Nonunitary gates using measurements only

Abstract: Measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC) is a universal platform to realize unitary gates, only using measurements which act on a pre-prepared entangled resource state. By deforming the measurement bases, as well as the geometry of the resource state, we show that MBQC circuits always transmit and act on the input state but generally realize nonunitary logical gates. In contrast to the stabilizer formalism which is often used for unitary gates, we find that ZX calculus is an ideal computation method of these nonunitary gates. As opposed to unitary gates, nonunitary gates can not be applied with certainty, due to the randomness of quantum measurements. We maximize the success probability of realizing nonunitary gates, and discuss applications including imaginary time evolution, which we demonstrate on a noisy intermediate scale quantum device.