Deriving optimal QPD for the CZ gate#

Here we will briefly go over where the decomposition for the CZ gate used comes from and how that is transfromed to operations implementable on a quantum computer. The derivation is based on [1].

Background#

The goal is to decompose a quantum channel implementing the CZ gate into a set of local channels implementable as single qubits operations. This decomposed channel can then be sampled to approximate the expectation values of the original channel.

Factor the CZ gate#

The CZ gate can (upto global phase) be decomposed as:

(1)#\[\begin{equation} CZ = \exp(i\pi Z \otimes I/4) \cdot \exp(i\pi I \otimes Z/4) \cdot \exp(-i\pi Z \otimes Z/4) \end{equation}\]

We can immediately see that the first two channels are just local single qubit Z rotations, S gates in this case. The only non-local part is then the third term \(\exp(-i\pi Z \otimes Z/4)\) and so has the form \(\exp(i\theta A_1 \otimes A_2)\) with \(A_1 = A_2 = Z, \theta = -\pi/4\)

Apply Lemma 1 from [1]#

The lemma states that we can decompose the super operator \(S(\exp(i\theta A_1 \otimes A_2))\) as:

(2)#\[\begin{equation} \begin{aligned} S(\exp(i\theta A_1 \otimes A_2)) &= \cos^2(\theta)S(I \otimes I) + \sin^2(\theta)S(A_1 \otimes A_2) + 1/8 \cos(\theta)\sin(\theta) \\ & \sum_{(\alpha_1, \alpha_2) \in \{\pm 1\}} \alpha_1 \alpha_2 [S((I+\alpha_1A_1) \otimes S(I+i\alpha_2A_2)) + \\ & S((I+i\alpha_1A_1) \otimes S(I+\alpha_2A_2))] \end{aligned} \end{equation}\]

if \(A_1^2 = A_2^2 = I\), which is the case for the pauli operators.

Transform to gates#

In less mathematical terms we can decompose any gate of form \(S(\exp(i\theta A_1 \otimes A_2))\) into a set of 6 single qubit operations. Looking at the decomposition we can see that term 1 is just applying identity on both qubits aka doing nothing. The second term is applying \(A_1\) on qubit 1 and \(A_2\) on qubit 2, remember that A are pauli operators and the total operations of term 2 is then the Z gate on both qubits. The third term is a bit more complex so let us look at it in detail.

Term 3#

Let us look at the structure that repeats twice in the sum: \(S((I+\alpha_1A_1) \otimes S(I+i\alpha_2A_2))\)

We can see that the superoperator acts separately on each qubit so we can look at in in two parts. By calculating out the matrices Appendix 1 we can see that the imaginary term is just the S gate (for \(\alpha=-1\)) and the \(S^\dagger\) gate for \(\alpha=+1\). Similarly we can see that the real term is the \(\ket{0}\bra{0}\) projector for \(\alpha=+1\) and the \(\ket{1}\bra{1}\) for \(\alpha=-1\). The total operation from the third term then becomes either measure + apply S/\(S^\dagger\) or apply S/\(S^\dagger\) + measure.


Now we can get the full decomposition by applying the extra terms from equation 1, which are also just S gates and calculating the coefficients Appendix 2. The full decomposition is then:

Qubit 1

Qubit 2

Coef

S

S

1/2

Z S

Z S

1/2

Meas

Z

-1/2

Meas

I

1/2

Z

Meas

-1/2

I

Meas

1/2

Here Meas is the computational basis measurement and Z S means first applying the Z gate and the the S gate. I is the identity gate. Z S could also be simplified to the \(S^\dagger\) gate here since they are equal.

Summing over the absolute coefficients we get \(\gamma=3\) which is optimal (without communication).

References#

  1. K. Mitarai and K. Fujii, “Constructing a virtual two-qubit gate by sampling single-qubit operations”, New J. Phys., vol. 23, no. 2, p. 023021, Feb. 2021, doi: 10.1088/1367-2630/abd7bc.

Appendix#

1. Explicitly calculate term 3 matrices#

\( \begin{aligned} Z =& \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & -1 \end{pmatrix} \\ \end{aligned} \), \( \begin{aligned} I =& \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix} \\ \end{aligned} \)

Imagnary term#

\(I+i\alpha A\), with

A = Z, \(\alpha = \pm 1\)

Expanding gives: \( \begin{aligned} & \begin{pmatrix} i\pm 1 & 0 \\ 0 & i\mp 1 \end{pmatrix} \\ &= (1 \pm i)\begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & \pm i \end{pmatrix} \\ \end{aligned} \)

This is exactly equal to the S/\(S^\dagger\) gate (upto global phase which gets absorber by the coefficient).

Real term#

\(I+\alpha A\), with

A = Z, \(\alpha = \pm 1\)

Expanding gives: For \(\alpha = +1\)

\( \begin{aligned} & 2\begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 \end{pmatrix} \\ &= 2\ket{0}\bra{0} \end{aligned} \)

For \(\alpha = -1\)

\( \begin{aligned} & 2\begin{pmatrix} 0 & 0 \\ 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix} \\ &= 2\ket{1}\bra{1} \end{aligned} \)

These are exactly the 0 and 1 projectors (the factor of 2 gets absorbed by the coefficient)

2. Calculating coefficients#

The coefficients follow immediately from the coefficients of equation 2. Let us go term wise:

Term 1#

\(\cos^2(\pi /4)=\frac{1}{2}\)

Term 2#

\(\sin^2(\pi /4)=\frac{1}{2}\)

Term 3#

\(\frac{1}{8}\cos(\pi/4)\sin(\pi/4) = \frac{1}{16}\)

Nos this gets multiplied by the extra factors from the terms in Appendix A (since they can be moved out of the sum). This then gives us:

\(\frac{1}{16}*2^2*|1 + i|^2 = \frac{1}{16}*4*2=\frac{1}{2}\)

And finally this is multiplied by the \(\alpha_1 \alpha_2\) factor from the sum yielding \(\pm \frac{1}{2}\) as the coeffcient for term 3 depending on the \(\alpha's\).