Yuchen Lu, Kun Fang (Jan 14 2025).

Abstract: Quantum relative entropy, a quantum generalization of the well-known Kullback-Leibler divergence, serves as a fundamental measure of the distinguishability between quantum states and plays a pivotal role in quantum information science. Despite its importance, efficiently estimating quantum relative entropy between two quantum states on quantum computers remains a significant challenge. In this work, we propose the first quantum algorithm for estimating quantum relative entropy and Petz Rényi divergence from two unknown quantum states on quantum computers, addressing open problems highlighted in [Phys. Rev. A 109, 032431 (2024)] and [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 70, 5653-5680 (2024)]. This is achieved by combining quadrature approximations of relative entropies, the variational representation of quantum f-divergences, and a new technique for parameterizing Hermitian polynomial operators to estimate their traces with quantum states. Notably, the circuit size of our algorithm is at most 2n+1 with n being the number of qubits in the quantum states and it is directly applicable to distributed scenarios, where quantum states to be compared are hosted on cross-platform quantum computers. We validate our algorithm through numerical simulations, laying the groundwork for its future deployment on quantum hardware devices.

Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.07292