Hadamard transform

Not to be confused with Walsh matrix.

The Hadamard transform (also known as the Walsh–Hadamard transform, Hadamard–Rademacher–Walsh transform, Walsh transform, or Walsh–Fourier transform) is an example of a generalized class of Fourier transforms. It is named for the French mathematician Jacques Solomon Hadamard, the German-American mathematician Hans Adolph Rademacher, and the American mathematician Joseph Leonard Walsh. It performs an orthogonal, symmetric, involutional, linear operation on $2^{m}$ real numbers (or complex numbers, although the Hadamard matrices themselves are purely real).

The Hadamard transform can be regarded as being built out of size-2 discrete Fourier transforms (DFTs), and is in fact equivalent to a multidimensional DFT of size $2\times 2\times \cdots \times 2\times 2$. It decomposes an arbitrary input vector into a superposition of Walsh functions.

Definition

The Hadamard transform H_m is a 2^m × 2^m matrix, the Hadamard matrix (scaled by a normalization factor), that transforms 2^m real numbers x_n into 2^m real numbers X_k. The Hadamard transform can be defined in two ways: recursively, or by using the binary (base-2) representation of the indices n and k.

Recursively, we define the 1 × 1 Hadamard transform H₀ by the identity H₀ = 1, and then define H_m for m > 0 by:

$H_{m}={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}{\begin{pmatrix}H_{m-1}&H_{m-1}\\H_{m-1}&-H_{m-1}\end{pmatrix}},$

where the 1/√2 is a normalization that is sometimes omitted. Thus, other than this normalization factor, the Hadamard matrices are made up entirely of 1 and −1.

Equivalently, we can define the Hadamard matrix by its (k, n)-th entry by writing

$k=k_{m-1}2^{m-1}+k_{m-2}2^{m-2}+\cdots +k_{1}2+k_{0}\,$

and

$n=n_{m-1}2^{m-1}+n_{m-2}2^{m-2}+\cdots +n_{1}2+n_{0},$

where the k_j and n_j are the binary digits (0 or 1) of k and n, respectively. In this case, we have:

$\left(H_{m}\right)_{k,n}={\frac {1}{2^{m/2}}}(-1)^{\sum _{j}k_{j}n_{j}}.$

This is exactly the multidimensional $2\times 2\times \cdots \times 2\times 2$ DFT, normalized to be unitary, if the inputs and outputs are regarded as multidimensional arrays indexed by the n_j and k_j, respectively.

Some examples of the Hadamard matrices follow.

$\ H_{0}=+1$

$H_{1}={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}{\begin{pmatrix}{\begin{array}{rr}1&1\\1&-1\end{array}}\end{pmatrix}}$

(This H₁ is precisely the size-2 DFT. It can also be regarded as the Fourier transform on the two-element additive group of Z/(2).)

$H_{2}={\frac {1}{2}}{\begin{pmatrix}{\begin{array}{rrrr}1&1&1&1\\1&-1&1&-1\\1&1&-1&-1\\1&-1&-1&1\end{array}}\end{pmatrix}}$

$H_{3}={\frac {1}{2^{3/2}}}{\begin{pmatrix}{\begin{array}{rrrrrrrr}1&1&1&1&1&1&1&1\\1&-1&1&-1&1&-1&1&-1\\1&1&-1&-1&1&1&-1&-1\\1&-1&-1&1&1&-1&-1&1\\1&1&1&1&-1&-1&-1&-1\\1&-1&1&-1&-1&1&-1&1\\1&1&-1&-1&-1&-1&1&1\\1&-1&-1&1&-1&1&1&-1\end{array}}\end{pmatrix}}.$

$(H_{n})_{i,j}={\frac {1}{2^{n/2}}}(-1)^{i\cdot j}$

where $i\cdot j$ is the bitwise dot product of the binary representations of the numbers i and j. For example, $H_{32}=(-1)^{3\cdot 2}=(-1)^{(1,1)\cdot (1,0)}=(-1)^{1+0}=(-1)^{1}=-1$, agreeing with the above (ignoring the overall constant). Note that the first row, first column of the matrix is denoted by $H_{00}$

The rows of the Hadamard matrices are the Walsh functions.

Hadamard gate operations

$H(|1\rangle )={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|0\rangle -{\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|1\rangle .$

$H(|0\rangle )={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|0\rangle +{\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|1\rangle .$

$H\left({\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|0\rangle -{\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|1\rangle \right)={\frac {1}{2}}(|0\rangle +|1\rangle )-{\frac {1}{2}}(|0\rangle -|1\rangle )=|1\rangle .$

$H\left({\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|0\rangle +{\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|1\rangle \right)={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}{\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}(|0\rangle +|1\rangle )+{\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}\left({\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|0\rangle -{\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}|1\rangle \right)=|0\rangle .$

One application of the Hadamard gate to either a 0 or 1 qubit will produce a quantum state that, if observed, will be a 0 or 1 with equal probability (as seen in the first two operations). This is exactly like flipping a fair coin in the standard probabilistic model of computation. However, if the Hadamard gate is applied twice in succession (as is effectively being done in the last two operations), then the final state is always the same as the initial state. This would be like taking a fair coin that is showing heads, flipping it twice, and it always landing on heads after the second flip.

Computational complexity

The Hadamard transform can be computed in m log m operations, using the fast Hadamard transform algorithm.

Quantum computing applications

In quantum information processing the Hadamard transformation, more often called Hadamard gate in this context (cf. quantum gate), is a one-qubit rotation, mapping the qubit-basis states $|0\rangle$ and $|1\rangle$ to two superposition states with equal weight of the computational basis states $|0\rangle$ and $|1\rangle$. Usually the phases are chosen so that we have

${\frac {|0\rangle +|1\rangle }{\sqrt {2}}}\langle 0|+{\frac {|0\rangle -|1\rangle }{\sqrt {2}}}\langle 1|$

in Dirac notation. This corresponds to the transformation matrix

$H_{1}={\frac {1}{\sqrt {2}}}{\begin{pmatrix}1&1\\1&-1\end{pmatrix}}$

in the $|0\rangle ,|1\rangle$ basis.

Many quantum algorithms use the Hadamard transform as an initial step, since it maps n qubits initialized with $|0\rangle$ to a superposition of all 2ⁿ orthogonal states in the $|0\rangle ,|1\rangle$basis with equal weight.

Other applications

The Hadamard transform is also used in data encryption, as well as many signal processing and data compression algorithms, such as HD Photo and MPEG-4 AVC. In video compression applications, it is usually used in the form of the sum of absolute transformed differences.

See also

• Fast Walsh-Hadamard transform
• Joseph Leonard Walsh
• Pseudo-Hadamard transform
• Haar transform

External links

• Terry Ritter, Walsh-Hadamard Transforms: A Literature Survey (Aug. 1996)
• Charles Constantine Gumas, [1]
• Pan, Jeng-shyang Data Encryption Method Using Discrete Fractional Hadamard Transformation (May 28 2009)