Groups of diagonal gates in the Clifford hierarchy

The Clifford hierarchy plays a crucial role in the stabilizer formalism of quantum error correction and quantum computation. Apart form the zeroth level (the discrete Heisenberg–Weyl group) and the first level (the Clifford group), all other levels of the Clifford hierarchy are not groups. However, the diagonal gates at all levels do form groups, and it is desirable to characterize their generators and structures. In this paper, we study the diagonal gates at the second level of the Clifford hierarchy. For this, we introduce the notion of a $$T$$ -gate in an arbitrary dimension, generalizing the corresponding notion in prime dimensions. By the use of the $$T$$ -gate, we are able to completely characterize the group structures of the diagonal gates at the second level of the Clifford hierarchy in any (not necessarily prime) dimension. It turns out that the classification depends crucially on the number-theoretic nature of the dimension. The results highlight the special role of the first two primes, $$2$$ and $$3$$ , in the prime factorization of the dimension. The $$T$$ -gate in an arbitrary dimension, apart from its key role as a generator of the diagonal gates, may have independent interest and further applications in quantum theory.