arXiv subjects

Pulkit Sinha

Publications and source records attributed to Pulkit Sinha.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Enhanced quantum capacity thresholds from symmetry

The quantum capacity captures the value of a quantum channel for transmitting quantum information, establishing the fundamental limits on quantum communication. In spite of its central role in quantum information theory, the quantum capacity of most channels is unknown, with wide gaps between the best upper and lower bounds. Even deciding whether a channel has nonzero capacity -- finding its capacity threshold -- is difficult. In this paper we report significant increases in the capacity thresholds of two prototypical noise models: the depolarizing channel and Pauli channels. In the case of the depolarizing channel, this is the first improvement in 18 years, giving a bigger increase beyond the hashing bound than all previous improvements combined. Our starting point is the representation theoretic framework recently proposed by Bhalerao and Leditzky (2025) to compute coherent information for special permutation invariant states. We generalize their framework to the full symmetric subspace, which allow us to optimize coherent information over rank two states in that space. A representation theoretic calculation shows that exponentially many Kraus operators of the channel annihilate the symmetric space, corresponding to a massive decrease in environment entropy for states on the symmetric space compared to the maximally mixed state. This explains the enhanced coherent information as a manifestation of degeneracy for the resulting codes.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Nearly optimal algorithms to learn sparse quantum Hamiltonians in physically motivated distances

We study the problem of learning Hamiltonians $H$ that are $s$-sparse in the Pauli basis, given access to their time evolution. Although Hamiltonian learning has been extensively investigated, two issues recur in much of the existing literature: the absence of matching lower bounds and the use of mathematically convenient but physically opaque error measures. We address both challenges by introducing two physically motivated distances between Hamiltonians and designing a nearly optimal algorithm with respect to one of these metrics. The first, time-constrained distance, quantifies distinguishability through dynamical evolution up to a bounded time. The second, temperature-constrained distance, captures distinguishability through thermal states at bounded inverse temperatures. We show that $s$-sparse Hamiltonians with bounded operator norm can be learned in both distances with $O(s \log(1/\epsilon))$ experiments and $O(s^2/\epsilon)$ evolution time. For the time-constrained distance, we further establish lower bounds of $\Omega((s/n)\log(1/\epsilon) + s)$ experiments and $\Omega(\sqrt{s}/\epsilon)$ evolution time, demonstrating near-optimality in the number of experiments. As an intermediate result, we obtain an algorithm that learns every Pauli coefficient of $s$-sparse Hamiltonians up to error $\epsilon$ in $O(s\log(1/\epsilon))$ experiments and $O(s/\epsilon)$ evolution time, improving upon several recent results. The source of this improvement is a new isolation technique, inspired by the Valiant-Vazirani theorem (STOC'85), which shows that NP is as easy as detecting unique solutions. This isolation technique allows us to query the time evolution of a single Pauli coefficient of a sparse Hamiltonian--even when the Pauli support of the Hamiltonian is unknown--ultimately enabling us to recover the Pauli support itself.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Stabilizer Ranks, Barnes Wall Lattices and Magic Monotones

In 2024, Kliuchnikov and Sch\"onnenbeck showed a connection between the Barnes Wall lattices, stabilizer states and Clifford operations. In this work, we study their results and relate them to the problem of lower bounding stabilizer ranks. We show the first quantitative lower bound on stabilizer fidelity as a function of stabilizer ranks, which reproduces the linear-by-log lower bound for $\chi_{\delta}({|{H}\rangle^{ \otimes n}})$, i.e, on the approximate stabilizer rank of $|H\rangle^{\otimes n}$. In fact, we show that the lower bound holds even when the fidelity between the approximation and ${|H\rangle}^{\otimes n}$ is exponentially small, which is currently the best lower bound in this regime. Next, we define a new magic monotone for pure states, the Barnes Wall norm, and its corresponding approximate variant. We upper bound these monotones by the $CS$-count of state preparation, and also by the stabilizer ranks. In particular, the upper bound given by the $CS$-count is tight, in the sense that we exhibit states that achieve the bound. Apart from these results, we give a Fidelity Amplification algorithm, which provides a trade-off between approximation error and the stabilizer rank. As a corollary, it gives us a way to compose approximate stabilizer decompositions into approximate decompositions of their tensor products. Finally, we provide an alternate, elementary proof of the existence and density of product states with maximal stabilizer ranks, which was first proven by Lovitz and Steffan (2022), where they used results from algebraic geometry.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Dimension Independent and Computationally Efficient Shadow Tomography

We describe a new shadow tomography algorithm that uses $n=\Theta(\sqrt{m}\log m/\epsilon^2)$ samples, for $m$ measurements and additive error $\epsilon$, which is independent of the dimension of the quantum state being learned. This stands in contrast to all previously known algorithms that improve upon the naive approach. The sample complexity also has optimal dependence on $\epsilon$. Additionally, this algorithm is efficient in various aspects, including quantum memory usage (possibly even $O(1)$), gate complexity, classical computation, and robustness to qubit measurement noise. It can also be implemented as a read-once quantum circuit with low quantum memory usage, i.e., it will hold only one copy of $\rho$ in memory, and discard it before asking for a new one, with the additional memory needed being $O(m\log n)$. Our approach builds on the idea of using noisy measurements, but instead of focusing on gentleness in trace distance, we focus on the \textit{gentleness in shadows}, i.e., we show that the noisy measurements do not significantly perturb the expected values.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

NP-hardness of testing equivalence to sparse polynomials and to constant-support polynomials

An $s$-sparse polynomial has at most $s$ monomials with nonzero coefficients. The Equivalence Testing problem for sparse polynomials (ETsparse) asks to decide if a given polynomial $f$ is equivalent to (i.e., in the orbit of) some $s$-sparse polynomial. In other words, given $f \in \mathbb{F}[\mathbf{x}]$ and $s \in \mathbb{N}$, ETsparse asks to check if there exist $A \in \mathrm{GL}(|\mathbf{x}|, \mathbb{F})$ and $\mathbf{b} \in \mathbb{F}^{|\mathbf{x}|}$ such that $f(A\mathbf{x} + \mathbf{b})$ is $s$-sparse. We show that ETsparse is NP-hard over any field $\mathbb{F}$, if $f$ is given in the sparse representation, i.e., as a list of nonzero coefficients and exponent vectors. This answers a question posed in [Gupta-Saha-Thankey, SODA'23] and [Baraskar-Dewan-Saha, STACS'24]. The result implies that the Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) is NP-hard for a dense subclass of depth-$3$ arithmetic circuits if the input is given in sparse representation. We also show that approximating the smallest $s_0$ such that a given $s$-sparse polynomial $f$ is in the orbit of some $s_0$-sparse polynomial to within a factor of $s^{\frac{1}{3} - \epsilon}$ is NP-hard for any $\epsilon > 0$; observe that $s$-factor approximation is trivial as the input is $s$-sparse. Finally, we show that for any constant $\sigma \geq 5$, checking if a polynomial (given in sparse representation) is in the orbit of some support-$\sigma$ polynomial is NP-hard. Support of a polynomial $f$ is the maximum number of variables present in any monomial of $f$. These results are obtained via direct reductions from the $3$-SAT problem.

cs.CC↗

arXiv2024

Phase error rate estimation in QKD with imperfect detectors

We present a finite-size security proof of the decoy-state BB84 QKD protocol against coherent attacks, using entropic uncertainty relations, for imperfect detectors. We apply this result to the case of detectors with imperfectly characterized basis-efficiency mismatch. Our proof works by obtaining a suitable bound on the phase error rate, without requiring any new modifications to the protocol steps or hardware. It is applicable to imperfectly characterized detectors, and only requires the maximum relative difference in detection efficiencies and dark count rates of the detectors to be characterized. Moreover, our proof allows Eve to choose detector efficiencies and dark count rates in their allowed ranges in each round, thereby addressing an important problem of detector side channels. We prove security in the variable-length framework, where users are allowed to adaptively determine the length of key to be produced, and number of bits to be used for error-correction, based on observations made during the protocol. We quantitatively demonstrate the effect of basis-efficiency mismatch by applying our results to the decoy-state BB84 protocol.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Proper vs Improper Quantum PAC learning

A basic question in the PAC model of learning is whether proper learning is harder than improper learning. In the classical case, there are examples of concept classes with VC dimension $d$ that have sample complexity $\Omega\left(\frac d\epsilon\log\frac1\epsilon\right)$ for proper learning with error $\epsilon$, while the complexity for improper learning is O$\!\left(\frac d\epsilon\right)$. One such example arises from the Coupon Collector problem. Motivated by the efficiency of proper versus improper learning with quantum samples, Arunachalam, Belovs, Childs, Kothari, Rosmanis, and de Wolf (TQC 2020) studied an analogue, the Quantum Coupon Collector problem. Curiously, they discovered that for learning size $k$ subsets of $[n]$ the problem has sample complexity $\Theta(k\log\min\{k,n-k+1\})$, in contrast with the complexity of $\Theta(k\log k)$ for Coupon Collector. This effectively negates the possibility of a separation between the two modes of learning via the quantum problem, and Arunachalam et al.\ posed the possibility of such a separation as an open question. In this work, we first present an algorithm for the Quantum Coupon Collector problem with sample complexity that matches the sharper lower bound of $(1-o_k(1))k\ln\min\{k,n-k+1\}$ shown recently by Bab Hadiashar, Nayak, and Sinha (IEEE TIT 2024), for the entire range of the parameter $k$. Next, we devise a variant of the problem, the Quantum Padded Coupon Collector. We prove that its sample complexity matches that of the classical Coupon Collector problem for both modes of learning, thereby exhibiting the same asymptotic separation between proper and improper quantum learning as mentioned above. The techniques we develop in the process can be directly applied to any form of padded quantum data. We hope that padding can more generally lift other forms of classical learning behaviour to the quantum setting.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Optimal lower bounds for Quantum Learning via Information Theory

Although a concept class may be learnt more efficiently using quantum samples as compared with classical samples in certain scenarios, Arunachalam and de Wolf (JMLR, 2018) proved that quantum learners are asymptotically no more efficient than classical ones in the quantum PAC and Agnostic learning models. They established lower bounds on sample complexity via quantum state identification and Fourier analysis. In this paper, we derive optimal lower bounds for quantum sample complexity in both the PAC and agnostic models via an information-theoretic approach. The proofs are arguably simpler, and the same ideas can potentially be used to derive optimal bounds for other problems in quantum learning theory. We then turn to a quantum analogue of the Coupon Collector problem, a classic problem from probability theory also of importance in the study of PAC learning. Arunachalam, Belovs, Childs, Kothari, Rosmanis, and de Wolf (TQC, 2020) characterized the quantum sample complexity of this problem up to constant factors. First, we show that the information-theoretic approach mentioned above provably does not yield the optimal lower bound. As a by-product, we get a natural ensemble of pure states in arbitrarily high dimensions which are not easily (simultaneously) distinguishable, while the ensemble has close to maximal Holevo information. Second, we discover that the information-theoretic approach yields an asymptotically optimal bound for an approximation variant of the problem. Finally, we derive a sharper lower bound for the Quantum Coupon Collector problem, via the generalized Holevo-Curlander bounds on the distinguishability of an ensemble. All the aspects of the Quantum Coupon Collector problem we study rest on properties of the spectrum of the associated Gram matrix, which may be of independent interest.

quant-ph↗