Probabilistic exact universal quantum circuits for transforming unitary operations

This paper addresses the problem of designing universal quantum circuits to transform $k$ uses of a $d$-dimensional unitary input-operation into a unitary output-operation in a probabilistic heralded manner. Three classes of protocols are considered, parallel circuits, where the input-operations can be simultaneously, adaptive circuits, where sequential uses of the input-operations are allowed, and general protocols, where the use of the input-operations may be performed without a definite causal order. For these three classes, we develop a systematic semidefinite programming approach that finds a circuit which obtains the desired transformation with the maximal success probability. We then analyse in detail three particular transformations; unitary transposition, unitary complex conjugation, and unitary inversion. For unitary transposition and unitary inverse, we prove that for any fixed dimension $d$, adaptive circuits have an exponential improvement in terms of uses $k$ when compared to parallel ones. For unitary complex conjugation and unitary inversion we prove that if the number of uses $k$ is strictly smaller than $d-1$, the probability of success is necessarily zero. We also discuss the advantage of indefinite causal order protocols over causal ones and introduce the concept of delayed input-state quantum circuits.