Efficient Approximation of Diagonal Unitaries over the Clifford+T Basis

We present an algorithm for the approximate decomposition of diagonal operators, focusing specifically on decompositions over the Clifford+$T$ basis, that minimize the number of phase-rotation gates in the synthesized approximation circuit. The equivalent $T$-count of the synthesized circuit is bounded by $k \, C_0 \log_2(1/\varepsilon) + E(n,k)$, where $k$ is the number of distinct phases in the diagonal $n$-qubit unitary, $\varepsilon$ is the desired precision, $C_0$ is a quality factor of the implementation method ($1<C_0<4$), and $E(n,k)$ is the total entanglement cost (in $T$ gates). We determine an optimal decision boundary in $(k,n,\varepsilon)$-space where our decomposition algorithm achieves lower entanglement cost than previous state-of-the-art techniques. Our method outperforms state-of-the-art techniques for a practical range of $\varepsilon$ values and diagonal operators and can reduce the number of $T$ gates exponentially in $n$ when $k << 2^n$.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures; introduction improved for readability, references added (in particular to Dawson & Nielsen

A meet-in-the-middle algorithm for fast synthesis of depth-optimal quantum circuits

We present an algorithm for computing depth-optimal decompositions of logical operations, leveraging a meet-in-the-middle technique to provide a significant speed-up over simple brute force algorithms. As an illustration of our method we implemented this algorithm and found factorizations of the commonly used quantum logical operations into elementary gates in the Clifford+T set. In particular, we report a decomposition of the Toffoli gate over the set of Clifford and T gates. Our decomposition achieves a total T-depth of 3, thereby providing a 40% reduction over the previously best known decomposition for the Toffoli gate. Due to the size of the search space the algorithm is only practical for small parameters, such as the number of qubits, and the number of gates in an optimal implementation.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, 1 table; To appear in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and System

Asymptotically optimal approximation of single qubit unitaries by Clifford and T circuits using a constant number of ancillary qubits

We present an algorithm for building a circuit that approximates single qubit unitaries with precision {\epsilon} using O(log(1/{\epsilon})) Clifford and T gates and employing up to two ancillary qubits. The algorithm for computing our approximating circuit requires an average of O(log^2(1/{\epsilon})log log(1/{\epsilon})) operations. We prove that the number of gates in our circuit saturates the lower bound on the number of gates required in the scenario when a constant number of ancillae are supplied, and as such, our circuits are asymptotically optimal. This results in significant improvement over the current state of the art for finding an approximation of a unitary, including the Solovay-Kitaev algorithm that requires O(log^{3+{\delta}}(1/{\epsilon})) gates and does not use ancillae and the phase kickback approach that requires O(log^2(1/{\epsilon})log log(1/{\epsilon})) gates, but uses O(log^2(1/{\epsilon})) ancillae

Efficient synthesis of probabilistic quantum circuits with fallback

Recently it has been shown that Repeat-Until-Success (RUS) circuits can approximate a given single-qubit unitary with an expected number of $T$ gates of about $1/3$ of what is required by optimal, deterministic, ancilla-free decompositions over the Clifford+$T$ gate set. In this work, we introduce a more general and conceptually simpler circuit decomposition method that allows for synthesis into protocols that probabilistically implement quantum circuits over several universal gate sets including, but not restricted to, the Clifford+$T$ gate set. The protocol, which we call Probabilistic Quantum Circuits with Fallback (PQF), implements a walk on a discrete Markov chain in which the target unitary is an absorbing state and in which transitions are induced by multi-qubit unitaries followed by measurements. In contrast to RUS protocols, the presented PQF protocols terminate after a finite number of steps. Specifically, we apply our method to the Clifford+$T$, Clifford+$V$, and Clifford+$\pi/12$ gate sets to achieve decompositions with expected gate counts of $\log_b(1/\varepsilon)+O(\log(\log(1/\varepsilon)))$, where $b$ is a quantity related to the expansion property of the underlying universal gate set.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures; added Appendix F on the runtime performance of the synthesis algorith

Efficient Decomposition of Single-Qubit Gates into VV Basis Circuits

We develop the first constructive algorithms for compiling single-qubit unitary gates into circuits over the universal $V$ basis. The $V$ basis is an alternative universal basis to the more commonly studied $\{H,T\}$ basis. We propose two classical algorithms for quantum circuit compilation: the first algorithm has expected polynomial time (in precision $\log(1/\epsilon)$) and offers a depth/precision guarantee that improves upon state-of-the-art methods for compiling into the $\{H,T\}$ basis by factors ranging from 1.86 to $\log_2(5)$. The second algorithm is analogous to direct search and yields circuits a factor of 3 to 4 times shorter than our first algorithm, and requires time exponential in $\log(1/\epsilon)$; however, we show that in practice the runtime is reasonable for an important range of target precisions.Comment: 13 page

Parallelizing quantum circuit synthesis

Quantum circuit synthesis is the process in which an arbitrary unitary operation is decomposed into a sequence of gates from a universal set, typically one which a quantum computer can implement both efficiently and fault-tolerantly. As physical implementations of quantum computers improve, the need is growing for tools which can effectively synthesize components of the circuits and algorithms they will run. Existing algorithms for exact, multi-qubit circuit synthesis scale exponentially in the number of qubits and circuit depth, leaving synthesis intractable for circuits on more than a handful of qubits. Even modest improvements in circuit synthesis procedures may lead to significant advances, pushing forward the boundaries of not only the size of solvable circuit synthesis problems, but also in what can be realized physically as a result of having more efficient circuits. We present a method for quantum circuit synthesis using deterministic walks. Also termed pseudorandom walks, these are walks in which once a starting point is chosen, its path is completely determined. We apply our method to construct a parallel framework for circuit synthesis, and implement one such version performing optimal $T$-count synthesis over the Clifford+$T$ gate set. We use our software to present examples where parallelization offers a significant speedup on the runtime, as well as directly confirm that the 4-qubit 1-bit full adder has optimal $T$-count 7 and $T$-depth 3.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figure

Floating Point Representations in Quantum Circuit Synthesis

We provide a non-deterministic quantum protocol that approximates the single qubit rotations R_x(2a^2 b^2)$ using R_x(2a) and R_x(2b) and a constant number of Clifford and T operations. We then use this method to construct a "floating point" implementation of a small rotation wherein we use the aforementioned method to construct the exponent part of the rotation and also to combine it with a mantissa. This causes the cost of the synthesis to depend more strongly on the relative (rather than absolute) precision required. We analyze the mean and variance of the \Tcount required to use our techniques and provide new lower bounds for the T-count for ancilla free synthesis of small single-qubit axial rotations. We further show that our techniques can use ancillas to beat these lower bounds with high probability. We also discuss the T-depth of our method and see that the vast majority of the cost of the resultant circuits can be shifted to parallel computation paths.Comment: Comments welcom

A Framework for Approximating Qubit Unitaries

We present an algorithm for efficiently approximating of qubit unitaries over gate sets derived from totally definite quaternion algebras. It achieves $\varepsilon$-approximations using circuits of length $O(\log(1/\varepsilon))$, which is asymptotically optimal. The algorithm achieves the same quality of approximation as previously-known algorithms for Clifford+T [arXiv:1212.6253], V-basis [arXiv:1303.1411] and Clifford+$\pi/12$ [arXiv:1409.3552], running on average in time polynomial in $O(\log(1/\varepsilon))$ (conditional on a number-theoretic conjecture). Ours is the first such algorithm that works for a wide range of gate sets and provides insight into what should constitute a "good" gate set for a fault-tolerant quantum computer.Comment: 60 pages, 16 figure

Efficient synthesis of universal Repeat-Until-Success circuits

Recently, it was shown that Repeat-Until-Success (RUS) circuits can achieve a $2.5$ times reduction in expected $T$-count over ancilla-free techniques for single-qubit unitary decomposition. However, the previously best known algorithm to synthesize RUS circuits requires exponential classical runtime. In this paper we present an algorithm to synthesize an RUS circuit to approximate any given single-qubit unitary within precision $\varepsilon$ in probabilistically polynomial classical runtime. Our synthesis approach uses the Clifford+$T$ basis, plus one ancilla qubit and measurement. We provide numerical evidence that our RUS circuits have an expected $T$-count on average $2.5$ times lower than the theoretical lower bound of $3 \log_2 (1/\varepsilon)$ for ancilla-free single-qubit circuit decomposition.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; reformatted and minor edits; added Fig. 2 to visualize the density of z-rotations implementable via RUS protocol

A Depth-Optimal Canonical Form for Single-qubit Quantum Circuits

Given an arbitrary single-qubit operation, an important task is to efficiently decompose this operation into an (exact or approximate) sequence of fault-tolerant quantum operations. We derive a depth-optimal canonical form for single-qubit quantum circuits, and the corresponding rules for exactly reducing an arbitrary single-qubit circuit to this canonical form. We focus on the single-qubit universal H,T basis due to its role in fault-tolerant quantum computing, and show how our formalism might be extended to other universal bases. We then extend our canonical representation to the family of Solovay-Kitaev decomposition algorithms, in order to find an \epsilon-approximation to the single-qubit circuit in polylogarithmic time. For a given single-qubit operation, we find significantly lower-depth \epsilon-approximation circuits than previous state-of-the-art implementations. In addition, the implementation of our algorithm requires significantly fewer resources, in terms of computation memory, than previous approaches.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure