Distance-Independent Universality of Clifford+T
Abstract
A well-known theorem states that the Clifford+T gate set is universal for quantum computing. The theorem combines approximation using a distance measure on unitary matrices with equality up to global phase. Previous proofs combine these two notions for specific distance measures, but do not identify the properties that govern how they work together. Which properties are sufficient to state and prove the theorem? We answer this question by defining projective distance measures using four axioms. We prove that the universality theorem holds for every distance measure satisfying these axioms. Thus, our formulation of the theorem is independent of any particular choice of distance measure. We show that the Hilbert-Schmidt distance is already a projective distance measure. We also develop a general construction that transforms a large class of distance measures into projective distance measures and apply it to obtain projective versions of the operator-norm distance, the Frobenius distance, and the trace distance. Finally, we formalize the proof of the universality theorem in Lean.
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BibTeX
@misc{palsberg2026distanceindependent,
title = {{Distance-Independent Universality of Clifford+T}},
author = {Jens Palsberg and Keli Huang and Abdullah Almanei},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.03364},
eprint = {2610.03364},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03364},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Distance-Independent Universality of Clifford+T
AU - Jens Palsberg
AU - Keli Huang
AU - Abdullah Almanei
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.03364
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03364
AB - A well-known theorem states that the Clifford+T gate set is universal for quantum computing. The theorem combines approximation using a distance measure on unitary matrices with equality up to global phase. Previous proofs combine these two notions for specific distance measures, but do not identify the properties that govern how they work together. Which properties are sufficient to state and prove the theorem? We answer this question by defining projective distance measures using four axioms. We prove that the universality theorem holds for every distance measure satisfying these axioms. Thus, our formulation of the theorem is independent of any particular choice of distance measure. We show that the Hilbert-Schmidt distance is already a projective distance measure. We also develop a general construction that transforms a large class of distance measures into projective distance measures and apply it to obtain projective versions of the operator-norm distance, the Frobenius distance, and the trace distance. Finally, we formalize the proof of the universality theorem in Lean.
ER -