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arXiv:quant-ph/9503016 · Physical Review A

Elementary gates for quantum computation

Adriano Barenco, Charles H. Bennett, Richard Cleve, David Peter Divincenzo, Norman Margolus, Peter W. Shor, Tycho Sleator, John A. Smolin, Harald Weinfurter

Published Nov 1, 1995• 4,309 citations

Abstract

We show that a set of gates that consists of all one-bit quantum gates [U(2)] and the two-bit exclusive-OR gate [that maps Boolean values (x,y) to (x,x\ensuremath{\bigoplus}y)] is universal in the sense that all unitary operations on arbitrarily many bits n [U(${2}^{\mathit{n}}$)] can be expressed as compositions of these gates. We investigate the number of the above gates required to implement other gates, such as generalized Deutsch-Toffoli gates, that apply a specific U(2) transformation to one input bit if and only if the logical and of all remaining input bits is satisfied. These gates play a central role in many proposed constructions of quantum computational networks. We derive upper and lower bounds on the exact number of elementary gates required to build up a variety of two- and three-bit quantum gates, the asymptotic number required for n-bit Deutsch-Toffoli gates, and make some observations about the number required for arbitrary n-bit unitary operations.

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.52.3457

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We show that a set of gates that consists of all one-bit quantum gates [U(2)] and the two-bit exclusive-OR gate [that maps Boolean values (x,y) to (x,x\ensuremath{\bigoplus}y)] is universal in the sense that all unitary operations on arbitrarily many bits n [U(

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We present numerical results which show how two-bit logic gates can be used in the design of a quantum computer. We show that the Toffoli gate, which is the universal gate for all classical reversible computation, can be implemented using a particular sequence of exactly five two-bit gates. An arbitrary three-bit unitary gate, which can be used to build up any arbitrary quantum computation, can be implemented exactly with six two-bit gates. The ease of implementation of any particular quantum operation is dependent upon a very nonclassical feature of the operation, its exact quantum phase factor.>

We present numerical results which show how two-bit logic gates can be used in the design of a quantum computer. We show that the Toffoli gate, which is a universal gate for all classical reversible computation, can be implemented using a particular sequence of exactly five two-bit gates. An arbitrary three-bit unitary gate, which can be used to build up any arbitrary quantum computation, can be implemented exactly with six two-bit gates. The ease of implementation of any particular quantum operation is dependent upon a very non-classical feature of the operation, its exact quantum phase factor.

To build a general-purpose quantum computer, it is crucial for the quantum devices to implement classical boolean logic. A straightforward realization of quantum boolean logic is to use auxiliary qubits as intermediate storage. This inefficient implementation causes a large number of auxiliary qubits to be used. In this paper, we have derived a systematic way of realizing any general m-to-n bit combinational boolean logic using elementary quantum gates. Our approach transforms the m-to-n bit classical mapping into a t-bit unitary quantum operation with minimum number of auxiliary qubits, then a variation of Toffoli gate is used as the basic building block to construct the unitary operation. Finally, each of these building blocks can be decomposed into one-bit rotation and two-bit control-U gates. The efficiency of the network is taken into consideration by formulating it as a constrained set partitioning problem.

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