Hosted by: Layla Hormozi

In exchange-only quantum computation, qubits are encoded using three or more spin-1/2 particles and quantum gates can be performed by switching on and off, or "pulsing", the isotropic exchange interaction between spins. Finding efficient pulse sequences for realizing two-qubit gates in this way is complicated by the large search space in which they live, and has typically involved numerical brute force search. Here I will give a simple analytic derivation of the most efficient known exchange-pulse sequence for carrying out a controlled-NOT gate, originally found numerically by Fong and Wandzura. I will then show how the ideas behind this derivation can be used to analytically find new pulse sequences for two-qubit gates beyond controlled-NOT.