On quantum circuits employing roots of the Pauli matrices

Abstract: The Pauli matrices are a set of three 2x2 complex Hermitian, unitary matrices. In this article, we investigate the relationships between certain roots of the Pauli matrices and how gates implementing those roots are used in quantum circuits. Techniques for simplifying such circuits are given. In particular, we show how those techniques can be used to find a circuit of Clifford+T gates starting from a circuit composed of gates from the well studied NCV library.