Sufficient quantum provenance: retained fields and certified recording precision

Abstract

Which execution details must a quantum computation retain, and to what precision, to support a declared comparison? We define a sufficient record by the largest Hellinger distance between outcome laws that share it. Our main result is a circuit-derived certificate for continuous recording precision: independent channel-mixture probabilities enter through the affinity of latent noise flags, while coherent rotation differences enter through conditional quantum fidelity. Their joint composition bounds whole record cells without simulating their outcome distributions. For four-qubit QAOA at depth one, a 13-bit comparison record guarantees distance below 0.05 throughout a declared continuous noise box, uniformly over programmed angles when comparisons hold the logical task fixed. A construction with observable noise flags attains the general bound. Exact tensorization of Hellinger affinity connects recording precision to the length of a future measurement transcript. On finite context classes, separation witnesses certify minimum-cost field retention; a four-field record is the unique minimum for 28 archived QAOA instances. Fresh six-qubit processor measurements establish different minimum label counts at one common tolerance: two labels are necessary and sufficient for raw laws, while one suffices after a fixed decoder for a synthetic image-segmentation task. These hardware conclusions are conditional on stationary independent shots and remain distinct from the analytic channel certificate. Shared task definitions and evidential archives are retained separately. The framework specifies which execution distinctions matter, how precisely to record them, and what evidence supports the resulting agreement guarantee.