Cosmetic appearances of multi-controlled Z gate in MCMT Qiskit

Question

Using from qiskit.circuit.library I can import MCMT to create short-hand multi controlled gates, e.g.

from qiskit.circuit.library import MCMT
c3z = MCMT('z', num_ctrl_qubits=3, num_target_qubits=1) #define the 3-controlled z gate a.k.a. cccz gate
c3z.decompose().draw(output='mpl')

upon running the code you see the decomposed c3z gate:

if you append this gate to a quantum circuit,

from qiskit import QuantumCircuit
circ.clear()
circ = QuantumCircuit(4)
circ.append(c3z,[0,1,2,3])
circ.draw('mpl')

you see the following:

2 questions:

1.) If I add the line

circ.decompose(c3z)

(see https://qiskit.org/documentation/stubs/qiskit.circuit.QuantumCircuit.decompose.html) to the above then the code becomes

from qiskit import QuantumCircuit
circ.clear()
circ = QuantumCircuit(4)
circ.append(c3z,[0,1,2,3])
circ.decompose(c3z)
circ.draw('mpl')

And I'd expect the output to resemble the first image, not the second. However the circuit is not decomposed by adding this line and I just see the purple rectangle instead.

2.) The cz/ccz gates in Qiskit have a nice appearance:

circ.clear()
circ = QuantumCircuit(4)
circ.cz(0,1)
circ.ccz(0,1,2)
circ.draw('mpl')

is there any way to get my c3z gate to follow this trend and look neat and tidy? Many thanks.

Answer 1

I don't think this is possible if you use the MCMT class to create your custom gate. However, if you start from a simple ZGate and transform it into your multi-controlled c3z gate by the Gate.control method, then the circuit should be finally drawn as you wish:

from qiskit import QuantumCircuit
from qiskit.circuit.library import ZGate

circ = QuantumCircuit(4)
c3z = ZGate().control(num_ctrl_qubits=3, ctrl_state='111')
circ.append(c3z, [0,1,2,3])

circ.draw('mpl')