An explicit family of unitaries with exponentially minimal length Pauli geodesics

Abstract

Recently, Nielsen et al have proposed a geometric approach to quantum computation. They've shown that the size of the minimum quantum circuits implementing a unitary U, up to polynomial factors, equals to the length of minimal geodesic from identity I through U. They've investigated a large class of solutions to the geodesic equation, called Pauli geodesics. They've raised a natural question whether we can explicitly construct a family of unitaries U that have exponentially long minimal length Pauli geodesics? We give a positive answer to this question.