclic operators and a qudit T gate, we generalise the dihedral benchmarking scheme for single- and multi-qudit circuits. Our results establish a path for experimentally benchmarking qudit systems and are of theoretical and experimental interest because our scheme is optimal insofar as it does not require preparation of the full qudit Clifford gate set to characterise a non-Clifford gate. Moreover, combined with Clifford randomised benchmarking, our scheme is useful to characterise the generators of a universal gate set.

Abstract Associated to every finite abelian group G , there is a generalization of qubit Clifford group associated to G . We demonstrate that every G -Clifford gate can be decomposed into some distinguished elementary types: Fourier transforms, quadratic phase gates, and automorphism gates. Combined with earlier results on classical simulation of normalizer circuits, this implies a generalized Gottesman-Knill-type result. We additionally provide circuits for a universal quantum computing scheme based on local two-qudit G -Clifford gates and magic states.