Efficient quantum circuits for binary elliptic curve arithmetic: reducing $T$-gate complexity

Abstract

Elliptic curves over finite fields ${\mathbb F}_{2^n}$ play a prominent role in modern cryptography. Published quantum algorithms dealing with such curves build on a short Weierstrass form in combination with affine or projective coordinates. In this paper we show that changing the curve representation allows a substantial reduction in the number of $T$-gates needed to implement the curve arithmetic. As a tool, we present a quantum circuit for computing multiplicative inverses in $\mathbb F_{2^n}$ in depth $\bigO(n\log_2 n)$ using a polynomial basis representation, which may be of independent interest.