We establish methods for quantum state tomography based on compressed sensing. These methods are specialized for quantum states that are fairly pure, and they offer a significant performance improvement on large quantum systems. In particular, they are able to reconstruct an unknown density matrix of dimension d and rank r using O(rdlog²d) measurement settings, compared to standard methods that require d² settings. Our methods have several features that make them amenable to experimental implementation: they require only simple Pauli measurements, use fast convex optimization, are stable against noise, and can be applied to states that are only approximately low rank. The acquired data can be used to certify that the state is indeed close to pure, so no a priori assumptions are needed.
We establish methods for quantum state tomography based on compressed sensing. These methods are specialized for quantum states that are fairly pure, and they offer a significant performance improvement on large quantum systems. In particular, they are able to reconstruct an unknown density matrix of dimension d and rank r using O(rdlog²d) measurement settings, compared to standard methods that require d² settings. Our methods have several features that make them amenable to experimental implementation: they require only simple Pauli measurements, use fast convex optimization, are stable against noise, and can be applied to states that are only approximately low rank. The acquired data can be used to certify that the state is indeed close to pure, so no a priori assumptions are needed.
This paper establishes the methods for quantum state tomography based on compressed sensing.These methods are specialized for quantum states that are fairly pure,and they offer a significant performance improvement on large quantum systems.In particular,they are able to reconstruct an unknown density matrix of dimension d and rank r using O(rdlog2d) measurement settings,compared to standard methods that require d2 settings.The methods have several features that make them amenable to experimental implementation: they require only simple Pauli measurements,use fast convex optimization,are stable against noise,and can be applied to states that are only approximately low rank.The acquired data can be used to certify that the state is indeed close to pure,so no a priori assumptions are needed.
Abstract With nowadays steadily growing quantum processors, it is required to develop new quantum tomography tools that are tailored for high-dimensional systems. In this work, we describe such a computational tool, based on recent ideas from non-convex optimization. The algorithm excels in the compressed sensing setting, where only a few data points are measured from a low-rank or highly-pure quantum state of a high-dimensional system. We show that the algorithm can practically be used in quantum tomography problems that are beyond the reach of convex solvers, and, moreover, is faster and more accurate than other state-of-the-art non-convex approaches. Crucially, we prove that, despite being a non-convex program, under mild conditions, the algorithm is guaranteed to converge to the global minimum of the quantum state tomography problem; thus, it constitutes a provable quantum state tomography protocol.
The techniques of low-rank matrix recovery were adapted for quantum state tomography (QST) previously by Gross et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 150401 (2010)] where they consider the tomography of n spin-1/2 systems. For the density matrix of dimension d=2n and rank r with $r\ensuremath{\ll}{2}^{n}$, it was shown that randomly chosen Pauli measurements of the order O[drlog(d)2] are enough to fully reconstruct the density matrix by running a specific convex optimization algorithm. The result utilized the low operator norm of the Pauli operator basis, which makes it ``incoherent'' to low-rank matrices. For quantum systems of dimension d not a power of two, Pauli measurements are not available, and one may consider using SU(d) measurements. Here, we point out that the SU(d) operators, owing to their high operator norm, do not provide a significant savings in the number of measurement settings required for successful recovery of all rank-r states. We propose an alternative strategy in which the quantum information is swapped into the subspace of a power-two system using only poly[log(d)2] gates at most with QST being implemented, subsequently, by performing O[drlog(d)2] Pauli measurements. We show that, despite the increased dimensionality, this method is more efficient than the one using SU(d) measurements.
Abstract Compressed sensing (CS) has been verified that it offers a significant performance improvement for large quantum systems comparing with the conventional quantum tomography approaches, because it reduces the number of measurements from O ( d 2 ) to O ( rd log( d )) in particular for quantum states that are fairly pure. Yet few algorithms have been proposed for quantum state tomography using CS specifically, let alone basis analysis for various measurement sets in quantum CS. To fill this gap, in this paper an efficient and robust state reconstruction algorithm based on compressive sensing is developed. By leveraging the fixed point equation approach to avoid the matrix inverse operation, we propose a fixed-point alternating direction method algorithm for compressive quantum state estimation that can handle both normal errors and large outliers in the optimization process. In addition, properties of five practical measurement bases (including the Pauli basis) are analyzed in terms of their coherences and reconstruction performances, which provides theoretical instructions for the selection of measurement settings in the quantum state estimation. The numerical experiments show that the proposed algorithm has much less calculating time, higher reconstruction accuracy and is more robust to outlier noises than many existing state reconstruction algorithms.
Intuitively, if a density operator has small rank, then it should be easier to estimate from experimental data, since in this case only a few eigenvectors need to be learned. We prove two complementary results that confirm this intuition. Firstly, we show that a low-rank density matrix can be estimated using fewer copies of the state, i.e. the sample complexity of tomography decreases with the rank. Secondly, we show that unknown low-rank states can be reconstructed from an incomplete set of measurements, using techniques from compressed sensing and matrix completion. These techniques use simple Pauli measurements, and their output can be certified without making any assumptions about the unknown state. In this paper, we present a new theoretical analysis of compressed tomography, based on the restricted isometry property for low-rank matrices. Using these tools, we obtain near-optimal error bounds for the realistic situation where the data contain noise due to finite statistics, and the density matrix is full-rank with decaying eigenvalues. We also obtain upper bounds on the sample complexity of compressed tomography, and almost-matching lower bounds on the sample complexity of any procedure using adaptive sequences of Pauli measurements. Using numerical simulations, we compare the performance of two compressed sensing estimators—the matrix Dantzig selector and the matrix Lasso—with standard maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE). We find that, given comparable experimental resources, the compressed sensing estimators consistently produce higher fidelity state reconstructions than MLE. In addition, the use of an incomplete set of measurements leads to faster classical processing with no loss of accuracy. Finally, we show how to certify the accuracy of a low-rank estimate using direct fidelity estimation, and describe a method for compressed quantum process tomography that works for processes with small Kraus rank and requires only Pauli eigenstate preparations and Pauli measurements.
Quantum state tomography (QST) is a fundamental task in quantum information science that aims to reconstruct unknown quantum states from measurement data. However, the exponential growth of Hilbert-space dimension with system size makes full tomography of general quantum states statistically and computationally prohibitive. This challenge has motivated extensive research on structured quantum state tomography, where prior structure, such as low-rankness, tensor-network representations, shallow quantum circuits, and neural quantum states, can substantially reduce the effective degrees of freedom and enable scalable recovery. In this review, we provide a unified perspective on QST for structured quantum states through three closely related themes: compact state representations, measurement design, and computational algorithms. After reviewing common models for structured quantum states, we survey existing work on geometric preservation properties of measurement frameworks, ranging from informationally complete POVMs to randomized measurements, and their implications for sample complexity. On the algorithmic side, we review optimization methods for reconstructing structured quantum states from empirical measurements. By connecting QST with broader principles from compressive sensing, matrix sensing, and structured inverse problems, this survey highlights common theoretical foundations underlying sample complexity, measurement efficiency, and scalable recovery.