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The ZX-calculus is complete for the single-qubit Clifford+T group

2014/12/30 by Miriam Backens
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.4204/eptcs.172.21

published as EPTCS 172, 2014, pp. 293-303 · In Proceedings QPL 2014, arXiv:1412.8102

arxiv created 2014/12/30 · arxiv updated 2014/12/31

Abstract

The ZX-calculus is a graphical calculus for reasoning about pure state qubit quantum mechanics. It is complete for pure qubit stabilizer quantum mechanics, meaning any equality involving only stabilizer operations that can be derived using matrices can also be derived pictorially. Stabilizer operations include the unitary Clifford group, as well as preparation of qubits in the state |0>, and measurements in the computational basis. For general pure state qubit quantum mechanics, the ZX-calculus is incomplete: there exist equalities involving non-stabilizer unitary operations on single qubits which cannot be derived from the current rule set for the ZX-calculus. Here, we show that the ZX-calculus for single qubits remains complete upon adding the operator T to the single-qubit stabilizer operations. This is particularly interesting as the resulting single-qubit Clifford+T group is approximately universal, i.e. any unitary single-qubit operator can be approximated to arbitrary accuracy using only Clifford operators and T.

Citations