A Quantum Phase-based Comparator

Abstract

Quantum comparators decide the order of two operands. They rely on reversible logic acting on basis-encoded integers, so their width grows with the precision. We introduce the Quantum Phase-based Comparator (QPC), which compares two values carried in relative phases instead. The circuit places the two phases, entered with opposite signs, between a pair of Hadamard gates, and a fixed offset centers the interference, so that the probability of measuring zero falls below one half exactly when the first phase is the smaller. We give two implementations. With hard-coded values, the two values are written into the parameters of two phase gates, and the comparison costs one qubit and five gates. With the register-driven cascade, the values are drawn from two $t$-qubit registers through binary-weighted controlled-phase gates, at a cost of one qubit beyond the registers and depth linear in $t$; since the cascade induces each phase linearly from the register content, one circuit handles a superposition of operand pairs. The readout yields a biased coin rather than a definite bit, and we quantify the shots that a decision takes at a given phase separation. Scaling both phases by an integer widens the decision margin at no cost in width or depth, and an adaptive doubling schedule turns this amplification into a shot count logarithmic in the inverse separation.