Lowering LCU Circuit Width through Maximum-Weight Birkhoff-von Neumann Decomposition
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2605.27430 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 22 May 2026] Title:Lowering LCU Circuit Width through Maximum-Weight Birkhoff-von Neumann Decomposition Authors:Ammar Daskin View a PDF of the paper titled Lowering LCU Circuit Width through Maximum-Weight Birkhoff-von Neumann Decomposition, by Ammar Daskin View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Any square matrix can be transformed into a doubly stochastic matrix via Sinkhorn scaling with diagonal matrices or completing to a larger dimensional matrix. Standard Birkhoff-von Neumann and Pauli decompositions represent such matrices as linear combinations of $O(N^2)$ permutation or Pauli terms, leading to a large ancilla overhead in a quantum Linear Combination of Unitaries (LCU) implementation. We prove that a bottleneck variant of Birkhoff's algorithm reduces the number of permutations to $O(N\log(1/\varepsilon))$, where $\varepsilon$ is the $\ell_1$-norm approximation error of the reconstructed matrix, and demonstrate empirically that a largest-weight greedy variant requires only $\approx 2N$ terms for dense matrices (the exact average observed is $\approx 2.4N$). The quadratic reduction in term count directly shrinks the ancilla register from $2\log_2 N$ to $\log_2 N$ qubits, shortens the SELECT circuit, and is especially valuable in fixed-Hadamard LCU architectures whose success probability scales with $1/K$. The approach enables compact quantum implementations of dense operators appearing in optimal transport, non-Hermitian simulation, and other settings amenable to Sinkhorn preconditioning. Furthermore, because the decomposition is a convex combination, the LCU normalization constant is exactly $\alpha = 1$, and the uniform superposition is an eigenvector of the target matrix with eigenvalue~1. This structure can be exploited to achieve high success probability without amplitude amplification in many practical scenarios, including quantum walks and Markov chain simulations. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2605.27430 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2605.27430v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.27430 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Ammar Daskin [view email] [v1] Fri, 22 May 2026 04:29:13 UTC (775 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Lowering LCU Circuit Width through Maximum-Weight Birkhoff-von Neumann Decomposition, by Ammar DaskinView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-05 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)