Universal quantum computation with two- and three-qubit projective measurements

Abstract

We present a finite set of projective measurements that, together with quantum memory and preparation of the |0> state, suffice for universal quantum computation. This extends work of Nielsen [quant-ph/0108020], who proposed a scheme in which an arbitrary unitary operation on n qubits can be simulated using only projective measurements on at most 2n qubits. All measurements in our set involve two qubits, except two measurements which involve three qubits. Thus we improve by one the upper bound, implied by Nielsen's results, on the maximum number of qubits needed to participate in any single measurement to achieve universal quantum computation. Each of our measurements is two-valued, and each can be expressed mathematically as a Boolean combination of single-qubit measurements.