Predicting quantum channels over general product distributions

Abstract

We investigate the problem of predicting the output behavior of unknown quantum channels. Given query access to an n-qubit channel E and an observable O, we aim to learn the mapping ρ↦Tr(OE[ρ]) to within a small error for most ρ sampled from a distribution D. Previously, Huang, Chen, and Preskill proved a surprising result that even if E is arbitrary, this task can be solved in time roughly nO(log(1/ϵ)), where ϵ is the target prediction error. However, their guarantee applied only to input distributions D invariant under all single-qubit Clifford gates, and their algorithm fails for important cases such as general product distributions over product states ρ. In this work, we propose a new approach that achieves accurate prediction over essentially any product distribution D, provided it is not classical'' in which case there is a trivial exponential lower bound. Our method employs a biased Pauli analysis,'' analogous to classical biased Fourier analysis. Implementing this approach requires overcoming several challenges unique to the quantum setting, including the lack of a basis with appropriate orthogonality properties. The techniques we develop to address these issues may have broader applications in quantum information.

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