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.