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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: He, Zhiyang, Robitaille, Luke, Tan, Xinyu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04993
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author He, Zhiyang
Robitaille, Luke
Tan, Xinyu
author_facet He, Zhiyang
Robitaille, Luke
Tan, Xinyu
contents The Clifford hierarchy is a fundamental structure in quantum computation whose mathematical properties are not fully understood. In this work, we characterize permutation gates -- unitaries which permute the $2^n$ basis states -- in the third level of the hierarchy. We prove that any permutation gate in the third level must be a product of Toffoli gates in what we define as \emph{staircase form}, up to left and right multiplications by Clifford permutations. We then present necessary and sufficient conditions for a staircase form permutation gate to be in the third level of the Clifford hierarchy. As a corollary, we construct a family of non-semi-Clifford permutation gates $\{U_k\}_{k\geq 3}$ in staircase form such that each $U_k$ is in the third level but its inverse is not in the $k$-th level.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_04993
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Characterization of permutation gates in the third level of the Clifford hierarchy
He, Zhiyang
Robitaille, Luke
Tan, Xinyu
Quantum Physics
The Clifford hierarchy is a fundamental structure in quantum computation whose mathematical properties are not fully understood. In this work, we characterize permutation gates -- unitaries which permute the $2^n$ basis states -- in the third level of the hierarchy. We prove that any permutation gate in the third level must be a product of Toffoli gates in what we define as \emph{staircase form}, up to left and right multiplications by Clifford permutations. We then present necessary and sufficient conditions for a staircase form permutation gate to be in the third level of the Clifford hierarchy. As a corollary, we construct a family of non-semi-Clifford permutation gates $\{U_k\}_{k\geq 3}$ in staircase form such that each $U_k$ is in the third level but its inverse is not in the $k$-th level.
title Characterization of permutation gates in the third level of the Clifford hierarchy
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04993