J-gate phase-error operator norm 2026-10-06
The J gate is , where : the phase gate acts first and the Hadamard gate acts second. Unitary invariance of the operator norm reduces its angle error to the single nonzero diagonal difference of the phase gate. Its norm is . The quantum circuit gate-error telescoping bound then makes an angle tolerance of sufficient for such imperfect gates and exact other gates.
Operator-norm distance between unitary gates 2026-10-25
The largest pure-state norm distance between outputs of two unitary operators on the same normalized input. By definition of the operator norm, it is . If it is at most , every input is approximated to that accuracy. A version disregarding the operation's global phase minimizes over one common . Error in a finite quantum circuit accumulates at most additively by the quantum circuit gate-error telescoping bound.
A finite universal quantum gate set can approximate every unitary on any fixed finite number of qubits to any prescribed positive accuracy, using a finite circuit of its gates on allowed wires. Explicitly, for every target and there is such a circuit withThe global-phase convention is the one just specified. Universality means arbitrary approximation, not exact representation of an uncountable family by finitely described circuits. Products of approximate gates can be controlled using the quantum circuit gate-error telescoping bound.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 47 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write both the input and output integer labels in most-significant-bit-first order, and . Factoring the Fourier phase over the bits of gives the product decomposition of a Fourier phase state:Here denotes the binary fraction ; the integer part of does not affect the phase.
Build a dyadic quantum Fourier transform circuit as follows. Process wires in that order. First apply a Hadamard gate to wire . Then, for each , apply the controlled phase gate with control wire and target wire . On a computational-basis state, every unprocessed control is still the bit , so wire becomesOnce a wire has been processed it is not touched by later stages. Reversing the order of the output wires gives exactly the Fourier product above. Agreement on every computational-basis state proves agreement as linear operators on all superpositions, even though the intermediate operation on a general input can create entanglement.
There are Hadamard gates and controlled phase gates. Output reversal may be treated as wire relabelling. If it must instead be implemented physically while using only the requested gate family, use swap operators. Each swap is three controlled-NOT gates, andThus the swaps use only Hadamard gates and Controlled-Z gates, which are controlled gates. An exact physical network haselementary gates from the stated family. This implements the positive-exponent Fourier transform with the correct output order in quadratic size. Omitting the output reversal without relabelling the wires would produce the reversed-order transform instead.
For the perturbation bound, the operator norm in the source is equivalently . It satisfies the triangle inequality, is unchanged by left or right multiplication by a unitary operator, and a unitary operator has norm one. The exact telescoping identity isIt follows by replacing one factor at a time; alternatively all intermediate products cancel in the sum. Taking the operator norm and using unitary invariance gives the quantum circuit gate-error telescoping boundThe original PDF assumes strict , so its strict conclusion is justified. If the hypothesis were weakened to a non-strict inequality, the conclusion would likewise be . The TeX aid misreads this hypothesis; the PDF resolves it.
Apply the non-strict version to each approximate unitary gate in the Fourier network. Extending a gate by the identity on other wires leaves its operator norm error unchanged. Including the physical swap decompositions, all gates are of the required type and can obey the stated accuracy. HenceWith exact output relabelling rather than physical swaps the numerator is just . The proof retains gate phases and makes no assumption of cancellation between coherent errors.
For every normalized input the output-state norm error is at most this same bound. If is any positive operator satisfying , the change in its measurement in quantum mechanics outcome probability is at most , where : expand the difference of the two expectations into two terms, each bounded by using the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. Thus inverse-polynomial gate accuracy gives an inverse-polynomial total error, rather than requiring exponential precision in the number of qubits. For the phase gates this corresponds to specifying angles with bits of precision, since . This is a robustness statement for unitary gate approximations; it does not by itself correct quantum decoherence, correlated stochastic faults, or limitations of hardware connectivity.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 61 4 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Use the operator norm induced by the usual vector norm, and assume the input quantum state is normalized. Since and the Hadamard gate is unitary, the J-gate phase-error operator norm isWrite the exact and implemented quantum circuits as ordered products and . The quantum circuit gate-error telescoping bound follows fromEvery surrounding factor is unitary, including gates tensored with identities on other qubits, so the triangle inequality and the submultiplicativity of the operator norm giveThe exact Controlled-Z gates contribute zero to that sum. ThusThe endpoint is sufficient because each implemented angle error is strictly smaller than . If , the circuits are identical and any positive works. The bound controls the stated vector distance with actual gate phases retained, so no adjustment of the global phase of one output is needed.