English

Unitarization Through Approximate Basis

Quantum Physics 2021-09-15 v2 Computational Complexity

Abstract

We introduce the problem of unitarization. Unitarization is the problem of taking kk input quantum circuits that produce orthogonal states from the all 00 state, and create an output circuit implementing a unitary with its first kk columns as those states. That is, the output circuit takes the kkth computational basis state to the state prepared by the kkth input circuit. We allow the output circuit to use ancilla qubits initialized to 00. But ancilla qubits must always be returned to 00 for any input. The input circuits may use ancilla qubits, but we are only guaranteed the they return ancilla qubits to 00 on the all 00 input. The unitarization problem seems hard if the output states are neither orthogonal to or in the span of the computational basis states that need to map to them. In this work, we approximately solve this problem in the case where input circuits are given as black box oracles by probably finding an approximate basis for our states. This method may be more interesting than the application. This technique is a sort of quantum analogue of Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization for quantum states. Specifically, we find an approximate basis in polynomial time for the following parameters. Take any natural nn, k=O(ln(n)ln(ln(n)))k = O\left(\frac{\ln(n)}{\ln(\ln(n))}\right), and ϵ=2O(ln(n))\epsilon = 2^{-O(\sqrt{\ln(n)})}. Take any kk input quantum states, (ψi)i[k](|\psi_i \rangle)_{i\in [k]}, on polynomial in nn qubits prepared by quantum oracles, (Vi)i[k](V_i)_{i \in [k]} (that we can control call and control invert). Then there is a quantum circuit with polynomial size in nn with access to the oracles (Vi)i[k](V_i)_{i \in [k]} that with at least 1ϵ1 - \epsilon probability, computes at most kk circuits with size polynomial in nn and oracle access to (Vi)i[k](V_i)_{i \in [k]} that ϵ\epsilon approximately computes an ϵ\epsilon approximate orthonormal basis for (ψi)i[k](|\psi_i \rangle)_{i\in [k]}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2104.00785,
  title  = {Unitarization Through Approximate Basis},
  author = {Joshua Cook},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.00785},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Review Significantly improves presentation of results, adds more details

R2 v1 2026-06-24T00:47:30.082Z