Exact Clifford Optimality for Two-Sided Locally Randomized Classical Shadows

Abstract

Entangling measurements can reduce the statistical cost of learning many-body correlations. We study Pauli strings with full support on a specified $k$-qubit region using classical shadows with two independent, uniformly random product single-qubit Clifford layers around a controllable unitary acting on that region, followed by computational-basis readout. In this architecture, we prove that a circuit $U_*$ of two collective Pauli rotations attains the exact minimum squared shadow norm over all Clifford choices of the controllable unitary for every $k\geq1$, namely $C_k^{\rm opt}=4\cdot 9^k/(3\cdot 5^k+3^k-6)$ for odd $k$ and $C_k^{\rm opt}=4\cdot 9^k/(3\cdot 5^k-3^k+2)$ for even $k$. The asymptotic optimum $(4/3)\cdot(9/5)^k$ establishes Wu et al.'s exponential base as optimal and improves their prefactor from $2$ to $4/3$. For $1\leq k\leq6$, exact rational certificates prove that the same optimum holds over the entire unitary group $\mathrm U(2^k)$, including all non-Clifford unitaries, within the same measurement architecture. These finite-size results motivate the conjecture that $U_*$ is optimal over all unitaries for arbitrary $k$ within this architecture.