We consider the problem of quantum state certification, where we are given the description of a mixed state $σ\in \mathbb{C}^{d \times d}$, $n$ copies of a mixed state $ρ\in \mathbb{C}^{d \times d}$, and $\varepsilon > 0$, and we are asked to determine whether $ρ= σ$ or whether $\| ρ- σ\|_1 > \varepsilon$. When $σ$ is the maximally mixed state $\frac{1}{d} I_d$, this is known as mixedness testing. We focus on algorithms which use incoherent measurements, i.e. which only measure one copy of $ρ$ at a time. Unlike those that use entangled, multi-copy measurements, these can be implemented without persistent quantum memory and thus represent a large class of protocols that can be run on current or near-term devices.
For mixedness testing, there is a folklore algorithm which uses incoherent measurements and only needs $O(d^{3/2} / \varepsilon^2)$ copies. The algorithm is non-adaptive, that is, its measurements are fixed ahead of time, and is known to be optimal for non-adaptive algorithms. However, when the algorithm can make arbitrary incoherent measurements, the best known lower bound is only $Ω(d^{4/3} / \varepsilon^2)$ [Bubeck-Chen-Li '20], and it has been an outstanding open problem to close this polynomial gap. In this work, 1) we settle the copy complexity of mixedness testing with incoherent measurements and show that $Ω(d^{3/2} / \varepsilon^2)$ copies are necessary, and 2) we show the instance-optimal bounds for state certification to general $σ$ first derived by [Chen-Li-O'Donnell '21] for non-adaptive measurements also hold for arbitrary incoherent measurements.
Qualitatively, our results say that adaptivity does not help at all for these problems. Our results are based on new techniques that allow us to reduce the problem to understanding certain matrix martingales, which we believe may be of independent interest.
Geometric Optimization over Quantum State Spaces: Tight Uncertainty Relations and Resource Certification
School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）；ICTP-AP, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学ICTP-AP）
Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院软件研究所）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Graduate School of Mathematics, Nagoya University（名古屋大学数学研究院）；Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University（清华大学计算机科学与技术系）
Unitary-accessible coherence-erasure distance: Exact qubit solution and a tight qutrit bound
Changchun University of Technology（长春工业大学）；Yanbian University（延边大学）；Capital Normal University（首都师范大学）；Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences（马克斯·普朗克科学促进部数理研究所）
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Ulm University（乌尔姆大学理论物理研究所）；Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology (IQST)（综合量子科学与技术中心）；Ulm University（乌尔姆大学）
