Efficient Synthesis of Linear Reversible Circuits

Abstract

In this paper we consider circuit synthesis for n-wire linear reversible circuits using the C-NOT gate library. These circuits are an important class of reversible circuits with applications to quantum computation. Previous algorithms, based on Gaussian elimination and LU-decomposition, yield circuits with O(n^2) gates in the worst-case. However, an information theoretic bound suggests that it may be possible to reduce this to as few as O(n^2/log n) gates. We present an algorithm that is optimal up to a multiplicative constant, as well as Theta(log n) times faster than previous methods. While our results are primarily asymptotic, simulation results show that even for relatively small n our algorithm is faster and yields more efficient circuits than the standard method. Generically our algorithm can be interpreted as a matrix decomposition algorithm, yielding an asymptotically efficient decomposition of a binary matrix into a product of elementary matrices.