English

On character table of Clifford groups

Representation Theory 2025-02-07 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP Quantum Physics

Abstract

Based on a presentation of Cn\mathcal{C}_n and the help of [GAP], we construct the character table of the Clifford group Cn\mathcal{C}_n for n=1,2,3n=1,2,3. As an application, we can efficiently decompose the (higher power of) tensor product of the matrix representation in those cases. Our results recover some known results in [HWW, WF] and reveal some new phenomena. We prove that when n3n \geq 3, (1) the trivial character is the only linear character for Cn\mathcal{C}_n and hence Cn\mathcal{C}_n equals to its commutator subgroup, (2) the nn-qubit Pauli group Pn\mathcal{P}_n is the only proper non-trivial normal subgroup of Cn\mathcal{C}_n, (3) the matrix representation M2n\mathcal{M}_{2^n} is a faithful representation for Cn\mathcal{C}_n. As a byproduct, we give a presentation of the finite symplectic group Sp(2n,2)Sp(2n,2) in terms of generators and relations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.14850,
  title  = {On character table of Clifford groups},
  author = {Chin-Yen Lee and Wei-Hsuan Yu and Yung-Ning Peng and Ching-Jui Lai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.14850},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

15 pages; comments and suggestions are welcome. Two conjectures in last version are proved and one is disproved; references updated

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:32:39.318Z