We introduce a measure for evaluating the efficiency of finite universal quantum gate sets $\mathcal{S}$, called the quantum circuit overhead (QCO), and the related notion of $T$-quantum circuit overhead $\left(T\text{−}\mathrm{QCO}\right)$. QCO compares the circuit length required by $\mathcal{S}$ with the best possible length among gate sets of the same size. The $T$-QCO adapts this idea to cost models in which only selected costly gates are counted, while cheap operations are absorbed into an effective gate set. We demonstrate the usefulness of the $\left(T\text{−}\right)\mathrm{QCO}$ by extensive numerical calculations of its upper bounds, providing insight into the efficiency of various choices of single-qubit $\mathcal{S}$, including Haar-random gate sets and the gate sets derived from finite subgroups, such as Clifford and Hurwitz groups. In particular, our results suggest that, in terms of the upper bounds on the $T\text{−}\mathrm{QCO}$, the famous T gate is a highly nonoptimal choice for the completion of the Clifford gate set, even among the gates of order 8. We identify the optimal choices of such completions for both finite subgroups.

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• Mathematical physics
• Quantum algorithms & computation
• Quantum circuits
• Quantum computation
• Quantum gates