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In IBM's Qiskit online simulator, we have the (non-reversible) ability to set a specific qubit to $| 0\rangle$. This is convenient but I'm left confused as to what happens to the elements of the statevector. The amplitudes must go somewhere so the probability is conserved, and I imagined at first that the 0 component for each 'Hadamard pair' absorbs the missing amplitude. But this does not take the phase into account.

What happens in the simulator when we set a qubit to $|0\rangle$?

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Applying a reset to a qubit is equivalent to measuring it, and then applying a bit flip to it conditioned on the measurement result.

def reset(qubit):
    if measure(qubit) == ON:
        X(qubit)

For example, in this Quirk circuit, you can see that the post-reset state matches the state you'd get when conditioning on a measurement-via-ancilla+bit-flip of the target qubit:

enter image description here

An equivalent reset, but perhaps more "physically accurate", is to swap the qubit for a fresh ancilla, then discard the ancilla.

def reset(qubit):
    ancilla = new_zero_qubit()
    swap(ancilla, qubit)
    discard(ancilla)
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  • $\begingroup$ Perfect, thank you! Are there instances where these results would give states which differ by a global phase (In my attempts to implement an ancillary qubit reset, I succeed in most cases, but in some am off by a global phase of $\pi$ when compared to IBM)? $\endgroup$
    – Craig
    Jan 10, 2022 at 4:11
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    $\begingroup$ Global phase is unobservable so that doesn't matter. $\endgroup$ Jan 10, 2022 at 5:49

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