Nonasymptotic bounds for quantum purity amplification

Thilo Scharnhorst, Jack Spilecki, John Wright (May 27 2026).

Abstract: In quantum purity amplification, one is given $n$ copies of a noisy quantum state $\rho \in \mathbb{C}^{d \times d}$ and asked to prepare $k$ copies of its principal eigenstate $|v_d\rangle$. Several prior works have derived information-theoretically optimal algorithms for this problem, but the bounds they prove are only shown in the asymptotic regime as the number of samples $n$ tends to infinity. In this paper, we establish the following nonasymptotic guarantee: if $\rho$'s eigenvalues are sorted $p_1 \leq \cdots \leq p_d$ and $p_{d-1} < p_d$, then \beginequation* n = O\Big(k + \frack\delta ⋅\frac1-p_d(p_d-p_d-1)^2\Big) \endequation* copies suffice to output a state with fidelity at least $1-\delta$ with $|v_d^{\otimes k}\rangle$. Our bound holds for arbitrary spectra, and is independent of the dimension $d$. In the case of depolarizing noise, our finite-sample guarantee matches the optimal asymptotic scaling. Our proof is based on the combinatorics of random Young diagrams.

Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27262