Deciding universality of quantum gates

Abstract

We say that collection of $n$-qudit gates is universal if there exists $N_0\geq n$ such that for every $N\geq N_0$ every $N$-qudit unitary operation can be approximated with arbitrary precision by a circuit built from gates of the collection. Our main result is an upper bound on the smallest $N_0$ with the above property. The bound is roughly $d^8 n$, where $d$ is the number of levels of the base system (the '$d$' in the term qu$d$it.) The proof is based on a recent result on invariants of (finite) linear groups.