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Shadow tomography of quantum states with prediction

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Abstract

The shadow tomography problem introduced by [1] is an important problem in quantum computing. Given an unknown n-qubit quantum state ρ, the goal is to estimate tr(F1ρ),…,(FMρ) using as least copies of ρ as possible, within an additive error of ε, where F1,…,FM are known 2-outcome measurements. In this paper, we consider the shadow tomography problem with a potentially inaccurate prediction ϱ of the true state ρ. This corresponds to practical cases where we possess prior knowledge of the unknown state. For example, in quantum verification or calibration, we may be aware of the quantum state that the quantum device is expected to generate. However, the actual state it generates may have deviations. We introduce an algorithm with sample complexity Õ(n max{∥ρ − ϱ∥1,ε}log2M/ε4). In the generic case, even if the prediction can be arbitrarily bad, our algorithm has the same complexity as the best algorithm without prediction [2]. At the same time, as the prediction quality improves, the sample complexity can be reduced smoothly to Õ(nlog2M/ε3) when the trace distance between the prediction and the unknown state is Θ(ε). Furthermore, we conduct numerical experiments to validate our theoretical analysis. The experiments are constructed to simulate noisy quantum circuits that reflect possible real scenarios in quantum verification or calibration. Notably, our algorithm outperforms the previous work without prediction in most settings.

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Acknowledgements

J. Zhang, Z. Wan were supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62325210, and 62272441), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDB28000000). T. Li was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62372006, 92365117), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Peking University. J. Jiang completed his work during an exchange study at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Jiyu Jiang & Meiyue Shao

  2. State Key Lab of Processors, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Zongqi Wan & Jialin Zhang

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 101408, China

    Zongqi Wan & Jialin Zhang

  4. Center on Frontiers of Computing Studies, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Tongyang Li

  5. School of Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Tongyang Li

  6. Shanghai Key Laboratory for Contemporary Applied Mathematics, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Meiyue Shao

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  1. Jiyu Jiang
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Correspondence to Jialin Zhang.

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Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests or financial conflicts to disclose.

Additional information

Jiyu Jiang is a master’s student in the School of Data Science, Fudan University, China under the supervision of Prof. Meiyue Shao. He is interested in quantum computing and machine learning.

Zongqi Wan is a PhD student at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China under the supervision of Prof. Jialin Zhang. He is interested in several directions of theoretical computer science and machine learning, including bandit theory, submodular maximization, and auction theory.

Tongyang Li is an assistant professor at Center on Frontiers of Computing Studies, School of Computer Science, Peking University, China. His research focuses on quantum algorithms, including topics such as quantum algorithms for machine learning and optimization, quantum query complexity, quantum simulation, and quantum walks.

Meiyue Shao is an associate professor in the School of Data Science at Fudan University, China. He received his PhD in mathematics from EPF Lausanne in 2014. Before joining Fudan University, China in 2019, he worked in the Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow and then as a project scientist. His research interests include numerical linear, high performance computing, and computational quantum mechanics.

Jialin Zhang is currently a professor in Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Science, China. Prior to ICT, she was a postdoctoral researcher in University of Southern California, USA. She received her PhD in applied mathematics from Tsinghua University under the supervision of Andrew Chi-Chih Yao. Her research interest includes quantum computing, submodular maximization, approximation algorithm, and algorithmic game theory.

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Cite this article

Jiang, J., Wan, Z., Li, T. et al. Shadow tomography of quantum states with prediction. Front. Comput. Sci. 19, 197907 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-024-40414-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-024-40414-w

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