Approximate synthesis of general single-qubit unitaries over the Clifford+$\sqrt{T}$ gate set

Abstract

For the standard Clifford+$T$ gate set, deterministic, ancilla-free synthesis now attains the minimal $T$-count for general single-qubit unitaries (Morisaki et al., arXiv:2510.05816). The $\sqrt{T}$ gate rotates by half the angle of $T$, generating a finer lattice of implementable operations. It was assumed that access to this magic state lowers the cost of deterministic and ancilla-free synthesis of general single-qubit unitaries, but no direct Clifford+$\sqrt{T}$ algorithm existed for this case. We provide one by extending the integer lattice-point enumeration method of Morisaki et al. We adopt a resource state cost model based on the magic-state catalysis approach of Gidney and Fowler (arXiv:1812.01238). On Haar-random targets synthesized to precisions ranging from $\varepsilon=10^{-3}$ to $10^{-8}$, the cost of Clifford+$\sqrt{T}$ circuits scales as $2.4\log_2(1/\varepsilon)$ compared to $3.0\log_2(1/\varepsilon)$ for the provably $T$-count-optimal Clifford+$T$ circuits. Once a one-time catalyst state is amortized, the Clifford+$\sqrt{T}$ circuits are never costlier than their Clifford+$T$ counterparts.