Polylogarithmic-depth controlled-NOT gates without ancilla qubits

Abstract

Controlled operations are fundamental building blocks of quantum algorithms. Decomposing n-control-NOT gates (Cn(X)) into arbitrary single-qubit and CNOT gates, is a crucial but non-trivial task. This study introduces Cn(X) circuits outperforming previous methods in the asymptotic and non-asymptotic regimes. Three distinct decompositions are presented: an exact one using one borrowed ancilla with a circuit depth Θ(log(n)3)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Theta (\log {(n)}^{3})$$\end{document}, an approximating one without ancilla qubits with a circuit depth O(log(n)3log(1/ϵ))\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{{{{{{\mathcal{O}}}}}}}}(\log {(n)}^{3}\log (1/\epsilon ))$$\end{document} and an exact one with an adjustable-depth circuit which decreases with the number m≤n of ancilla qubits available as O(log(n/⌊m/2⌋)3+log(⌊m/2⌋))\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${{{{{{{\mathcal{O}}}}}}}}(\log {(n/\lfloor m/2\rfloor )}^{3}+\log (\lfloor m/2\rfloor ))$$\end{document}. The resulting exponential speedup is likely to have a substantial impact on fault-tolerant quantum computing by improving the complexities of countless quantum algorithms with applications ranging from quantum chemistry to physics, finance and quantum machine learning. Multi-controlled operations are very common in quantum algorithms applications. Here, the authors propose three schemes for decomposing n-control-NOT gates into single-qubit and CNOT gates, which have polylog overhead as opposed to current linear schemes.