arXiv subjects

Nadish de Silva

Publications and source records attributed to Nadish de Silva.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The generalised semi-Clifford conjecture is false

The Clifford hierarchy is a nested sequence of sets of quantum gates that can be fault-tolerantly performed using gate teleportation within standard quantum error correction schemes. The importance of these gates has motivated numerous studies of their structure. Zeng-Chen-Chuang conjectured in 2007 that all hierarchy gates are generalised semi-Clifford, i.e. take the form $C_1 ΠD C_2$ for Clifford gates $C_1, C_2$, a permutation gate $Π$, and a diagonal gate $D$; Beigi-Shor proved in 2008 that this holds for all third-level gates. We construct a five-qubit gate that is in the fifth level of the Clifford hierarchy but is not generalised semi-Clifford. Rather than simply present and verify our counterexample to the generalised semi-Clifford conjecture, we show how its form can be deduced. Our counterexample also demonstrates that the Clifford hierarchy is not closed under inverses.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Three-qubit nonlocality paradoxes: beyond GHZ

Quantum nonlocality paradoxes, such as that of GHZ, provide maximally sharp logical obstructions to classical probabilistic models of quantum correlations. They are key resources in a broad variety of information-theoretic tasks that exhibit unconditional quantum advantage. For example, in nonlocal games, which are communication tasks that serve as core technical tools in recent landmark results in quantum computational complexity theory. Their role in establishing quantum advantage motivated their study by Abramsky et al. who introduced an infinite family of three-qubit paradoxes exhibiting novel conditional structure. This was later extended by the present authors into a full classification program. In this work, we completely classify all three-qubit nonlocality paradoxes established via a biconditional parity proof; this is a very large class of paradoxes that encompasses all earlier-known examples. We do this by introducing a suite of new structural and combinatorial techniques. We find that the landscape of nonlocality paradoxes is far richer than previously understood, violating regularity conditions underlying all prior constructions.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

High-threshold magic state distillation with quantum quadratic residue codes

We present applications of quantum quadratic residue codes in magic state distillation. This includes showing that existing codes which are known to distill magic states, like the $5$-qubit perfect code, the $7$-qubit Steane code, and the $11$-qutrit and $23$-qubit Golay codes, are equivalent to certain quantum quadratic residue codes. We also present new examples of quantum quadratic residue codes that distill qubit $T$ states and qutrit Strange states with high thresholds, and we show that there are infinitely many quantum quadratic residue codes that distill $T$ states with a non-trivial threshold. All of these codes, including the codes with the highest currently known thresholds for $T$ state and Strange state distillation, are unified under the umbrella of quantum quadratic residue codes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

A Classification Program for Nonlocality Paradoxes of Three Qubits

Nonlocality is a quintessential signature of nonclassical behaviour and a resource for quantum advantages in communication and computation. The paradoxical correlations witnessed by strong nonlocality undergird the standard probabilistic form of nonlocality and provide optimal advantages in numerous informational tasks. Three-qubit systems are the simplest ones that admit strong nonlocality. Abramsky et al. (TQC, 2017) established the existence of an infinite family of three-qubit paradoxes, beyond the well-known GHZ paradox, which exhibited a novel conditional structure. In this work, we introduce several new infinite families of three-qubit paradoxes and articulate a detailed roadmap towards the complete classification of all three-qubit nonlocality paradoxes. In particular, we prove that our paradoxes exhaust all those satisfying reasonable regularity conditions. We give an example of a highly exotic paradox and place constraints on the search for new exotic paradoxes. We conjecture that all paradoxes must involve states from a one-parameter family and provide significant evidence in support of this conjecture.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

The Clifford hierarchy for one qubit or qudit

The Clifford hierarchy is a nested sequence of sets of quantum gates that can be fault-tolerantly performed using gate teleportation within standard quantum error correction schemes. The groups of Pauli and Clifford gates constitute the first and second 'levels', respectively. Non-Clifford gates from the third level or higher, such as the $T$ gate, are necessary for achieving fault-tolerant universal quantum computation. Since it was defined twenty-five years ago by Gottesman-Chuang, two questions have been studied by numerous researchers. First, precisely which gates constitute the Clifford hierarchy? Second, which subset of the hierarchy gates admit efficient gate teleportation protocols? We completely solve both questions in the practically-relevant case of the Clifford hierarchy for gates of one qubit or one qudit of prime dimension. We express every such hierarchy gate uniquely as a product of three simple gates, yielding also a formula for the size of every level. These results are a consequence of our finding that all such hierarchy gates can be expressed in a certain form that guarantees efficient gate teleportation. Our decomposition of Clifford gates as a unique product of three elementary Clifford gates is of broad applicability.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Fast algorithms for classical specifications of stabiliser states and Clifford gates

The stabiliser formalism plays a central role in quantum computing, error correction, and fault tolerance. Conversions between and verifications of different specifications of stabiliser states and Clifford gates are important components of many classical algorithms in quantum information, e.g. for gate synthesis, circuit optimisation, and simulating quantum circuits. These core functions are also used in the numerical experiments critical to formulating and testing mathematical conjectures on the stabiliser formalism. We develop novel mathematical insights concerning stabiliser states and Clifford gates that significantly clarify their descriptions. We then utilise these to provide ten new fast algorithms which offer asymptotic advantages over any existing implementations. We show how to rapidly verify that a vector is a stabiliser state, and interconvert between its specification as amplitudes, a quadratic form, and a check matrix. These methods are leveraged to rapidly check if a given unitary matrix is a Clifford gate and to interconvert between the matrix of a Clifford gate and its compact specification as a stabiliser tableau. For example, we extract the stabiliser tableau of a $2^n \times 2^n$ matrix, promised to be a Clifford gate, in $O(n 2^n)$ time. Remarkably, it is not necessary to read all the elements of a Clifford gate matrix to extract its stabiliser tableau. This is an asymptotic speedup over the best-known method that is exponential in the number of qubits. We provide implementations of our algorithms in $\texttt{Python}$ and $\texttt{C++}$ that exhibit vastly improved practical performance over existing algorithms in the cases where they exist.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Matchgate hierarchy: A Clifford-like hierarchy for deterministic gate teleportation in matchgate circuits

The Clifford hierarchy, introduced by Gottesman and Chuang in 1999, is an increasing sequence of sets of quantum gates crucial to the gate teleportation model for fault-tolerant quantum computation. Gates in the hierarchy can be deterministically implemented, with increasing complexity, via gate teleportation using (adaptive) Clifford circuits with access to magic states. We propose an analogous gate teleportation protocol and a related hierarchy in the context of matchgate circuits, another restricted class of quantum circuits that can be efficiently classically simulated but are promoted to quantum universality via access to `matchgate-magic' states. The protocol deterministically implements any $n$-qubit gate in the hierarchy using adaptive matchgate circuits with magic states, with the level in the hierarchy indicating the required depth of adaptivity and thus number of magic states consumed. It also provides a whole family of novel deterministic matchgate-magic states. We completely characterise the gates in the matchgate hierarchy for two qubits, with the consequence that, in this case, the required number of resource states grows linearly with the target gate's level in the hierarchy. For an arbitrary number of qubits, we propose a characterisation of the matchgate hierarchy by leveraging the fermionic Stone$\unicode{x2013}$von Neumann theorem. It places a polynomial upper bound on the space requirements for representing gates at each level.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Bases for optimising stabiliser decompositions of quantum states

Stabiliser states play a central role in the theory of quantum computation. For example, they are used to encode computational basis states in the most common quantum error correction schemes. Arbitrary quantum states admit many stabiliser decompositions: ways of being expressed as a superposition of stabiliser states. Understanding the structure of stabiliser decompositions has significant applications in verifying and simulating near-term quantum computers. We introduce and study the vector space of linear dependencies of $n$-qubit stabiliser states. These spaces have canonical bases containing vectors whose size grows exponentially in $n$. We construct elegant bases of linear dependencies of constant size three. Critically, our sparse bases can be computed without first compiling a dictionary of all $n$-qubit stabiliser states. We utilise them to explicitly compute the stabiliser extent of states of more qubits than is feasible with existing techniques. Finally, we delineate future applications to improving theoretical bounds on the stabiliser rank of magic states.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Characterising semi-Clifford gates using algebraic sets

Motivated by their central role in fault-tolerant quantum computation, we study the sets of gates of the third-level of the Clifford hierarchy and their distinguished subsets of `nearly diagonal' semi-Clifford gates. The Clifford hierarchy gates can be implemented via gate teleportation given appropriate magic states. The vast quantity of these resource states required for achieving fault-tolerance is a significant bottleneck for the practical realisation of universal quantum computers. Semi-Clifford gates are important because they can be implemented with far more efficient use of these resource states. We prove that every third-level gate of up to two qudits is semi-Clifford. We thus generalise results of Zeng-Chen-Chuang (2008) in the qubit case and of the second author (2020) in the qutrit case to the case of qudits of arbitrary prime dimension $d$. Earlier results relied on exhaustive computations whereas our present work leverages tools of algebraic geometry. Specifically, we construct two schemes corresponding to the sets of third-level Clifford hierarchy gates and third-level semi-Clifford gates. We then show that the two algebraic sets resulting from reducing these schemes modulo $d$ share the same set of rational points.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Efficient quantum gate teleportation in higher dimensions

The Clifford hierarchy is a nested sequence of sets of quantum gates critical to achieving fault-tolerant quantum computation. Diagonal gates of the Clifford hierarchy and 'nearly diagonal' semi-Clifford gates are particularly important: they admit efficient gate teleportation protocols that implement these gates with fewer ancillary quantum resources such as magic states. Despite the practical importance of these sets of gates, many questions about their structure remain open; this is especially true in the higher-dimensional qudit setting. Our contribution is to leverage the discrete Stone-von Neumann theorem and the symplectic formalism of qudit stabiliser mechanics towards extending results of Zeng-Cheng-Chuang (2008) and Beigi-Shor (2010) to higher dimensions in a uniform manner. We further give a simple algorithm for recursively enumerating all gates of the Clifford hierarchy, a simple algorithm for recognising and diagonalising semi-Clifford gates, and a concise proof of the classification of the diagonal Clifford hierarchy gates due to Cui-Gottesman-Krishna (2016) for the single-qudit case. We generalise the efficient gate teleportation protocols of semi-Clifford gates to the qudit setting and prove that every third level gate of one qudit (of any prime dimension) and of two qutrits can be implemented efficiently. Numerical evidence gathered via the aforementioned algorithms support the conjecture that higher-level gates can be implemented efficiently.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Logical paradoxes in quantum computation

While quantum computers are expected to yield considerable advantages over classical devices, the precise features of quantum theory enabling these advantages remain unclear. Contextuality--the denial of a notion of classical physical reality--has emerged as a promising hypothesis. Magic states are quantum resources critical for practically achieving universal quantum computation. They exhibit the standard form of contextuality that is known to enable probabilistic advantages in a variety of computational and communicational tasks. Strong contextuality is an extremal form of contextuality describing systems that exhibit logically paradoxical behaviour. Here, we consider special magic states that deterministically enable quantum computation. After introducing number-theoretic techniques for constructing exotic quantum paradoxes, we present large classes of strongly contextual magic states that enable deterministic implementation of gates from the Clifford hierarchy. These surprising discoveries bolster a refinement of the resource theory of contextuality that emphasises the computational power of logical paradoxes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Contextuality and noncommutative geometry in quantum mechanics

Observable properties of a classical physical system can be modelled deterministically as functions from the space of pure states to outcomes; dually, states can be modelled as functions from the algebra of observables to outcomes. The probabilistic predictions of quantum physics are contextual in that they preclude this classical assumption of reality: noncommuting observables, which are not assumed to be comeasurable, cannot be consistently ascribed deterministic values even if one enriches the description of a quantum state. Here, we consider the geometrically dual objects of noncommutative algebras of observables as being generalisations of classical state spaces to the quantum setting and argue that these generalised geometric spaces represent the objects of study of noncommutative operator geometry. By adapting the spectral presheaf of Hamilton-Isham-Butterfield, a formulation of quantum state space that collates contextual data, we reconstruct tools of noncommutative geometry in an explicitly geometric fashion. In this way, we bridge the foundations of quantum mechanics with the foundations of noncommutative geometry à la Connes et al. To each unital $C^*$-algebra we associate a geometric object acting as a generalised Gel'fand spectrum. We show how any functor $F$ from compact Hausdorff spaces to a suitable target category can be applied directly to these geometric objects to automatically yield an extension $\tilde{F}$ acting on all unital $C^*$-algebras. This procedure is used to give a novel formulation of the operator $K_0$-functor in terms of the topological $K$-functor. We then delineate a $C^*$-algebraic conjecture that the extension of the functor that assigns to a topological space its lattice of open sets assigns to a unital $C^*$-algebra its lattice of closed, two-sided ideals. We prove the von Neumann algebraic analogue of this conjecture.

math.OA↗

arXiv2017

Minimum quantum resources for strong non-locality

We analyse the minimum quantum resources needed to realise strong non-locality, as exemplified e.g. by the classical GHZ construction. It was already known that no two-qubit system, with any finite number of local measurements, can realise strong non-locality. For three-qubit systems, we show that strong non-locality can only be realised in the GHZ SLOCC class, and with equatorial measurements. However, we show that in this class there is an infinite family of states which are pairwise non-LU-equivalent that realise strong non-locality with finitely many measurements. These states have decreasing entanglement between one qubit and the other two, necessitating an increasing number of local measurements on the latter.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

The Quantum Monad on Relational Structures

Homomorphisms between relational structures play a central role in finite model theory, constraint satisfaction and database theory. A central theme in quantum computation is to show how quantum resources can be used to gain advantage in information processing tasks. In particular, non-local games have been used to exhibit quantum advantage in boolean constraint satisfaction, and to obtain quantum versions of graph invariants such as the chromatic number. We show how quantum strategies for homomorphism games between relational structures can be viewed as Kleisli morphisms for a quantum monad on the (classical) category of relational structures and homomorphisms. We show a general connection between these notions and state-independent quantum realizations of strong contextuality in the Abramsky-Brandenburger formulation of contextuality. We use these results to exhibit a wide range of examples of contextuality-powered quantum advantage, and to unify several apparently diverse strands of previous work.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2017

Graph-theoretic strengths of contextuality

Cabello-Severini-Winter and Abramsky-Hardy (building on the framework of Abramsky-Brandenburger) both provide classes of Bell and contextuality inequalities for very general experimental scenarios using vastly different mathematical techniques. We review both approaches, carefully detail the links between them, and give simple, graph-theoretic methods for finding inequality-free proofs of nonlocality and contextuality and for finding states exhibiting strong nonlocality and/or contextuality. Finally, we apply these methods to concrete examples in stabilizer quantum mechanics relevant to understanding contextuality as a resource in quantum computation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2014

From Topology to Noncommutative Geometry: $K$-theory

We associate to each unital $C^*$-algebra $A$ a geometric object---a diagram of topological spaces representing quotient spaces of the noncommutative space underlying $A$---meant to serve the role of a generalized Gel'fand spectrum. After showing that any functor $F$ from compact Hausdorff spaces to a suitable target category can be applied directly to these geometric objects to automatically yield an extension $\tilde{F}$ which acts on all unital $C^*$-algebras, we compare a novel formulation of the operator $K_0$ functor to the extension $\tilde K$ of the topological $K$-functor.

math.OA↗

arXiv2014

Partial and Total Ideals of Von Neumann Algebras

A notion of partial ideal for an operator algebra is a weakening the notion of ideal where the defining algebraic conditions are enforced only in the commutative subalgebras. We show that, in a von Neumann algebra, the ultraweakly closed two-sided ideals, which we call total ideals, correspond to the unitarily invariant partial ideals. The result also admits an equivalent formulation in terms of central projections. We place this result in the context of an investigation into notions of spectrum of noncommutative $C^*$-algebras.

math.OA↗

arXiv2014

A Concise, Elementary Proof of Arzelà's Bounded Convergence Theorem

Arzelà's bounded convergence theorem (1885) states that if a sequence of Riemann integrable functions on a closed interval is uniformly bounded and has an integrable pointwise limit, then the sequence of their integrals tends to the integral of the limit. It is a trivial consequence of measure theory. However, denying oneself this machinery transforms this intuitive result into a surprisingly difficult problem; indeed, the proofs first offered by Arzelà and Hausdorff were long, difficult, and contained gaps. In addition, the proof is omitted from most introductory analysis texts despite the result's naturality and applicability. Here, we present a novel argument suitable for consumption by freshmen.

math.CA↗