# Generic matrix exponential in Q#

I am trying to find a way to implement a unitary transformation in Q# that implements e^(iA) where A is a square matrix. However, I only found ways to do this in Q# if A can be represented as a tensors of Paulis (the Exp operation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/qsharp/api/qsharp/microsoft.quantum.primitive.exp or using a PauliEvolutionSet when trying to do Hamiltonian simulation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/qsharp/api/qsharp/microsoft.quantum.simulation.paulievolutionset).

Does anyone know how to do this for a generic matrix A? If for example you want to use a 8x8 matrix, you can't express it in terms of tensors of Paulis...

Thanks in advance for the help!

One thing to point out is that because the Paulis form a basis, you can actually represent any $$2^n \times 2^n$$ matrix in terms of a sum of tensors of Paulis, i.e., members of the $$n$$-qubit Pauli group. That is, you can write any $$8 \times 8$$ matrix $$A$$ as a sum of the form $$A =\sum_{i,j,k}h_{ijk}\ \sigma_i\otimes\sigma_j\otimes\sigma_k$$ where $$h_{ijk}$$ are the coefficients in the Pauli basis. The answer to this related question describes how to solve for these coefficients.
Now, once you have expressed $$A$$ in the Pauli basis, you can use the Q# operations you mention to implement the evolution. Some more background on implementing this in Q# is available at this link. The general idea is that once you have expressed the matrix $$A$$ in the Pauli basis, you can now use something like a Trotter–Suzuki expansion to approximately express the exponential $$e^{iA}$$ as a product of exponentials of Paulis, which can then in turn be implemented on a quantum computer (and also via built-in Q# tools such as Exp and PauliEvolutionSet).
Why doesn't a language like Q# include a built-in library for implementing a matrix exponential $$e^{iA}$$ for some general matrix $$A$$? Essentially because such an operation is, in general, extremely inefficient to implement on a quantum computer. To understand why, note that for a general $$n$$-qubit unitary, there are $$4^n$$ coefficients required to represent it in a basis like the Pauli basis, which means that your resulting circuit depth will be on the order of $$4^n$$ -- far too deep to be practical for anything beyond very small systems.
The exception is the case where the matrix $$A$$ has "sparsity" in some representation -- for example, if only a constant number of the $$4^n$$ coefficients in the Pauli basis are non-zero. In that case, the circuit resulting from a Trotter-Suzuki decomposition would have only constant depth, rather than going as $$4^n$$.