Quantum channel tomography and estimation by local test

TL;DR

This paper investigates quantum channel estimation, establishing that access to dilations doesn't aid in testing, and provides query complexity bounds for channel tomography with various error metrics and conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a local tester that simulates dilation access, and derives optimal query complexities for quantum channel tomography under different scenarios.

Findings

Access to dilations does not improve testing efficiency.

Query complexity for channel tomography scales as O(rd_1d_2/ε^2).

Heisenberg scaling achieved with O(1/ε) queries when rd_2=d_1.

Abstract

We study the estimation of an unknown quantum channel $\mathcal{E}$ with input dimension $d_1$, output dimension $d_2$ and Kraus rank at most $r$. We establish a connection between the query complexities in two models: (i) access to $\mathcal{E}$, and (ii) access to a random dilation of $\mathcal{E}$. Specifically, we show that for parallel (possibly coherent) testers, access to dilations does not help. This is proved by constructing a local tester that uses $n$ queries to $\mathcal{E}$ yet faithfully simulates the tester with $n$ queries to a random dilation. As application, we show that: - $O(rd_1d_2/\varepsilon^2)$ queries to $\mathcal{E}$ suffice for channel tomography to within diamond norm error $\varepsilon$. Moreover, when $rd_2=d_1$, we show that the Heisenberg scaling $O(1/\varepsilon)$ can be achieved, even if $\mathcal{E}$ is not a unitary channel: - $O(\min\{d_1^{2.5}/\varepsilon,d_1^2/\varepsilon^2\})$ queries to $\mathcal{E}$ suffice for channel tomography to within diamond norm error $\varepsilon$, and $O(d_1^2/\varepsilon)$ queries suffice for the case of Choi state trace norm error $\varepsilon$. - $O(\min\{d_1^{1.5}/\varepsilon,d_1/\varepsilon^2\})$ queries to $\mathcal{E}$ suffice for tomography of the mixed state $\mathcal{E}(|0\rangle\langle 0|)$ to within trace norm error $\varepsilon$.