Causal and compositional structure of unitary transformations

Quantum 5, 511 (2021).

https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2021-07-28-511

The causal structure of a unitary transformation is the set of relations of possible influence between any input subsystem and any output subsystem. We study whether such causal structure can be understood in terms of compositional structure of the unitary. Given a quantum circuit with no path from input system $A$ to output system $B$, system $A$ cannot influence system $B$. Conversely, given a unitary $U$ with a no-influence relation from input $A$ to output $B$, it follows from [B. Schumacher and M. D. Westmoreland, Quantum Information Processing 4 no. 1, (Feb, 2005)] that there exists a circuit decomposition of $U$ with no path from $A$ to $B$. However, as we argue, there are unitaries for which there does not exist a circuit decomposition that makes all causal constraints evident $textit{simultaneously}$. To address this, we introduce a new formalism of `extended circuit diagrams’, which goes beyond what is expressible with quantum circuits, with the core new feature being the ability to represent direct sum structures in addition to sequential and tensor product composition. A $textit{causally faithful}$ extended circuit decomposition, representing a unitary $U$, is then one for which there is a path from an input $A$ to an output $B$ if and only if there actually is influence from $A$ to $B$ in $U$. We derive causally faithful extended circuit decompositions for a large class of unitaries, where in each case, the decomposition is implied by the unitary’s respective causal structure. We hypothesize that every finite-dimensional unitary transformation has a causally faithful extended circuit decomposition.