Realization of Conditional Operations through Transition Pathway Engineering

In the NISQ era, achieving large-scale quantum computing demands compact circuits to mitigate decoherence and gate error accumulation. Quantum operations with diverse degrees of freedom hold promise for circuit compression, but conventional approaches encounter challenges in simultaneously adjusting multiple parameters. Here, we propose a transition composite gate (TCG) scheme grounded on state-selective transition path engineering, enabling more expressive conditional operations. We experimentally validate a controlled unitary (CU) gate as an example, with independent and continuous parameters. By adjusting the parameters of X^12 gate, we obtain the CU family with a fidelity range of 95. 2% to 99. 0% leveraging quantum process tomography (QPT). To demonstrate the capability of circuit compression, we use TCG scheme to prepare 3-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and W states, with the fidelity of 96. 77% and 95. 72%. TCG can achieve the reduction in circuit depth of about 40% and 44% compared with the use of CZ gates only. Moreover, we show that short-path TCG (SPTCG) can further reduce the state-preparation circuit time cost. The TCG scheme exhibits advantages in certain quantum circuits and shows significant potential for large-scale quantum algorithms.