skip to main content


Title: Synthesis of Logical Clifford Operators via Symplectic Geometry
Quantum error-correcting codes can be used to protect qubits involved in quantum computation. This requires that logical operators acting on protected qubits be translated to physical operators (circuits) acting on physical quantum states. We propose a mathematical framework for synthesizing physical circuits that implement logical Clifford operators for stabilizer codes. Circuit synthesis is enabled by representing the desired physical Clifford operator in CN ×N as a 2m × 2m binary sym- plectic matrix, where N = 2m. We show that for an [m, m − k] stabilizer code every logical Clifford operator has 2k(k+1)/2 symplectic solutions, and we enumerate them efficiently using symplectic transvections. The desired circuits are then obtained by writing each of the solutions as a product of elementary symplectic matrices. For a given operator, our assembly of all of its physical realizations enables optimization over them with respect to a suitable metric. Our method of circuit synthesis can be applied to any stabilizer code, and this paper provides a proof of concept synthesis of universal Clifford gates for the well- known [6, 4, 2] code. Programs implementing our algorithms can be found at https://github.com/nrenga/symplectic-arxiv18a.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1718494
NSF-PAR ID:
10064523
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. A basic question in the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation is to understand the fundamental resource costs for performing a universal logical set of gates on encoded qubits to arbitrary accuracy. Here we consider qubits encoded with constant space overhead (i.e. finite encoding rate) in the limit of arbitrarily large code distance d through the use of topological codes associated to triangulations of hyperbolic surfaces. We introduce explicit protocols to demonstrate how Dehn twists of the hyperbolic surface can be implemented on the code through constant depth unitary circuits, without increasing the space overhead. The circuit for a given Dehn twist consists of a permutation of physical qubits, followed by a constant depth local unitary circuit, where locality here is defined with respect to a hyperbolic metric that defines the code. Applying our results to the hyperbolic Fibonacci Turaev-Viro code implies the possibility of applying universal logical gate sets on encoded qubits through constant depth unitary circuits and with constant space overhead. Our circuits are inherently protected from errors as they map local operators to local operators while changing the size of their support by at most a constant factor; in the presence of noisy syndrome measurements, our results suggest the possibility of universal fault tolerant quantum computation with constant space overhead and time overhead of O ( d / log ⁡ d ) . For quantum circuits that allow parallel gate operations, this yields the optimal scaling of space-time overhead known to date. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract

    We study two-qubit circuits over the Clifford+CS gate set, which consists of the Clifford gates together with the controlled-phase gate CS = diag(1, 1, 1, i). The Clifford+CS gate set is universal for quantum computation and its elements can be implemented fault-tolerantly in most error-correcting schemes through magic state distillation. Since non-Clifford gates are typically more expensive to perform in a fault-tolerant manner, it is often desirable to construct circuits that use few CS gates. In the present paper, we introduce an efficient and optimal synthesis algorithm for two-qubit Clifford+CS operators. Our algorithm inputs a Clifford+CS operatorUand outputs a Clifford+CS circuit forU, which uses the least possible number of CS gates. Because the algorithm is deterministic, the circuit it associates to a Clifford+CS operator can be viewed as a normal form for that operator. We give an explicit description of these normal forms and use this description to derive a worst-case lower bound of$$5{{\rm{log}}}_{2}(\frac{1}{\epsilon })+O(1)$$5log2(1ϵ)+O(1)on the number of CS gates required toϵ-approximate elements of SU(4). Our work leverages a wide variety of mathematical tools that may find further applications in the study of fault-tolerant quantum circuits.

     
    more » « less
  3. Abstract

    We study the effectiveness of quantum error correction against coherent noise. Coherent errors (for example, unitary noise) can interfere constructively, so that in some cases the average infidelity of a quantum circuit subjected to coherent errors may increase quadratically with the circuit size; in contrast, when errors are incoherent (for example, depolarizing noise), the average infidelity increases at worst linearly with circuit size. We consider the performance of quantum stabilizer codes against a noise model in which a unitary rotation is applied to each qubit, where the axes and angles of rotation are nearly the same for all qubits. In particular, we show that for the toric code subject to such independent coherent noise, and for minimal-weight decoding, the logical channel after error correction becomes increasingly incoherent as the length of the code increases, provided the noise strength decays inversely with the code distance. A similar conclusion holds for weakly correlated coherent noise. Our methods can also be used for analyzing the performance of other codes and fault-tolerant protocols against coherent noise. However, our result does not show that the coherence of the logical channel is suppressed in the more physically relevant case where the noise strength is held constant as the code block grows, and we recount the difficulties that prevented us from extending the result to that case. Nevertheless our work supports the idea that fault-tolerant quantum computing schemes will work effectively against coherent noise, providing encouraging news for quantum hardware builders who worry about the damaging effects of control errors and coherent interactions with the environment.

     
    more » « less
  4. null (Ed.)
    Universal quantum computation requires the implementation of a logical non-Clifford gate. In this paper, we characterize all stabilizer codes whose code subspaces are preserved under physical T and T † gates. For example, this could enable magic state distillation with non-CSS codes and, thus, provide better parameters than CSS-based protocols. However, among non-degenerate stabilizer codes that support transversal T, we prove that CSS codes are optimal. We also show that triorthogonal codes are, essentially, the only family of CSS codes that realize logical transversal T via physical transversal T. Using our algebraic approach, we reveal new purely-classical coding problems that are intimately related to the realization of logical operations via transversal T. Decreasing monomial codes are also used to construct a code that realizes logical CCZ. Finally, we use Ax's theorem to characterize the logical operation realized on a family of quantum Reed-Muller codes. This result is generalized to finer angle Z-rotations in https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.09333. 
    more » « less
  5. The challenge of quantum computing is to combine error resilience with universal computation. Diagonal gates such as the transversal T gate play an important role in implementing a universal set of quantum operations. This paper introduces a framework that describes the process of preparing a code state, applying a diagonal physical gate, measuring a code syndrome, and applying a Pauli correction that may depend on the measured syndrome (the average logical channel induced by an arbitrary diagonal gate). It focuses on CSS codes, and describes the interaction of code states and physical gates in terms of generator coefficients determined by the induced logical operator. The interaction of code states and diagonal gates depends very strongly on the signs of Z -stabilizers in the CSS code, and the proposed generator coefficient framework explicitly includes this degree of freedom. The paper derives necessary and sufficient conditions for an arbitrary diagonal gate to preserve the code space of a stabilizer code, and provides an explicit expression of the induced logical operator. When the diagonal gate is a quadratic form diagonal gate (introduced by Rengaswamy et al.), the conditions can be expressed in terms of divisibility of weights in the two classical codes that determine the CSS code. These codes find application in magic state distillation and elsewhere. When all the signs are positive, the paper characterizes all possible CSS codes, invariant under transversal Z -rotation through π / 2 l , that are constructed from classical Reed-Muller codes by deriving the necessary and sufficient constraints on l . The generator coefficient framework extends to arbitrary stabilizer codes but there is nothing to be gained by considering the more general class of non-degenerate stabilizer codes. 
    more » « less