The Schur basis on n d-dimensional quantum systems is a generalization of the
total angular momentum basis that is useful for exploiting symmetry under
permutations or collective unitary rotations. We present efficient (size
poly(n,d,log(1/\epsilon)) for accuracy \epsilon) quantum circuits for the Schur
transform, which is the change of basis between the computational and the Schur
bases. These circuits are based on efficient circuits for the Clebsch-Gordan
transformation. We also present an efficient circuit for a limited version of
the Schur transform in which one needs only to project onto different Schur
subspaces. This second circuit is based on a generalization of phase estimation
to any nonabelian finite group for which there exists a fast quantum Fourier
transform.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
