ZX-Flow: A Flexible Criterion for Deterministic Computation with ZX-Diagrams

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kissinger, Aleks, van de Wetering, John
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914382542274560
author Kissinger, Aleks
van de Wetering, John
author_facet Kissinger, Aleks
van de Wetering, John
contents Flow criteria are used to efficiently extract computations, either in the form of measurement patterns or quantum circuits, from ZX-diagrams. Existing criteria such as causal flow, generalised flow, and Pauli flow, were all originally formulated for graph states, so they require ZX-diagrams to be in a very particular graph-state-like form. This form is easily broken by applying basic ZX rules and makes establishing some desirable properties very complicated. Here, we introduce a new "ZX-native" flow criterion called ZX-flow, formulated using a new type of decoration of a ZX-diagram we call Pauli semiwebs. These are a generalisation of Pauli webs, which have recently been used extensively in reasoning about fault-tolerant computations in the ZX-calculus. We show that ZX-flow is straightforwardly preserved by all Clifford rewrites and furthermore that a ZX-diagram has ZX-flow if and only if it is Clifford-equivalent to a graph-like ZX-diagram with Pauli flow. Finally, we show that any diagram with ZX-flow can be readily interpreted either as a deterministic measurement-based computation or as a Clifford isometry followed by a sequence of Pauli exponentials. The latter can then be efficiently extracted to a quantum circuit.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_09580
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ZX-Flow: A Flexible Criterion for Deterministic Computation with ZX-Diagrams
Kissinger, Aleks
van de Wetering, John
Quantum Physics
Flow criteria are used to efficiently extract computations, either in the form of measurement patterns or quantum circuits, from ZX-diagrams. Existing criteria such as causal flow, generalised flow, and Pauli flow, were all originally formulated for graph states, so they require ZX-diagrams to be in a very particular graph-state-like form. This form is easily broken by applying basic ZX rules and makes establishing some desirable properties very complicated. Here, we introduce a new "ZX-native" flow criterion called ZX-flow, formulated using a new type of decoration of a ZX-diagram we call Pauli semiwebs. These are a generalisation of Pauli webs, which have recently been used extensively in reasoning about fault-tolerant computations in the ZX-calculus. We show that ZX-flow is straightforwardly preserved by all Clifford rewrites and furthermore that a ZX-diagram has ZX-flow if and only if it is Clifford-equivalent to a graph-like ZX-diagram with Pauli flow. Finally, we show that any diagram with ZX-flow can be readily interpreted either as a deterministic measurement-based computation or as a Clifford isometry followed by a sequence of Pauli exponentials. The latter can then be efficiently extracted to a quantum circuit.
title ZX-Flow: A Flexible Criterion for Deterministic Computation with ZX-Diagrams
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09580