Optimal tradeoffs for estimating Pauli observables

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the optimal sample complexity and memory tradeoffs for estimating subsets of Pauli observables in quantum states, providing tight bounds and improved protocols for quantum shadow tomography.

Contribution

It offers a complete characterization of the optimal sample complexity for Pauli shadow tomography with various memory constraints and introduces protocols that estimate actual Pauli expectation values.

Findings

Any poly(n)-copy measurement protocol requires at least /4 measurements.

For protocols with k < n qubits of memory, 4 4 copies are necessary and sufficient.

Established tight bounds for purity testing, revealing a phase transition in the memory-sample tradeoff.

Abstract

We revisit the problem of Pauli shadow tomography: given copies of an unknown $n$-qubit quantum state $\rho$, estimate $\text{tr}(P\rho)$ for some set of Pauli operators $P$ to within additive error $\epsilon$. This has been a popular testbed for exploring the advantage of protocols with quantum memory over those without: with enough memory to measure two copies at a time, one can use Bell sampling to estimate $|\text{tr}(P\rho)|$ for all $P$ using $O(n/\epsilon^4)$ copies, but with $k\le n$ qubits of memory, $\Omega(2^{(n-k)/3})$ copies are needed. These results leave open several natural questions. How does this picture change in the physically relevant setting where one only needs to estimate a certain subset of Paulis? What is the optimal dependence on $\epsilon$? What is the optimal tradeoff between quantum memory and sample complexity? We answer all of these questions. For any subset $A$ of Paulis and any family of measurement strategies, we completely characterize the optimal sample complexity, up to $\log |A|$ factors. We show any protocol that makes $\text{poly}(n)$-copy measurements must make $\Omega(1/\epsilon^4)$ measurements. For any protocol that makes $\text{poly}(n)$-copy measurements and only has $k < n$ qubits of memory, we show that $\widetilde{\Theta}(\min\{2^n/\epsilon^2, 2^{n-k}/\epsilon^4\})$ copies are necessary and sufficient. The protocols we propose can also estimate the actual values $\text{tr}(P\rho)$, rather than just their absolute values as in prior work. Additionally, as a byproduct of our techniques, we establish tight bounds for the task of purity testing and show that it exhibits an intriguing phase transition not present in the memory-sample tradeoff for Pauli shadow tomography.