Unitary $t$-designs are `good' finite subsets of the unitary group $U(d)$ that approximate the whole unitary group $U(d)$ well. Unitary $t$-designs have been applied in randomized benchmarking, tomography, quantum cryptography and many other areas of quantum information science. If a unitary $t$-design itself is a group then it is called a unitary $t$-group. Although it is known that unitary $t$-designs in $U(d)$ exist for any $t$ and $d$, the unitary $t$-groups do not exist for $t\geq 4$ if $d\geq 3$, as it is shown by Guralnick-Tiep (2005) and Bannai-Navarro-Rizo-Tiep (BNRT, 2018). Explicit constructions of exact unitary $t$-designs in $U(d)$ are not easy in general. In particular, explicit constructions of unitary $4$-designs in $U(4)$ have been an open problem in quantum information theory. We prove that some exact unitary $(t+1)$-designs in the unitary group $U(d)$ are constructed from unitary $t$-groups in $U(d)$ that satisfy certain specific conditions. Based on this result, we specifically construct exact unitary $3$-designs in $U(3)$ from the unitary $2$-group $SL(3,2)$ in $U(3),$ and also unitary $4$-designs in $U(4)$ from the unitary $3$-group $Sp(4,3)$ in $U(4)$ numerically. We also discuss some related problems.
The value of spectral form factor at the origin, called level compressibility, is an important characteristic of random spectra. The paper is devoted to analytical calculations of this quantity for different random unitary matrices describing models with intermediate spectral statistics. The computations are based on the approach developed by G. Tanner in [J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 34, 8485 (2001)] for chaotic systems. The main ingredient of the method is the determination of eigenvalues of a transition matrix whose matrix elements equal squared moduli of matrix elements of the initial unitary ma…
We clarify the mathematical structure underlying unitary $t$-designs. These are sets of unitary matrices, evenly distributed in the sense that the average of any $t$-th order polynomial over the design equals the average over the entire unitary group. We present a simple necessary and sufficient criterion for deciding if a set of matrices constitutes a design. Lower bounds for the number of elements of 2-designs are derived. We show how to turn mutually unbiased bases into approximate 2-designs whose cardinality is optimal in leading order. Designs of higher order are discussed and an example …
Unitary $t$-designs are a ubiquitous tool in many research areas, including randomized benchmarking, quantum process tomography, and scrambling. Despite the intensive efforts of many researchers, little is known about unitary $t$-designs with $t\geq3$ in the literature. We show that the multiqubit Clifford group in any even prime-power dimension is not only a unitary 2-design, but also a 3-design. Moreover, it is a minimal 3-design except for dimension~4. As an immediate consequence, any orbit of pure states of the multiqubit Clifford group forms a complex projective 3-design; in particular, t…
The applications of random quantum circuits range from quantum computing and quantum many-body systems to the physics of black holes. Many of these applications are related to the generation of quantum pseudorandomness: Random quantum circuits are known to approximate unitary $t$-designs. Unitary $t$-designs are probability distributions that mimic Haar randomness up to $t$th moments. In a seminal paper, Brandão, Harrow and Horodecki prove that random quantum circuits on qubits in a brickwork architecture of depth $O(n t^{10.5})$ are approximate unitary $t$-designs. In this work, we revisit th…
Epsilon-nets and approximate unitary $t$-designs are natural notions that capture properties of unitary operations relevant for numerous applications in quantum information and quantum computing. The former constitute subsets of unitary channels that are epsilon-close to any unitary channel in the diamond norm. The latter are ensembles of unitaries that (approximately) recover Haar averages of polynomials in entries of unitary channels up to order $t$. In this work we establish quantitative connections between these two notions. Specifically, we prove that, for a fixed dimension $d$ of the Hil…
Randomized benchmarking is a useful scheme for evaluation the average fidelity of a noisy quantum circuit. However, it is insensitive to the unitary error. Here, we propose a method of randomized benchmarking in which a unitary t-design is applied and by which the unitary error estimation can be converted to analysis of pseudo-randomness on a set of unitary operators. We give a bound on the number of randomized benchmarking sequences, when performing a unitary t-design on n-qubit d-dimensional system. By applying local random unitary operators, a decomposition of a unitary t-design, the bound …
While quantum circuits built from two-particle dual-unitary (maximally entangled) operators serve as minimal models of typically nonintegrable many-body systems, the construction and characterization of dual-unitary operators themselves are only partially understood. A nonlinear map on the space of unitary operators was proposed in PRL.~125, 070501 (2020) that results in operators being arbitrarily close to dual unitaries. Here we study the map analytically for the two-qubit case describing the basins of attraction, fixed points, and rates of approach to dual unitaries. A subset of dual-unitar…
Generalized group designs: constructing novel unitary 2-, 3- and 4-designs
HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics（匈牙利科学院维格纳物理研究中心）；Eötvös Loránd University（罗兰大学）；Algorithmiq Ltd（Algorithmiq有限公司）；University of Helsinki（赫尔辛基大学）
Unambiguous unitary maps and unambiguous unitary quantum channels are introduced and some of their properties are derived. These properties ensure certain simple form for the measurements involved in realizing an unambiguous unitary quantum channel. Error correction and unambiguous error correction with nonzero probability are discussed in terms of unambiguous unitary quantum channels. We not only re-derive the well-known condition for a set of errors to be correctable with certainty, but also obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the errors caused by a noisy channel to be correctabl…
We show that weighted unitary 2-designs define optimal measurements on the system-ancilla output state for ancilla-assisted process tomography of unital quantum channels. Examples include complete sets of mutually unbiased unitary-operator bases. Each of these specifies a minimal series of optimal orthogonal measurements. General quantum channels are also considered.
We address the question of existence of private quantum channel for qubits encoded in polarization degrees of freedom of a photon, that remains secure even if multi-photon (instead of single-photon) pulse is emitted. We show that random unitary channel distributed according to SU(2) Haar measure has this property. Further we analyze the qubit unitary k-designs. We show they ensure security if the photons' parity of the source is guaranteed. Otherwise, the qubit unitary k-designs do not guarantee perfect security.
A unitary design is a collection of unitary matrices that approximate the entire unitary group, much like a spherical design approximates the entire unit sphere. In this paper, we use irreducible representations of the unitary group to find a general lower bound on the size of a unitary t-design in U(d), for any d and t. We also introduce the notion of a unitary code - a subset of U(d) in which the trace inner product of any pair of matrices is restricted to only a small number of distinct values - and give an upper bound for the size of a code of degree s in U(d) for any d and s. These bounds…
A unitary 2-design can be viewed as a quantum analogue of a 2-universal hash function: it is indistinguishable from a truly random unitary by any procedure that queries it twice. We show that exact unitary 2-designs on n qubits can be implemented by quantum circuits consisting of ~O(n) elementary gates in logarithmic depth. This is essentially a quadratic improvement in size (and in width times depth) over all previous implementations that are exact or approximate (for sufficiently strong approximations).
In terms of the analysis of fixed point subgroup and tensor decomposability of certain matrices, we study the equivalence of of quantum bipartite mixed states under local unitary transformations. For non-degenerate case an operational criterion for the equivalence of two such mixed bipartite states under local unitary transformations is presented.
We propose a simple formalism to design unitary gates robust against given systematic errors. This formalism generalizes our previous observation [Y. Kondo and M. Bando, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 80, 054002 (2011)] that vanishing dynamical phase in some composite gates is essential to suppress amplitude errors. By employing our formalism, we naturally derive a new composite unitary gate which can be seen as a concatenation of two known composite unitary operations. The obtained unitary gate has high fidelity over a wider range of the error strengths compared to existing composite gates.
We develop the concept of a unitary t-design as a means of expressing operationally useful subsets of the stochastic properties of the uniform (Haar) measure on the unitary group U(2^n) on n qubits. In particular, sets of unitaries forming 2-designs have wide applicability to quantum information protocols. We devise an O(n)-size in-place circuit construction for an approximate unitary 2-design. We then show that this can be used to construct an efficient protocol for experimentally characterizing the fidelity of a quantum process on n qubits with quantum circuits of size O(n) without requiring…
The famous Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma states that for any set of n vectors, there is a linear transformation into a space of dimension O(log n) that approximately preserves all their lengths. In fact, a Haar random unitary transformation followed by projection onto the first O(log n) coordinates followed by a scaling works as a valid transformation with high probability. In this work, we show that the Haar random unitary can be replaced by a uniformly random unitary chosen from a finite set called an approximate unitary t-design for t = O(log n). Choosing a unitary from such a design requires…
Unitary $k$-designs are finite ensembles of unitary matrices that approximate the Haar distribution over unitary matrices. Several ensembles are known to be 2-designs, including the uniform distribution over the Clifford group, but no family of ensembles was previously known to form a 3-design. We prove that the Clifford group is a 3-design, showing that it is a better approximation to Haar-random unitaries than previously expected. Our proof strategy works for any distribution of unitaries satisfying a property we call Pauli 2-mixing and proceeds without the use of heavy mathematical machiner…
Unitary $2$-designs are random unitaries simulating up to the second order statistical moments of the uniformly distributed random unitaries, often referred to as Haar random unitaries. They are used in a wide variety of theoretical and practical quantum information protocols, and also have been used to model the dynamics in complex quantum many-body systems. Here, we show that unitary $2$-designs can be approximately implemented by alternately repeating random unitaries diagonal in the Pauli-$Z$ basis and that in the Pauli-$X$ basis. We also provide a converse about the number of repetitions …
A unitary t-design is a set of unitaries that is "evenly distributed" in the sense that the average of any t-th order polynomial over the design equals the average over the entire unitary group. In various fields -- e.g. quantum information theory -- one frequently encounters constructions that rely on matrices drawn uniformly at random from the unitary group. Often, it suffices to sample these matrices from a unitary t-design, for sufficiently high t. This results in more explicit, derandomized constructions. The most prominent unitary t-design considered in quantum information is the multi-q…
Unitary $k$-designs are probabilistic ensembles of unitary matrices whose first $k$ statistical moments match that of the full unitary group endowed with the Haar measure. In prior work, we showed that the automorphism group of classical $\mathbb{Z}_4$-linear Kerdock codes maps to a unitary $2$-design, which established a new classical-quantum connection via graph states. In this paper, we construct a Markov process that mixes this Kerdock $2$-design with symplectic transvections, and show that this process produces an $ε$-approximate unitary $3$-design. We construct a graph whose vertices are…
We study efficient generations of random diagonal-unitary matrices, an ensemble of unitary matrices diagonal in a given basis with randomly distributed phases for their eigenvalues. Despite the simple algebraic structure, they cannot be achieved by quantum circuits composed of a few-qubit diagonal gates. We introduce diagonal-unitary $t$-designs and present two quantum circuits that implement diagonal-unitary $2$-designs with the computational basis in $N$-qubit systems. One is composed of single-qubit diagonal gates and controlled-phase gates with randomized phases, which achieves an exact di…
ICFO – Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology（光子科学研究所，巴塞罗那科技研究院）；Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems, Department of Physics, Freie Universität Berlin（达勒姆复杂量子系统中心，柏林自由大学物理系）
The Clifford group is the quotient of the normalizer of the Weyl-Heisenberg group in dimension $d$ by its centre. We prove that when $d$ is not prime the Clifford group is not a group unitary $2$-design. Furthermore, we prove that the multipartite Clifford group is not a group unitary 2-design except for the known cases wherein the local Hilbert space dimensions are a constant prime number. We also clarify the structure of projective group unitary $2$-designs. We show that the adjoint action induced by a group unitary $2$-design decomposes into exactly two irreducible components; moreover, a g…
We consider a variant of the phase retrieval problem, where vectors are replaced by unitary matrices, i.e., the unknown signal is a unitary matrix U, and the measurements consist of squared inner products |Tr(C*U)|^2 with unitary matrices C that are chosen by the observer. This problem has applications to quantum process tomography, when the unknown process is a unitary operation. We show that PhaseLift, a convex programming algorithm for phase retrieval, can be adapted to this matrix setting, using measurements that are sampled from unitary 4- and 2-designs. In the case of unitary 4-design me…
We provide new constructions of unitary $t$-designs for general $t$ on one qudit and $N$ qubits, and propose a design Hamiltonian, a random Hamiltonian of which dynamics always forms a unitary design after a threshold time, as a basic framework to investigate randomising time evolution in quantum many-body systems. The new constructions are based on recently proposed schemes of repeating random unitaires diagonal in mutually unbiased bases. We first show that, if a pair of the bases satisfies a certain condition, the process on one qudit approximately forms a unitary $t$-design after $O(t)$ re…
The capacity to randomly pick a unitary across the whole unitary group is a powerful tool across physics and quantum information. A unitary $t$-design is designed to tackle this challenge in an efficient way, yet constructions to date rely on heavy constraints. In particular, they are composed of ensembles of unitaries which, for technical reasons, must contain inverses and whose entries are algebraic. In this work, we reduce the requirements for generating an $\varepsilon$-approximate unitary $t$-design. To do so, we first construct a specific $n$-qubit random quantum circuit composed of a se…
Quantum algorithms are typically understood in terms of the evolution of a multi-qubit quantum system under a prescribed sequence of unitary transformations. The input to the algorithm prescribes some of the unitary transformations in the sequence with others remaining fixed. For oracle query algorithms, the input determines the oracle unitary transformation. Such algorithms can be regarded as devices for discriminating amongst a set of unitary transformations. The question arises: "Given a set of known oracle unitary transformations, to what extent is it possible to discriminate amongst them?…
The representation of discrete, compact wavelet transformations (WTs) as circuits of local unitary gates is discussed. We employ a similar formalism as used in the multi-scale representation of quantum many-body wavefunctions using unitary circuits, further cementing the relation established in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 140403 (2016)] between classical and quantum multi-scale methods. An algorithm for constructing the circuit representation of known orthogonal, dyadic, discrete WTs is presented, and the explicit representation for Daubechies wavelets, coiflets, and symlets is provided. Furthermor…
Robust control design for quantum unitary transformations has been recognized as a fundamental and challenging task in the development of quantum information processing due to unavoidable decoherence or operational errors in the experimental implementation of quantum operations. In this paper, we extend the systematic methodology of sampling-based learning control (SLC) approach with a gradient flow algorithm for the design of robust quantum unitary transformations. The SLC approach first uses a "training" process to find an optimal control strategy robust against certain ranges of uncertainti…
Random quantum circuits are proficient information scramblers and efficient generators of randomness, rapidly approximating moments of the unitary group. We study the convergence of local random quantum circuits to unitary $k$-designs. Employing a statistical mechanical mapping, we give an exact expression of the distance to forming an approximate design as a lattice partition function. In the statistical mechanics model, the approach to randomness has a simple interpretation in terms of domain walls extending through the circuit. We analytically compute the second moment, showing that random …
We show that a unitary operation (quantum circuit) secretely chosen from a finite set of unitary operations can be determined with certainty by sequentially applying only a finite amount of runs of the unknown circuit. No entanglement or joint quantum operations is required in our scheme. We further show that our scheme is optimal in the sense that the number of the runs is minimal when discriminating only two unitary operations.
Unitary $t$-designs are the bread and butter of quantum information theory and beyond. An important issue in practice is that of efficiently constructing good approximations of such unitary $t$-designs. Building on results by Aubrun (Comm. Math. Phys. 2009), we prove that sampling $d^t\mathrm{poly}(t,\log d, 1/ε)$ unitaries from an exact $t$-design provides with positive probability an $ε$-approximate $t$-design, if the error is measured in one-to-one norm distance of the corresponding $t$-twirling channels. As an application, we give a partially derandomized construction of a quantum encrypti…
In this paper, we critically revisit the Horowitz-Maldacena proposal and its generalization by Lloyd. In the original proposal, as well as in Lloyd's generalization, Hawking radiation involves a pair of maximally entangled quantum states in which the ingoing partner state and the collapsed matter form either a maximally entangled pair or a Schmidt decomposed random state near the singularity. We point out that the unitary matrix introduced in Lloyd's fidelity calculation depends on initial matter states; hence, his result on the high average fidelity may not represent an almost unitary evoluti…
Quantum physical unclonable functions, or QPUFs, are rapidly emerging as theoretical hardware solutions to provide secure cryptographic functionalities such as key-exchange, message authentication, entity identification among others. Recent works have shown that in order to provide provable security of these solutions against any quantum polynomial time adversary, QPUFs are required to be a unitary sampled uniformly randomly from the Haar measure. This however is known to require an exponential amount of resources. In this work, we propose an efficient construction of these devices using unita…
Memoryless processes are ubiquitous in nature, in contrast with the mathematics of open systems theory, which states that non-Markovian processes should be the norm. This discrepancy is usually addressed by subjectively making the environment forgetful. Here we prove that there are physical non-Markovian processes that with high probability look highly Markovian for all orders of correlations; we call this phenomenon Markovianization. Formally, we show that when a quantum process has dynamics given by an approximate unitary design, a large deviation bound on the size of non-Markovian memory is…
Stochastic channels are ubiquitous in the field of quantum information because they are simple and easy to analyze. In particular, Pauli channels and depolarizing channels are widely studied because they can be efficiently simulated in many relevant quantum circuits. Despite their wide use, the properties of general stochastic channels have received little attention. In this paper, we prove that the diamond distance of a general stochastic channel from the identity coincides with its process infidelity to the identity. We demonstrate with an explicit example that there exist multi-qubit stocha…
Absolutely Maximally Entangled (AME) states are those multipartite quantum states that carry absolute maximum entanglement in all possible partitions. AME states are known to play a relevant role in multipartite teleportation, in quantum secret sharing and they provide the basis novel tensor networks related to holography. We present alternative constructions of AME states and show their link with combinatorial designs. We also analyze a key property of AME, namely their relation to tensors that can be understood as unitary transformations in every of its bi-partitions. We call this property m…
Entangled multipartite states are resources for universal quantum computation, but they can also give rise to ensembles of unitary transformations, a topic usually studied in the context of random quantum circuits. Using several graph state techniques, we show that these resources can `derandomize' circuit results by sampling the same kinds of ensembles quantum mechanically, (analogously to a quantum random number generator). Furthermore, we find simple examples that give rise to new ensembles whose statistical moments exactly match those of the uniformly random distribution over all unitaries…
We investigate protocols for generating a state $t$-design by using a fixed separable initial state and a diagonal-unitary $t$-design in the computational basis, which is a $t$-design of an ensemble of diagonal unitary matrices with random phases as their eigenvalues. We first show that a diagonal-unitary $t$-design generates a $O(1/2^N)$-approximate state $t$-design, where $N$ is the number of qubits. We then discuss a way of improving the degree of approximation by exploiting non-diagonal gates after applying a diagonal-unitary $t$-design. We also show that it is necessary and sufficient to …
We propose a unitary procedure to reconstruct quantum secret for a quantum secret sharing scheme constructed from stabilizer quantum error-correcting codes. Erasure correcting procedures for stabilizer codes need to add missing shares for reconstruction of quantum secret while unitary reconstruction procedures for certain class of quantum secret sharing are known to work without adding missing shares. The proposed procedure also works without adding missing shares.
Recent works have investigated the emergence of a new kind of random matrix behaviour in unitary dynamics following a quantum quench. Starting from a time-evolved state, an ensemble of pure states supported on a small subsystem can be generated by performing projective measurements on the remainder of the system, leading to a projected ensemble. In chaotic quantum systems it was conjectured that such projected ensembles become indistinguishable from the uniform Haar-random ensemble and lead to a quantum state design. Exact results were recently presented by Ho and Choi [Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 0…
