Kerdock Codes Determine Unitary 2-Designs

The non-linear binary Kerdock codes are known to be Gray images of certain extended cyclic codes of length $N = 2^m$ over $\mathbb{Z}_4$. We show that exponentiating these $\mathbb{Z}_4$-valued codewords by $\imath \triangleq \sqrt{-1}$ produces stabilizer states, that are quantum states obtained using only Clifford unitaries. These states are also the common eigenvectors of commuting Hermitian matrices forming maximal commutative subgroups (MCS) of the Pauli group. We use this quantum description to simplify the derivation of the classical weight distribution of Kerdock codes. Next, we organize the stabilizer states to form $N+1$ mutually unbiased bases and prove that automorphisms of the Kerdock code permute their corresponding MCS, thereby forming a subgroup of the Clifford group. When represented as symplectic matrices, this subgroup is isomorphic to the projective special linear group PSL($2,N$). We show that this automorphism group acts transitively on the Pauli matrices, which implies that the ensemble is Pauli mixing and hence forms a unitary $2$-design. The Kerdock design described here was originally discovered by Cleve et al. (arXiv:1501.04592), but the connection to classical codes is new which simplifies its description and translation to circuits significantly. Sampling from the design is straightforward, the translation to circuits uses only Clifford gates, and the process does not require ancillary qubits. Finally, we also develop algorithms for optimizing the synthesis of unitary $2$-designs on encoded qubits, i.e., to construct logical unitary $2$-designs. Software implementations are available at https://github.com/nrenga/symplectic-arxiv18a, which we use to provide empirical gate complexities for up to $16$ qubits.Comment: 16 pages double-column, 4 figures, and some circuits. Accepted to 2019 Intl. Symp. Inf. Theory (ISIT), and PDF of the 5-page ISIT version is included in the arXiv packag

Kerdock Codes Determine Unitary 2-Designs

The binary non-linear Kerdock codes are Gray images of ℤ_4-linear Kerdock codes of length N =2^m . We show that exponentiating ı=−√-1 by these ℤ_4-valued codewords produces stabilizer states, which are the common eigenvectors of maximal commutative subgroups (MCS) of the Pauli group. We use this quantum description to simplify the proof of the classical weight distribution of Kerdock codes. Next, we partition stabilizer states into N +1 mutually unbiased bases and prove that automorphisms of the Kerdock code permute the associated MCS. This automorphism group, represented as symplectic matrices, is isomorphic to the projective special linear group PSL(2,N) and forms a unitary 2-design. The design described here was originally discovered by Cleve et al. (2016), but the connection to classical codes is new. This significantly simplifies the description of the design and its translation to circuits

Three Results in Quantum Physics

This thesis is split into three disjoint sections. The first deals with two practical issues regarding the use of unitary 2-designs. A simplified description of how to generate elements of the smallest known unitary 2-design on qubits is given which should be usable even for people who do not have much experience with the mathematics of finite fields. The section also gives a new way to decompose an arbitrary element of the Clifford group into one and two qubit gates and is by far the simplest decomposition of its kind. The second section describes similarities and differences between a probabilistic formulation of classical mechanics and quantum mechanics, with the intention that it could become a resource for physics students to show that just because a physical phenomenon is strange it is not necessarily quantum. The third section is speculative and delves into the relationship between a highly theoretical field of quantum information science, Quantum Prover Interactive Proofs, and a highly practical area of quantum information science, error characterization. Previously unnoticed links are drawn between these fields with the intention that further research can provide fertile ground for both to flourish