Quantum Higher Order Fourier Analysis and the Clifford Hierarchy

Abstract: We propose a mathematical framework that we call quantum, higher-order Fourier analysis. This generalizes the classical theory of higher-order Fourier analysis, which led to many advances in number theory and combinatorics. We define a family of quantum measures on a Hilbert space, that reduce in the case of diagonal matrices to the classical uniformity norms. We show that our quantum measures and our related theory of quantum higher-order Fourier analysis characterize the Clifford hierarchy, an important notion of complexity in quantum information. In particular, we give a necessary and sufficient analytic condition that a unitary is an element of the k-th level of the Clifford hierarchy.