Solovay-Kitaev Decomposition Strategy for Single-Qubit Channels

Abstract: Inspired by the Solovay-Kitaev decomposition for approximating unitary operations as a sequence of operations selected from a universal quantum computing gate set, we introduce a method for approximating any single-qubit channel using single-qubit gates and the controlled-NOT (CNOT). Our approach uses the decomposition of the single-qubit channel into a convex combination of "quasiextreme" channels. Previous techniques for simulating general single-qubit channels would require as many as 20 CNOT gates, whereas ours only needs one, bringing it within the range of current experiments.