Crystalline Quantum Circuits Grace M. Sommers1David A. Huse1and Michael J. Gullans2 1Department of Physics Princeton University Princeton NJ 08544 USA

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Crystalline Quantum Circuits
Grace M. Sommers,1David A. Huse,1and Michael J. Gullans2
1Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
2Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science,
NIST/University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
(Dated: August 2, 2023)
Random quantum circuits continue to inspire a wide range of applications in quantum infor-
mation science and many-body quantum physics, while remaining analytically tractable through
probabilistic methods. Motivated by an interest in deterministic circuits with similar applications,
we construct classes of nonrandom unitary Clifford circuits by imposing translation invariance in
both time and space. Further imposing dual-unitarity, our circuits effectively become crystalline
spacetime lattices whose vertices are SWAP or iSWAP two-qubit gates and whose edges may contain
one-qubit gates. One can then require invariance under (subgroups of) the crystal’s point group.
Working on the square and kagome lattices, we use the formalism of Clifford quantum cellular
automata to describe operator spreading, entanglement generation, and recurrence times of these
circuits. A full classification on the square lattice reveals, of particular interest, a “nonfractal good
scrambling class” with dense operator spreading that generates codes with linear contiguous code
distance and high performance under erasure errors at the end of the circuit. We also break unitar-
ity by adding spacetime-translation-invariant measurements and find a class of such circuits with
fractal dynamics.
I. INTRODUCTION
Random quantum circuits are a model system of
many-body quantum physics, in which the degrees of
freedom are qubits or qudits and the evolution under
a local Hamiltonian is modeled by local unitary gates.
Random unitary circuits thus provide a platform for
analytic computation of, for example, out-of-time-order
correlators and entanglement growth [1–4]. They also
have numerous applications to quantum complexity the-
ory [1, 5–9], tomography [10, 11], benchmarking [12, 13],
and circuit complexity bounds [14, 15]. A particular mo-
tivation for this work comes from the field of quantum
error correction, where random circuits have also played
an important role [16, 17]. For example, random finite-
rate stabilizer codes have linear code distance and reach
channel capacity, and their performance under erasure
errors can be modeled by random matrix theory [18].
Randomness has also proven useful for improving the
error threshold and logical error rates of surface codes
under biased noise, through random Clifford-gate defor-
mations [19].
While randomness is a valuable theoretical tool for
studying quantum circuit dynamics, ultimately, there is
a need for deterministic circuits with similar applica-
tions. For example, the behavior of practically relevant
algorithms may not be well captured by random cir-
cuits. Indeed, in the case of the variational quantum
eigensolver (VQE), initializing the solver with random
circuits leads to barren plateaus in the gradient [20, 21].
Nonrandom circuits are likely to be more natural for
many applications and avoid these barren plateaus. In
the context of quantum simulation algorithms, one may
question whether generic Hamiltonian evolution dis-
plays the same phenomena as random circuits. The
growth of quantum circuit complexity with evolution
time is not understood outside random circuits [22]. In
addition, specific circuit families with more identifiable
structure have been necessary to boost the performance
of gate-set tomography in practical use cases [23], and
are likely to play a crucial role in the efficient verification
of quantum advantage on near-term devices [24]. Even
addressing these questions from a conceptual point of
view or providing a route towards future progress can
be useful. From a theoretical computer science perspec-
tive, this research avenue has echoes of “derandomiza-
tion”. In classical complexity theory, this term refers
to the process of turning probabilistic algorithms into
deterministic ones as part of the quest to prove that
the latter are just as powerful (i.e., BP P =P) [25].
Similarly, in the theory of expander graphs and error-
correcting codes, derandomization refers to the art of
finding explicit constructions for objects only known to
exist from probabilistic arguments [26].
Here we take a less formal, more physical view of
the problem by analyzing a class of deterministic cir-
cuits with “translational” invariance in both time and
space. These spacetime translation-invariant (STTI)
circuits are endowed with two special features that en-
able an analytic treatment while still allowing for er-
godic dynamics. First, all the gates are dual-unitary,
namely, unitary when viewed in the spatial direction
as well as the usual time direction. As a nontrivial
model of quantum chaos with certain exactly solvable
correlation functions, dual-unitary circuits are the sub-
ject of a rich, rapidly developing literature on which we
build [27–38]. Second, the gates in our circuits are Clif-
ford. Clifford circuits hold appeal because they can be
classically simulated in polynomial time [39, 40], yet are
physically relevant in the sense that the n-qudit uniform
Clifford ensemble is a unitary 2-design for the n-qudit
Haar ensemble [41] if the qudit dimension is a prime
power [42] (and in fact a 3-design if the qudit dimen-
sion is a power of 2 [42, 43]). Analytically, Clifford
arXiv:2210.10808v3 [quant-ph] 1 Aug 2023
2
circuits with spacetime randomness obey effective hy-
drodynamic equations [2, 3, 44], while spatially random
Floquet Clifford circuits can exhibit strong localization
in 1+1D [45–47]. In the present work, with spacetime
translation invariance, our circuits can be interpreted
as quantum cellular automata (QCA) [48, 49], and re-
stricting to Clifford gates allows us complement the ex-
act methods for treating dual-unitary circuits with the
tools of symplectic cellular automata [50–52].
Clifford quantum cellular automata (CQCA) on
prime-dimensional qudits with spatial period a= 1 have
received a thorough treatment in earlier work, but to
our knowledge there is no systematic classification of
automata with a > 1 and beyond. Our primary focus in
this work is on brickwork dual-unitary Clifford circuits,
which naturally are expressed as qubit CQCA with
a= 2 and exhibit richer behavior than a= 1. We high-
light several physical properties of these circuits that can
be gleaned from the symplectic automaton representa-
tion, including fractality in operator spreading and re-
currence times. In addition to classifying and situating
these circuits within the broader context of CQCA, we
extend the concept of “self-dual-unitary” gates—gates
such as the SWAP gate whose spacetime rotation is not
only unitary, but in fact invariant [28, 53]—to all the
point group symmetries of the lattice, associated with
dual-unitarity, time reversal, and reflection. We further
generalize to (self-) tri-unitary [54] automata using the
kagome lattice, for which a= 4 and we can define 3 axes
of time with unitary evolution.
On the quantum information side, we focus in this
work on the applications to quantum error correction.
We highlight a class of CQCA on the square lattice
in which initially local operators scramble and spread
densely within the lightcone, which can serve as en-
coding circuits for finite-rate codes with high perfor-
mance under erasure errors and whose quasicyclic struc-
ture [55, 56] could provide a path toward efficient decod-
ing under more general noise [57–61]. More broadly, our
results on these specific classes of quantum dynamics
have potential applications in the same areas as ran-
dom circuits, including benchmarking, quantum chaos,
and complexity theory.
A. Outline
The paper proceeds as follows. Sec. II provides a
high-level overview of our results. As a case study
in the most novel class of circuits discovered in our
work, Sec. III details the behavior of the “dense good
scrambling class” on the square lattice Sec. III. Taking
a step back, in Sec. IV, we define the general models
in detail and demonstrate how the symmetry transfor-
mations are enacted at the level of the one- and two-
qubit gates. To gain greater insight into these symme-
tries, we introduce the CQCA formalism and show how
the corresponding matrices transform under rotations
and reflections of the lattice, in Sec. V. Sec. VI spe-
FIG. 1: The convention for the dual gate used in this
paper [31, 34]: given a unitary gate Uβ1β2
α1α2(left), we rotate
the spacetime axes by π/2 (center) to obtain the dual
˜
Uβ2α2
β1α1(right). If Uis dual-unitary, then ˜
Uis unitary (as is
the spacetime rotation in the opposite direction).
cializes to the square lattice, classifying the SWAP-core
and iSWAP-core a= 2 automata including the nonfrac-
tal good scrambling class. In Sec. VII, we turn to the
kagome lattice, where the circuits are described by a= 4
CQCA. Returning to the square lattice, in Sec. VIII we
describe the fractal structure that arises when we in-
troduce projective measurements. Finally, we conclude
in Sec. IX with a discussion of future research avenues.
II. OVERVIEW
Before presenting our methods and results in de-
tail, we begin with an overview of our findings. The
two common features of the STTI circuits considered
in this work—dual-unitarity and Cliffordness—provide
complementary avenues for study.
A. Symmetries, dual-unitarity, and tri-unitarity
The circuits we consider are all crystalline lattices, in
which vertices correspond to gates and edges correspond
to qubits, possibly dressed with single-qubit gates. Fo-
cusing our attention on two-qubit gates, we choose lat-
tices with coordination number z= 4. In addition to
spacetime translation invariance, the bare lattices are
invariant under the rotations and reflections that com-
prise their point group [62]. In the circuit perspective,
however, vertices are no longer pointlike objects, and
edges have a directionality imposed by the single-qubit
gates. We can therefore ask which of the symmetries of
the lattice are also symmetries of the circuit.
One main thrust of this work is organizing and classi-
fying these symmetries for two such lattices, square and
kagome. Implicit in this analysis is that the transformed
gates are unitary. For two-qubit gates, this imposes
dual-unitarity: rotating the gate by π/2 in spacetime
yields another unitary gate (Fig. 1). From the parame-
terization of dual-unitary gates in Ref. [28], restricting
to the Clifford group, the dual-unitary operator Uim-
plemented by the gate can be written as either a SWAP
core (non-entangling) or iSWAP core (maximally entan-
gling), with single-qubit Clifford gates on each of the
four legs.
Our main model is the brickwork circuit shown
in Fig. 2, a square lattice of SWAP or iSWAP cores,
3
FIG. 2: STTI dual-unitary brickwork circuit represented
as a rotated square lattice. Black squares are (i)SWAP
cores. Edges are decorated with single-qubit Clifford gates,
represented as red and blue circles. One time step is
defined as two layers of the brickwork circuit.
with single-qubit gates on each edge. The bare SWAP
and iSWAP cores are “self-octa-unitary” since they are
invariant under all eight point group transformations of
the square. With the inclusion of single-qubit gates,
the resulting STTI circuit can have some, all, or none
of these symmetries. This is the focus of Sec. IV.
On the kagome lattice, whose point group is D6in-
stead of D4, we can define three axes (six arrows)
of time, making these circuits (self)-tri-unitary. In
Ref. [54], where tri-unitarity is first introduced, tri-
unitary gates are defined on three qubits and tiled on
a triangular lattice. However, as the authors note, the
family of tri-unitary gates considered in that paper can
be decomposed into three two-qubit gates, and the re-
sulting circuit can then be expressed on the kagome
lattice. The three axes of time restrict the two-point
correlations between traceless one-site operators aver-
aged over all states to vanish except at x1x2= 0 and
at |x1x2|=v|t1t2|where vis the velocity of the
lightcone.
B. Classification of CQCA
Because our circuits are both STTI and Clifford, we
can represent them as Clifford quantum cellular au-
tomata (CQCA), which is the primary analytic tech-
nique used in this work. For a more detailed intro-
duction to the CQCA formalism, the reader is referred
to Sec. V and to Refs. [50–52].
The circuit in Fig. 2 is translation-invariant with a
unit cell of T= 1/2, a= 2, composed with a shift
by 1 site, so it can be treated as an “a= 2 automa-
ton.” In Sec. VI, we classify all iSWAP-core automata
on the square lattice into six classes, where members of
each class are related by a reflection about the center
of the gate, and/or a change of basis. The point group
transformations exchange members of the same class.
A similar classification scheme can be applied on the
kagome lattice, where a= 4, but in Sec. VII we focus
our attention on those with a high amount of symmetry,
the “self-tri-unitary” circuits.
Since the Clifford group normalizes the Pauli group,
the dynamics under a Clifford circuit with spatial pe-
riod ais fully encoded (modulo phases) by the image
of Xiand Zion each site i= 1, ..., a of the unit cell.
Leveraging this translation invariance, a CQCA with a
unit cell containing aqudits is described by a 2a×2a
matrix M, whose entries are Laurent polynomials in the
variable uwhich labels the unit cell [63].
We adapt and extend to a > 1 the techniques pre-
sented in foundational works [50–52], which focus on
prime q,a= 1 automata [64]. a= 1 CQCA have
determinant u2dwhere dZ. Factoring out a shift
of udmakes a centered symplectic cellular automaton
(CSCA) with determinant 1, whose characteristic poly-
nomial is uniquely determined by Tr(M) [51, 52]:
χM(y) = y2+ Tr(M)y+ 1.(1)
While this simple relationship between Tr(M) and
χM(y) no longer holds for a > 1, the characteristic
polynomial remains inextricably linked to three related
properties of the automaton: entanglement generation,
operator spreading, and the recurrence time in a finite
system.
The recurrence time of the unitary, up to a phase, on
a system of Lqubits, or m=L/a unit cells (with pe-
riodic boundary conditions) is denoted τ(m), the mini-
mum power such that Mτ= mod (um1) up to global
shifts. Under the evolution of the automaton, any sta-
bilizer group, mixed or pure, repeats modulo signs and
shifts after an interval that divides τ(m). The scal-
ing of τ(m) divides the six square lattice classes into
two groups: three for which τ(m)3mfor all m, and
three for which τ(m) is linear in mfor m= 2k, but
grows much faster for generic m. We also demonstrate
a sharp distinction between these two groups with re-
spect to the entanglement generation for a random ini-
tial product state. The first group consists of “poor
scramblers,” for which the resulting Page curve [65] has
a slope less than 1, i.e. the total entropy of a subsystem
of length |A|< L/2 is f|A|, where 0 < f < 1. This sub-
maximal entanglement generation can be attributed, at
least in part, to the presence of conserved Zcharges, or
“gliders.” In particular, we find a close connection be-
tween the “bare iSWAP class” (all single-qubit gates are
the identity) and the standard glider automaton with
a= 1 [52].
C. Fractality, dense operator spreading, and
quantum error correction
The second group of iSWAP-core automata on the
square lattice is comprised of “good scramblers”, which,
4
when acting on random initial product states, gener-
ate Page curves of slope 1 at times away from the re-
currences. The three classes within this group exhibit
different fractal behavior. The fractal in question is
the footprint of an initially local Pauli operator which
spreads within the lightcone. We define the fractal di-
mension through the scaling of the cumulative number
of non-identity sites within this footprint vs. the depth
of the circuit, so that df2 for CQCA defined in
1+1D. In the limit of infinite time, the fractal structure
of the footprint depends only on the minimal polyno-
mial µMof the automaton M[66]. The minimal poly-
nomial is the lowest-degree monic polynomial µMfor
which µM(M) = 0, thus encoding a recursion relation
for M.
We refer to one class as the self-dual kicked Ising
(SDKI) class, a representative of which maps to the
SDKI model via a “boundary” circuit [28]. Without in-
voking this direct mapping at the level of gates, the con-
nection to SDKI is clear from the automata, which both
have the minimal polynomial µ(y) = y2+(u1+1+u)y+
1. Initially local operators spread in this class of cir-
cuits with a fractal dimension df= log2[(3 + 17)/2] =
1.8325... [66]. A second good scrambling class has frac-
tal dimension df
=1.9, a pattern not seen in a= 1
automata [67].
Special attention is paid to the third “good scram-
bling” class, the subject of a case study in Sec. III.
We describe its operator spreading as “nonfractal” or
“dense”, because the number of X,Y, and Zsites
within a spreading operator are all a finite fraction of
the lightcone volume (df= 2). On one hand, as with
all of these dual-unitary CQCA, this nonfractal class has
large amounts of structure not seen in random Clifford
circuits. In fact, a representative of this class, which
has π/2Xrotations on each leg, is self-octa-unitary.
On the other hand, it shares important features with
random circuits, including dense operator spreading. It
also has promise for error correction. Namely, when a
random initial product state with nonzero entropy den-
sity is fed into this circuit, the logical operators spread
linearly in time, so that at late times the contiguous
length of the shortest logical operator—the contiguous
code distance [68]—is linear in m. Since operators also
spread densely, we expect their weight to scale propor-
tionally to their length, which then implies a linear code
distance. Indeed, quasicyclic codes generated from ini-
tial periodic product states perform well under erasure
errors applied at the end of the circuit. Under more
general noise, the crystalline symmetries of the encod-
ing circuit could be beneficial for finding efficient op-
timal decoders. Note that we have not addressed the
overhead needed to make these codes or the circuits
fault-tolerant, which we leave as a problem for future
work.
D. Adding measurements
Finally, in Sec. VIII we break unitarity by adding
measurements in a STTI fashion. With one measure-
ment per doubled spacetime unit cell of the square lat-
tice, in most cases an initial fully mixed state reaches a
steady state (mixed or pure) after O(1) time steps, but
for the df
=1.9 good scrambling class in the appropriate
measurement basis, a fully mixed initial state purifies
in mtime steps for m= 2k. During the initial tran-
sient, the state acquires volume-law entanglement, but
loses it before reaching the steady state, which has zero
entanglement. A perturbation to this product steady
state spreads as a Sierpinski gasket, a pattern not seen
on the square-lattice dual-unitary circuits without mea-
surements. We present this as just one example of the
rich menagerie of hybrid STTI circuits, deferring an
extended discussion of the hierarchical classification of
such circuits, including those whose steady state is a
high-performing finite-rate code, to a future paper [69].
III. CASE STUDY OF THE DENSE GOOD
SCRAMBLING CLASS
As motivation for the broader classification program
undertaken in the rest of this paper, consider a realiza-
tion of Fig. 2 in which all of the two-qubit gates (black
squares) are the iSWAP gate:
iSWAP = eiπ
4(XX+Y Y )=
1 0 0 0
0 0 i0
0i0 0
0 0 0 1
(2)
and all of the single-qubit gates (red and blue circles)
are rotations by π/2 about the Xaxis on the Bloch
sphere:
RX[π/2] = eiπ
4X.(3)
This circuit is a Clifford quantum cellular automa-
ton (CQCA) with unit cell a= 2 composed solely
of dual-unitary gates, thus lending it a high degree
of structure. In fact, in addition to being spacetime
translation-invariant (STTI), the class to which this
(RX[π/2], RX[π/2]) circuit belongs is the only one, be-
sides the “bare iSWAP class” (in which all the single-
qubit gates are the identity), that contains circuits
left invariant under the 8 rotations and reflections of
the unit cell of the square lattice. We call this prop-
erty “strong self-octa-unitarity” and define it formally
in Sec. IV.
On the other hand, the dynamics under this circuit
is in many ways reminiscent of random Clifford cir-
cuits, with local operators spreading densely rather than
as fractals, and with initial product states evolving to
volume-law-entangled states whose Page curve has slope
1. In this section, we explore this dichotomy between
structure and scrambling and discuss the application of
5
these circuits to developing codes with linear distance.
We will revisit these concepts in more general settings
throughout the paper.
A. Recurrence times
An immediate difference from random circuits is the
presence of recurrences: since the dynamics are Floquet,
Clifford, and unitary, any initial state on a finite system
must eventually repeat under the action of the circuit.
To wit, there are QL1
k=0 (2Lk+ 1) = O(2cL2) unique
stabilizer groups (modulo signs) on Lqubits [40], which
places an upper bound on the recurrence time.
In fact, for all m, where m=L/a is the number
of unit cells with periodic boundary conditions, the re-
currence time τ(m) is well below this bound. Of spe-
cial note are system sizes m= 2k, for which τ(m)
grows linearly. This linear trend in τ(m) for STTI cir-
cuits has been proven for m= 2kin a= 1 CQCA
over qubits [4, 70] as well as for m=qkin a class
of dual-unitary circuits known as perfect permutation
maps, where the odd prime qis the dimension of the
qudits [34].
What distinguishes this circuit and the other good
scrambling classes from the “poor scrambling” classes
discussed in Sec. VI C is the trend in m̸= 2k. As the
example of Ref. [34] indicates, the sensitivity in our good
scrambling circuits to the power of 2 is related to the on-
site Hilbert space dimension q= 2. As shown in Fig. 3,
τ(m) is strongly nonmonotonic in m. A curious trend,
left for the interested reader to ponder, is that if we
write m=j2k, then τ(m)/2kis either 2p+ 2 or 2p2
for some p, where pis a function of jalone. If this
trend holds for all m, then τ(29) 224 2 (indicated
as the lower bound on an error bar in Fig. 3). Specula-
tively, the upper envelope of τ(m) grows exponentially
in mbut no faster than O(2m) (gray line), which is still
exponentially smaller than the generic upper bound of
O(2cm2).
B. Entanglement generation for pure product
states
The second defining feature of this class, along with
the other good scrambling classes, is in the generation
of entanglement for initial pure product states. In this
aspect it behaves like a random circuit: starting from a
random product state, the subsystem entropy averaged
over all contiguous regions of the same length increases
linearly in time before saturating at a near-Page curve
with slope 1 (Fig. 4) [2]. However, the initial product
state does eventually recur. Since τ(m) is linear in m
for m= 2k, on those system sizes, the system spends
a finite fraction of its evolution in a state of suppressed
entanglement. For the time evolution on m= 64 unit
cells shown in Fig. 4, the initial product state recurs
(modulo signs) with a period of τ(m) = 128, but the
FIG. 3: Recurrence time τ(m) of the unitary, modulo
signs and shifts, for a brickwork circuit of iSWAP cores and
π/2Xrotations (Eq. (2) and Eq. (3)), acting on m=L/2
unit cells with periodic boundary conditions. Gray line is
τ= 2m+1, which appears to be an upper bound on τ(m).
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
|A|
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
S(|A|, t0+t)
t0= 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
|A|
t0= 45
0
5
10
15
t
FIG. 4: Entanglement generation on a random pure
product state on L= 128 qubits, or m= 64 unit cells, for a
brickwork circuit of iSWAP cores and π/2Xrotations (Eq.
(2) and Eq. (3)). For t < 20, the subsystem entropy
increases at a near-maximal rate before reaching a Page
curve with slope 1 (left). The state remains near-maximally
entangled until t
=45, before the subsystem entropy starts
to decrease until reaching an area-law state at t= 64
(right). In both panels, the entropy S(|A|, t0+ ∆t)is
averaged over all contiguous regions of length |A|with
periodic boundary conditions, with darker (lighter) curves
corresponding to later (earlier) times ∆twith respect to t0.
state returns to area-law entanglement twice per pe-
riod. For generic large m, the recurrence time generally
satisfies τ(m)m, so the state spends most of its time
near-maximally entangled.
C. Operator content
The two above properties—superlinear recurrence
times for generic mand generation of slope-1 Page
curves starting from a pure product state—are also seen
in two other classes of good scrambling automata, dis-
cussed in Sec. VI. What makes this class unique among
摘要:

CrystallineQuantumCircuitsGraceM.Sommers,1DavidA.Huse,1andMichaelJ.Gullans21DepartmentofPhysics,PrincetonUniversity,Princeton,NJ08544,USA2JointCenterforQuantumInformationandComputerScience,NIST/UniversityofMaryland,CollegePark,Maryland20742,USA(Dated:August2,2023)Randomquantumcircuitscontinuetoinspi...

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