Synthesis of reversible logic circuits

Abstract

Reversible or information-lossless circuits have applications in digital signal processing, communication, computer graphics, and cryptography. They are also a fundamental requirement in the emerging field of quantum computation. We investigate the synthesis of reversible circuits that employ a minimum number of gates and contain no redundant input-output line-pairs (temporary storage channels). We prove constructively that every even permutation can be implemented without temporary storage using NOT, CNOT, and TOFFOLI gates. We describe an algorithm for the synthesis of optimal circuits and study the reversible functions on three wires, reporting the distribution of circuit sizes. We also study canonical circuit decompositions where gates of the same kind are grouped together. Finally, in an application important to quantum computing, we synthesize oracle circuits for Grover's search algorithm, and show a significant improvement over a previously proposed synthesis algorithm.