Quantum circuit for multi-qubit Toffoli gate with optimal resource

Abstract: Resource consumption is an important issue in quantum information processing, particularly during the present NISQ era. In this paper, we investigate resource optimization of implementing multiple controlled operations, which are fundamental building blocks in the field of quantum computing and quantum simulation. We design new quantum circuits for the $n$-Toffoli gate and general multi-controlled unitary, which have only $O(\log n)$-depth and $O(n)$-size, and only require $1$ ancillary qubit. To achieve these results, we explore the potential of ancillary qubits and discover a method to create new conditional clean qubits from existed ancillary qubits. These techniques can also be utilized to construct an efficient quantum circuit for incrementor, leading to an implementation of multi-qubit Toffoli gate with a depth of $O(\log^2n)$ and size of $O(n)$ without any ancillary qubits. Furthermore, we explore the power of ancillary qubits from the perspective of resource theory. We demonstrate that without the assistance of ancillary qubit, any quantum circuit implementation of multi-qubit Toffoli gate must employ exponential precision gates. This finding indicates a significant disparity in computational power of quantum circuits between using and not using ancillary qubits. Additionally, we discuss the comparison of the power of ancillary qubits and extra energy levels in quantum circuit design.