arXiv subjects

Mark M. Wilde

Publications and source records attributed to Mark M. Wilde.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Quantum natural gradient with thermal-state initialization

Parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs) are central to variational quantum algorithms (VQAs), yet their performance is hindered by complex loss landscapes that make their trainability challenging. Quantum natural gradient descent, which leverages the geometry of the parameterized space through quantum generalizations of the Fisher information matrix, offers a promising solution but has been largely limited to pure-state scenarios, with only approximate methods available for mixed-state settings. This paper addresses this question, originally posed in [Stokes et al., Quantum 4, 269 (2020)], by providing exact methods to compute three quantum generalizations of the Fisher information matrix-the Fisher-Bures, Wigner-Yanase, and Kubo-Mori information matrices-for PQCs initialized with thermal states. We prove that these matrix elements can be estimated using quantum algorithms combining the Hadamard test, classical random sampling, and Hamiltonian simulation. By broadening the set of quantum generalizations of Fisher information and realizing their unbiased estimation, our results enable the implementation of quantum natural gradient descent algorithms for mixed-state PQCs, thereby enhancing the flexibility of optimization when using VQAs. Another immediate consequence of our findings is to establish fundamental limitations on the ability to estimate the parameters of a state generated by an unknown PQC, when given sample access to such a state.

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arXiv2025

Extendible quantum measurements and limitations on classical communication

Unextendibility of quantum states and channels is inextricably linked to the no-cloning theorem of quantum mechanics, it has played an important role in understanding and quantifying entanglement, and more recently it has found applications in providing limitations on quantum error correction and entanglement distillation. Here we generalize the framework of unextendibility to quantum measurements and define $k$-extendible measurements for every integer $k\ge 2$. Our definition provides a hierarchy of semidefinite constraints that specify a set of measurements containing every measurement that can be realized by local operations and one-way classical communication. Furthermore, the set of $k$-extendible measurements converges to the set of measurements that can be realized by local operations and one-way classical communication as $k\to \infty$. To illustrate the utility of $k$-extendible measurements, we establish a semidefinite programming upper bound on the one-shot classical capacity of a channel, which outperforms the best known efficiently computable bound from [Matthews and Wehner, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 60, pp. 7317-7329 (2014)] and also leads to efficiently computable upper bounds on the $n$-shot classical capacity of a channel.

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arXiv2025

Quantum algorithms for matrix geometric means

Matrix geometric means between two positive definite matrices can be defined from distinct perspectives - as solutions to certain nonlinear systems of equations, as points along geodesics in Riemannian geometry, and as solutions to certain optimisation problems. We devise quantum subroutines for the matrix geometric means, and construct solutions to the algebraic Riccati equation - an important class of nonlinear systems of equations appearing in machine learning, optimal control, estimation, and filtering. Using these subroutines, we present a new class of quantum learning algorithms, for both classical and quantum data, called quantum geometric mean metric learning, for weakly supervised learning and anomaly detection. The subroutines are also useful for estimating geometric Rényi relative entropies and the Uhlmann fidelity, in particular achieving optimal dependence on precision for the Uhlmann and Matsumoto fidelities. Finally, we provide a BQP-complete problem based on matrix geometric means that can be solved by our subroutines.

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arXiv2025

An invitation to the sample complexity of quantum hypothesis testing

Quantum hypothesis testing (QHT) has been traditionally studied from the information-theoretic perspective, wherein one is interested in the optimal decay rate of error probabilities as a function of the number of samples of an unknown state. In this paper, we study the sample complexity of QHT, wherein the goal is to determine the minimum number of samples needed to reach a desired error probability. By making use of the wealth of knowledge that already exists in the literature on QHT, we characterize the sample complexity of binary QHT in the symmetric and asymmetric settings, and we provide bounds on the sample complexity of multiple QHT. In more detail, we prove that the sample complexity of symmetric binary QHT depends logarithmically on the inverse error probability and inversely on the negative logarithm of the fidelity. As a counterpart of the quantum Stein's lemma, we also find that the sample complexity of asymmetric binary QHT depends logarithmically on the inverse type II error probability and inversely on the quantum relative entropy, provided that the type II error probability is sufficiently small. We then provide lower and upper bounds on the sample complexity of multiple QHT, with it remaining an intriguing open question to improve these bounds. The final part of our paper outlines and reviews how sample complexity of QHT is relevant to a broad swathe of research areas and can enhance understanding of many fundamental concepts, including quantum algorithms for simulation and search, quantum learning and classification, and foundations of quantum mechanics. As such, we view our paper as an invitation to researchers coming from different communities to study and contribute to the problem of sample complexity of QHT, and we outline a number of open directions for future research.

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arXiv2025

Multivariate Fidelities

The main contribution of our paper is to introduce a number of multivariate quantum fidelities and show that they satisfy several desirable properties that are natural extensions of those of the Uhlmann and Holevo fidelities. We propose three variants that reduce to the average pairwise fidelity for commuting states: average pairwise $z$-fidelities, the multivariate semi-definite programming (SDP) fidelity, and a multivariate fidelity inspired by an existing secrecy measure. The second one is obtained by extending the SDP formulation of the Uhlmann fidelity to more than two states. All three of these variants satisfy the following properties: (i) reduction to multivariate classical fidelities for commuting states, (ii) the data-processing inequality, (iii) invariance under permutations of the states, (iv) its values are in the interval $[0,1]$; they are faithful, that is, their values are equal to one if and only if all the states are equal, and they satisfy orthogonality, that is their values are equal to zero if and only if the states are mutually orthogonal to each other, (v) direct-sum property, (vi) joint concavity, and (vii) uniform continuity bounds under certain conditions. Furthermore, we establish inequalities relating these different variants, indeed clarifying that all these definitions coincide with the average pairwise fidelity for commuting states. Lastly, we introduce another multivariate fidelity called multivariate log-Euclidean fidelity, which is a quantum generalization of the Matusita multivariate fidelity. We also show that it satisfies most of the desirable properties listed above, it is a function of a multivariate log-Euclidean divergence, and has an operational interpretation in terms of quantum hypothesis testing with an arbitrarily varying null hypothesis.

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arXiv2025

Near-optimal performance of square-root measurement for general score functions and quantum ensembles

The Barnum-Knill theorem states that the optimal success probability in the multiple state discrimination task is not more than the square root of the success probability when the pretty good or square-root measurement is used for this task. An assumption of the theorem is that the underlying ensemble consists of finitely many quantum states over a finite-dimensional quantum system. Motivated in part by the fact that the success probability is not a relevant metric for continuous ensembles, in this paper we provide a generalization of the notion of pretty good measurement and the Barnum-Knill theorem for general quantum ensembles, including those described by a continuous parameter space and an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. To achieve this, we also design a general metric of performance for quantum measurements that generalizes the success probability, namely, the expected gain of the measurement with respect to a positive score function. A notable consequence of the main result is that, in a Bayesian estimation task, the mean square error of the generalized pretty good measurement does not exceed twice the optimal mean square error.

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arXiv2025

Quantum thermodynamics and semi-definite optimization

In quantum thermodynamics, a system is described by a Hamiltonian and a list of non-commuting charges representing conserved quantities like particle number or electric charge, and an important goal is to determine the system's minimum energy in the presence of these conserved charges. In optimization theory, a semi-definite program (SDP) involves a linear objective function optimized over the cone of positive semi-definite operators intersected with an affine space. These problems arise from differing motivations in the physics and optimization communities and are phrased using very different terminology, yet they are essentially identical mathematically. By adopting Jaynes' mindset motivated by quantum thermodynamics, we observe that minimizing free energy in the aforementioned thermodynamics problem, instead of energy, leads to an elegant solution in terms of a dual chemical potential maximization problem that is concave in the chemical potential parameters. As such, one can employ standard (stochastic) gradient ascent methods to find the optimal values of these parameters, and these methods are guaranteed to converge quickly. At low temperature, the minimum free energy provides an excellent approximation for the minimum energy. We then show how this Jaynes-inspired gradient-ascent approach can be used in both first- and second-order classical and hybrid quantum-classical algorithms for minimizing energy, and equivalently, how it can be used for solving SDPs, with guarantees on the runtimes of the algorithms. The approach discussed here is well grounded in quantum thermodynamics and, as such, provides physical motivation underpinning why algorithms published fifty years after Jaynes' seminal work, including the matrix multiplicative weights update method, the matrix exponentiated gradient update method, and their quantum algorithmic generalizations, perform well at solving SDPs.

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arXiv2025

Measured Hockey-Stick Divergence and its Applications to Quantum Pufferfish Privacy

The hockey-stick divergence is a fundamental quantity characterizing several statistical privacy frameworks that ensure privacy for classical and quantum data. In such quantum privacy frameworks, the adversary is allowed to perform all possible measurements. However, in practice, there are typically limitations to the set of measurements that can be performed. To this end, here, we comprehensively analyze the measured hockey-stick divergence under several classes of practically relevant measurement classes. We prove several of its properties, including data processing and convexity. We show that it is efficiently computable by semi-definite programming for some classes of measurements and can be analytically evaluated for Werner and isotropic states. Notably, we show that the measured hockey-stick divergence characterizes optimal privacy parameters in the quantum pufferfish privacy framework. With this connection and the developed technical tools, we enable methods to quantify and audit privacy for several practically relevant settings. Lastly, we introduce the measured hockey-stick divergence of channels and explore its applications in ensuring privacy for channels.

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arXiv2025

Quantum Computational Complexity and Symmetry

Testing the symmetries of quantum states and channels provides a way to assess their usefulness for different physical, computational, and communication tasks. Here, we establish several complexity-theoretic results that classify the difficulty of symmetry-testing problems involving a unitary representation of a group and a state or a channel that is being tested. In particular, we prove that various such symmetry-testing problems are complete for BQP, QMA, QSZK, QIP(2), QIP_EB(2), and QIP, thus spanning the prominent classes of the quantum interactive proof hierarchy and forging a non-trivial connection between symmetry and quantum computational complexity. Finally, we prove the inclusion of two Hamiltonian symmetry-testing problems in QMA and QAM, while leaving it as an intriguing open question to determine whether these problems are complete for these classes.

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arXiv2024

Inevitability of knowing less than nothing

A colloquial interpretation of entropy is that it is the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of a random experiment. Conditional entropy is then interpreted as the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of one random experiment after learning the outcome of another, possibly statistically dependent, random experiment. In the classical world, entropy and conditional entropy take only non-negative values, consistent with the intuition that one has regarding the aforementioned interpretations. However, for certain entangled states, one obtains negative values when evaluating commonly accepted and information-theoretically justified formulas for the quantum conditional entropy, leading to the confounding conclusion that one can know less than nothing in the quantum world. Here, we introduce a physically motivated framework for defining quantum conditional entropy, based on two simple postulates inspired by the second law of thermodynamics (non-decrease of entropy) and extensivity of entropy, and we argue that all plausible definitions of quantum conditional entropy should respect these two postulates. We then prove that all plausible quantum conditional entropies take on negative values for certain entangled states, so that it is inevitable that one can know less than nothing in the quantum world. All of our arguments are based on constructions of physical processes that respect the first postulate, the one inspired by the second law of thermodynamics.

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arXiv2024

Multipartite Intrinsic Non-Locality and Device-Independent Conference Key Agreement

In this work, we introduce multipartite intrinsic non-locality as a method for quantifying resources in the multipartite scenario of device-independent (DI) conference key agreement. We prove that multipartite intrinsic non-locality is additive, convex, and monotone under a class of free operations called local operations and common randomness. As one of our technical contributions, we establish a chain rule for two variants of multipartite mutual information, which we then use to prove that multipartite intrinsic non-locality is additive. This chain rule may be of independent interest in other contexts. All of these properties of multipartite intrinsic non-locality are helpful in establishing the main result of our paper: multipartite intrinsic non-locality is an upper bound on secret key rate in the general multipartite scenario of DI conference key agreement. We discuss various examples of DI conference key protocols and compare our upper bounds for these protocols with known lower bounds. Finally, we calculate upper bounds on recent experimental realizations of DI quantum key distribution.

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arXiv2024

Extendibility limits quantum-secured communication and key distillation

Secret-key distillation from quantum states and channels is a central task of interest in quantum information theory, as it facilitates private communication over a quantum network. Here, we study the task of secret-key distillation from bipartite states and point-to-point quantum channels using local operations and one-way classical communication (one-way LOCC). We employ the resource theory of unextendible entanglement to study the transformation of a bipartite state under one-way LOCC, and we obtain several efficiently computable upper bounds on the number of secret bits that can be distilled from a bipartite state using one-way LOCC channels; these findings apply not only in the one-shot setting but also in some restricted asymptotic settings. We extend our formalism to private communication over a quantum channel assisted by forward classical communication. We obtain efficiently computable upper bounds on the one-shot forward-assisted private capacity of a channel, thus addressing a question in the theory of quantum-secured communication that has been open for some time now. Our formalism also provides upper bounds on the rate of private communication when using a large number of channels in such a way that the error in the transmitted private data decreases exponentially with the number of channel uses. Moreover, our bounds can be computed using semidefinite programs, thus providing a computationally feasible method to understand the limits of private communication over a quantum network.

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arXiv2024

Logarithmic-Depth Quantum Circuits for Hamming Weight Projections

A pure state of fixed Hamming weight is a superposition of computational basis states such that each bitstring in the superposition has the same number of ones. Given a Hilbert space of the form $\mathcal{H} = (\mathbb{C}_2)^{\otimes n}$, or an $n$-qubit system, the identity operator can be decomposed as a sum of projectors onto subspaces of fixed Hamming weight. In this work, we propose several quantum algorithms that realize a coherent Hamming weight projective measurement on an input pure state, meaning that the post-measurement state of the algorithm is the projection of the input state onto the corresponding subspace of fixed Hamming weight. We analyze a depth-width trade-off for the corresponding quantum circuits, allowing for a depth reduction of the circuits at the cost of more control qubits. For an $n$-qubit input, the depth-optimal algorithm uses $O(n)$ control qubits and the corresponding circuit has depth $O(\log (n))$, assuming that we have the ability to perform qubit resets. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm construction uses only one- and two-qubit gates.

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arXiv2024

Device-Independent Certification of Multipartite Distillable Entanglement

Quantum networks consist of various quantum technologies, spread across vast distances, and involve various users at the same time. Certifying the functioning and efficiency of the individual components is a task that is well studied and widely used. However, the power of quantum networks can only be realized by integrating all the required quantum technologies and platforms across a large number of users. In this work, we demonstrate how to certify the distillable entanglement available in multipartite states produced by quantum networks, without relying on the physical realization of its constituent components. We do so by using the paradigm of device independence.

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arXiv2024

Postselected communication over quantum channels

The single-letter characterisation of the entanglement-assisted capacity of a quantum channel is one of the seminal results of quantum information theory. In this paper, we consider a modified communication scenario in which the receiver is allowed an additional, `inconclusive' measurement outcome, and we employ an error metric given by the error probability in decoding the transmitted message conditioned on a conclusive measurement result. We call this setting postselected communication and the ensuing highest achievable rates the postselected capacities. Here, we provide a precise single-letter characterisation of postselected capacities in the setting of entanglement assistance as well as the more general nonsignalling assistance, establishing that they are both equal to the channel's projective mutual information -- a variant of mutual information based on the Hilbert projective metric. We do so by establishing bounds on the one-shot postselected capacities, with a lower bound that makes use of a postselected teleportation-based protocol and an upper bound in terms of the postselected hypothesis testing relative entropy. As such, we obtain fundamental limits on a channel's ability to communicate even when this strong resource of postselection is allowed, implying limitations on communication even when the receiver has access to postselected closed timelike curves.

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arXiv2024

Quantum Algorithms for Realizing Symmetric, Asymmetric, and Antisymmetric Projectors

In quantum computing, knowing the symmetries a given system or state obeys or disobeys is often useful. For example, Hamiltonian symmetries may limit allowed state transitions or simplify learning parameters in machine learning applications, and certain asymmetric quantum states are known to be resourceful in various applications. Symmetry testing algorithms provide a means to identify and quantify these properties with respect to a representation of a group. In this paper, we present a collection of quantum algorithms that realize projections onto the symmetric subspace, as well as the asymmetric subspace, of quantum systems. We describe how this can be modified to realize an antisymmetric projection as well, and we show how projectors can be combined in a systematic way to effectively measure various projections in a single quantum circuit. Using these constructions, we demonstrate applications such as testing for Werner-state symmetry and estimating Schmidt ranks of bipartite states, supported by experimental data from IBM Quantum systems. This work underscores the pivotal role of symmetry in simplifying quantum calculations and advancing quantum information tasks.

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arXiv2024

Unextendible entanglement of quantum channels

Quantum communication relies on the existence of high quality quantum channels to exchange information. In practice, however, all communication links are affected by noise from the environment. Here we investigate the ability of quantum channels to perform quantum communication tasks by restricting the participants to use only local operations and one-way classical communication (one-way LOCC) along with the available quantum channel. In particular, a channel can be used to distill a highly entangled state between two parties, which further enables quantum or private communication. In this work, we invoke the framework of superchannels to study the distillation of a resourceful quantum state, such as a maximally entangled state or a private state, using multiple instances of a point-to-point quantum channel. We use the idea of $k$-extendibility to obtain a semidefinite relaxation of the set of one-way LOCC superchannels and define a class of entanglement measures for quantum channels that decrease monotonically under such superchannels; therefore these measures, dubbed collectively the ``unextendible entanglement of a channel'', yield upper bounds on several communication-theoretic quantities of interest in the regimes of resource distillation and zero error. We then generalize the formalism of $k$-extendibility to bipartite superchannels, thus obtaining functions that are monotone under two-extendible superchannels. This allows us to analyze probabilistic distillation of ebits or secret key bits from a bipartite state when using a resourceful quantum channel. Moreover, we propose semidefinite programs to evaluate several of these quantities, providing a computationally feasible method of comparison between quantum channels for resource distillation.

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arXiv2024

Cycle Index Polynomials and Generalized Quantum Separability Tests

The mixedness of one share of a pure bipartite state determines whether the overall state is a separable, unentangled state. Here we consider quantum computational tests of mixedness, and we derive an exact expression of the acceptance probability of such tests as the number of copies of the state becomes larger. We prove that the analytical form of this expression is given by the cycle index polynomial of the symmetric group $S_k$, which is itself related to the Bell polynomials. After doing so, we derive a family of quantum separability tests, each of which is generated by a finite group; for all such algorithms, we show that the acceptance probability is determined by the cycle index polynomial of the group. Finally, we produce and analyze explicit circuit constructions for these tests, showing that the tests corresponding to the symmetric and cyclic groups can be executed with $O(k^2)$ and $O(k\log(k))$ controlled-SWAP gates, respectively, where $k$ is the number of copies of the state being tested.

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