Nonunitary Gates Using Measurements Only

Measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC) is a universal platform to realize unitary gates, only using measurements that act on a preprepared entangled resource state. By deforming the measurement bases, as well as the geometry of the resource state, we show that MBQC circuits always transmit and act on the input state but generally realize nonunitary logical gates. In contrast to the stabilizer formalism that is often used for unitary gates, we find that ZX-calculus is an ideal computation method for these nonunitary gates. As opposed to unitary gates, nonunitary gates cannot be applied with certainty, due to the randomness of quantum measurements. We maximize the success probability of realizing nonunitary gates and discuss applications including imaginary time evolution, which we demonstrate on a noisy intermediate-scale quantum device.