Generators and Relations for Real Stabilizer Operators

Abstract: Real stabilizer operators, which are also known as real Clifford operators, are generated, through composition and tensor product, by the Hadamard gate, the Pauli Z gate, and the controlled-Z gate. We introduce a normal form for real stabilizer circuits and show that every real stabilizer operator admits a unique normal form. Moreover, we give a finite set of relations that suffice to rewrite any real stabilizer circuit to its normal form.