Gaussian decomposition of magic states for matchgate computations

Abstract

Magic states were originally introduced as a resource that enables universal quantum computation using classically simulable Clifford gates. This concept has been extended to matchgate circuits (MGCs) which are made of two-qubit nearest-neighbour quantum gates defined by a set of algebraic constraints. In our work, we study the Gaussian rank of a quantum state -- defined as the minimum number of terms in any decomposition of that state into Gaussian states -- and associated quantities: the Gaussian Fidelity and the Gaussian Extent. We investigate the algebraic structure of Gaussian states and find and describe the independent sets of constraints upper-bounding the dimension of the manifold of Gaussian states. Furthermore, we describe the form of linearly dependent triples of Gaussian states and find the dimension of the manifold of solutions. By constructing the corresponding $\epsilon$-net for the Gaussian states, we are able to obtain upper bounds on the Gaussian fidelity. We identify a family of extreme points of the feasible set for the Dual Gaussian extent problem and show that Gaussian extent is multiplicative on systems of 4 qubits; and further that it is multiplicative on primal points whose optimal dual witness is in the above family. These extreme points turn out to be closely related to Extended Hamming Codes. We show that optimal dual witnesses are unique almost-surely, when the primal point lies in the interior of the normal cone of an extreme point. Furthermore, we show that the Gaussian rank of two copies of our canonical magic state is 4 for symmetry-restricted decompositions. Numerical investigation suggests that no low-rank decompositions exist of either 2 or 3 copies of the magic state. Finally, we consider approximate Gaussian rank and present approximate decompositions for selected magic states.Comment: See also related works by Dias and Koenig and by Reardon-Smith et al. appearing in the same arXiv listin