Three-dimensional QCA that are not stably circuits

Abstract

We prove that the three-dimensional chiral $\Z_p$ Clifford quantum cellular automata of Haah and of Sun--Yang--Wang--Tantivasadakarn--Chen are, for every odd prime $p$, not finite-depth quantum circuits, even after tensoring with arbitrary ancillary degrees of freedom and composing with translations. Previously such statements were known only inside the Clifford category. As a consequence, the group of three-dimensional QCA modulo stabilized circuits and translations is not finitely generated. The key ingredient is a new invariant of invertible subalgebras, which we conjecture to be the square of the total quantum dimension of the hosted anyon theory, modulo rational squares.