# PauliTable¶

class PauliTable(data)[source]

Bases: BaseOperator, AdjointMixin

Symplectic representation of a list Pauli matrices.

Symplectic Representation

The symplectic representation of a single-qubit Pauli matrix is a pair of boolean values $$[x, z]$$ such that the Pauli matrix is given by $$P = (-i)^{z * x} \sigma_z^z.\sigma_x^x$$. The correspondence between labels, symplectic representation, and matrices for single-qubit Paulis are shown in Table 1.

Table 5 Pauli Representations

Label

Symplectic

Matrix

"I"

$$[0, 0]$$

$$\begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix}$$

"X"

$$[1, 0]$$

$$\begin{bmatrix} 0 & 1 \\ 1 & 0 \end{bmatrix}$$

"Y"

$$[1, 1]$$

$$\begin{bmatrix} 0 & -i \\ i & 0 \end{bmatrix}$$

"Z"

$$[0, 1]$$

$$\begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 0 & -1 \end{bmatrix}$$

The full Pauli table is a M x 2N boolean matrix:

$\begin{split}\left(\begin{array}{ccc|ccc} x_{0,0} & ... & x_{0,N-1} & z_{0,0} & ... & z_{0,N-1} \\ x_{1,0} & ... & x_{1,N-1} & z_{1,0} & ... & z_{1,N-1} \\ \vdots & \ddots & \vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\ x_{M-1,0} & ... & x_{M-1,N-1} & z_{M-1,0} & ... & z_{M-1,N-1} \end{array}\right)\end{split}$

where each row is a block vector $$[X_i, Z_i]$$ with $$X = [x_{i,0}, ..., x_{i,N-1}]$$, $$Z = [z_{i,0}, ..., z_{i,N-1}]$$ is the symplectic representation of an N-qubit Pauli. This representation is based on reference [1].

PauliTable's can be created from a list of labels using from_labels(), and converted to a list of labels or a list of matrices using to_labels() and to_matrix() respectively.

Group Product

The Pauli's in the Pauli table do not represent the full Pauli as they are restricted to having +1 phase. The dot-product for the Pauli's is defined to discard any phase obtained from matrix multiplication so that we have $$X.Z = Z.X = Y$$, etc. This means that for the PauliTable class the operator methods compose() and dot() are equivalent.

A.B

I

X

Y

Z

I

I

X

Y

Z

X

X

I

Z

Y

Y

Y

Z

I

X

Z

Z

Y

X

I

Qubit Ordering

The qubits are ordered in the table such the least significant qubit [x_{i, 0}, z_{i, 0}] is the first element of each of the $$X_i, Z_i$$ vector blocks. This is the opposite order to position in string labels or matrix tensor products where the least significant qubit is the right-most string character. For example Pauli "ZX" has "X" on qubit-0 and "Z" on qubit 1, and would have symplectic vectors $$x=[1, 0]$$, $$z=[0, 1]$$.

Data Access

Subsets of rows can be accessed using the list access [] operator and will return a table view of part of the PauliTable. The underlying Numpy array can be directly accessed using the array property, and the sub-arrays for only the X or Z blocks can be accessed using the X and Z properties respectively.

Iteration

Rows in the Pauli table can be iterated over like a list. Iteration can also be done using the label or matrix representation of each row using the label_iter() and matrix_iter() methods.

References

1. S. Aaronson, D. Gottesman, Improved Simulation of Stabilizer Circuits, Phys. Rev. A 70, 052328 (2004). arXiv:quant-ph/0406196

Initialize the PauliTable.

Parameters

data (array or str or ScalarOp or PauliTable) -- input data.

Raises

QiskitError -- if input array is invalid shape.

The input array is not copied so multiple Pauli tables can share the same underlying array.

Methods

 adjoint Return the adjoint of the Operator. anticommutes_with_all Return indexes of rows that commute other. argsort Return indices for sorting the rows of the table. commutes Return list of commutation properties for each row with a Pauli. commutes_with_all Return indexes of rows that commute other. compose Return the compose output product of two tables. conjugate Not implemented. copy Make a deep copy of current operator. delete Return a copy with Pauli rows deleted from table. dot Return the dot output product of two tables. expand Return the expand output product of two tables. from_labels Construct a PauliTable from a list of Pauli strings. input_dims Return tuple of input dimension for specified subsystems. insert Insert Pauli's into the table. label_iter Return a label representation iterator. matrix_iter Return a matrix representation iterator. output_dims Return tuple of output dimension for specified subsystems. power Return the compose of a operator with itself n times. reshape Return a shallow copy with reshaped input and output subsystem dimensions. sort Sort the rows of the table. tensor Return the tensor output product of two tables. to_labels Convert a PauliTable to a list Pauli string labels. to_matrix Convert to a list or array of Pauli matrices. transpose Not implemented. unique Return unique Paulis from the table.

Attributes

X

The X block of the array.

Z

The Z block of the array.

array

The underlying boolean array.

dim

Return tuple (input_shape, output_shape).

num_qubits

Return the number of qubits if a N-qubit operator or None otherwise.

qargs

Return the qargs for the operator.

settings

Return settings.

Return type

Dict

shape

The full shape of the array()

size

The number of Pauli rows in the table.