Quantum arithmetic and numerical analysis using Repeat-Until-Success circuits

Abstract: We develop a method for approximate synthesis of single--qubit rotations of the form $e^{-i f(\phi_1,\ldots,\phi_k)X}$ that is based on the Repeat-Until-Success (RUS) framework for quantum circuit synthesis. We demonstrate how smooth computable functions $f$ can be synthesized from two basic primitives. This synthesis approach constitutes a manifestly quantum form of arithmetic that differs greatly from the approaches commonly used in quantum algorithms. The key advantage of our approach is that it requires far fewer qubits than existing approaches: as a case in point, we show that using as few as $3$ ancilla qubits, one can obtain RUS circuits for approximate multiplication and reciprocals. We also analyze the costs of performing multiplication and inversion on a quantum computer using conventional approaches and find that they can require too many qubits to execute on a small quantum computer, unlike our approach.