We propose a continuous-variable (CV) SWAP test that requires no ancilla register, thereby generalizing the ancilla-free SWAP test for qubits. In this ancilla-free CV SWAP test, the computational basis measurement is replaced by photon number-resolving measurement, and we calculate an upper bound on the error of the overlap estimate obtained from a finite Fock cutoff in the detector. As an example, we show that estimation of the overlap of pure, centered, single-mode Gaussian states of energy E and squeezed in opposite quadratures can be obtained to error ϵ using photon statistics below a Fock basis cutoff O(Elnϵ−1) . This cutoff is greatly reduced to E+O(Elnϵ−1) when the states have rapidly decaying Fock tails, such as coherent states. We show how the ancilla-free CV SWAP test can be extended to many modes and applied to quantum algorithms such as variational compiling and entanglement spectroscopy in the CV setting. For the latter we also provide a new algorithm which does not have an analog in qubit systems. The ancilla-free CV SWAP test is implemented on Xanadu's 8-mode photonic processor in order to estimate the vacuum probability of a two-mode squeezed state.
We introduce a framework for simulating hybrid oscillator-qubit quantum processors on qubit-only systems through position encoding. By encoding continuous-variable position and momentum wave functions into qubit amplitudes, our method efficiently simulates all Gaussian and conditional Gaussian operations -- encompassing the phase-space instruction set (beam splitter, single-qubit rotation, conditional displacement) and extending to squeezing, conditional squeezing, conditional rotation, and conditional beam splitter -- using
O(log2(Γ+log(1/ε))) qubit gates per hybrid gate, where
Γ is the Fock-level bound and
ε is the target precision. This polylogarithmic per-gate complexity represents an exponential improvement over Fock basis encoding approaches, which require exponential quantum or classical resources in the number of qubits per mode. We provide rigorous numerical characterization of quantum Fourier transform errors for Fock-bounded states, enabling precise resource estimation for practical implementations. This work establishes that hybrid oscillator-qubit algorithms can be implemented on qubit processors with polynomial overhead, providing new insights into the computational power trade-offs between discrete-variable and hybrid continuous-discrete-variable quantum computing.
Numerical simulation of continuous variable quantum state preparation is a necessary tool for optimization of existing quantum information processing protocols. A powerful instrument for such simulation is the numerical computation in the Fock state representation. It unavoidably uses an approximation of the infinite-dimensional Fock space by finite complex vector spaces implementable with classical digital computers. In this approximation we analyze the accuracy of several currently available methods for computation of the truncated coherent displacement operator. To overcome their limitations we propose an alternative with improved accuracy based on the standard matrix exponential. We then employ the method in analysis of non-Gaussian state preparation scheme based on coherent displacement of a two mode squeezed vacuum with subsequent photon counting measurement. We compare different detection mechanisms, including avalanche photodiodes, their cascades, and photon number resolving detectors in the context of engineering non-linearly squeezed cubic states and construction of qubit-like superpositions between vacuum and single photon states.
The dimensionality of entanglement in high-dimensional quantum systems is quantified by the Schmidt number, whose large value signals potential advantages for quantum communication and quantum computation. A commonly used approach to practical Schmidt-number detection in finite-dimensional systems is based on the estimation of fidelities to pure states with large entanglement dimensionality or lower bounds to these fidelities. However, for mode-entangled continuous-variable systems, the corresponding measurements are typically difficult to realize. Here, we introduce and assess fidelity bounds for Schmidt-number detection based on practically more accessible measurements of the first and second statistical moments of arbitrary continuous-variable quantum states. We provide analytical formulas that allow evaluating these bounds and test them for families of Gaussian and non-Gaussian states, including two-mode squeezed thermal states and photon-added displaced two-mode squeezed vacuum states. We compare our bounds to other methods for the certification of high-dimensional entanglement based on the same measurements.
We translate the one-mode unitary-dilation framework for nonunitary linear dynamics into a gate-level hybrid oscillator--qubit architecture. An ancillary oscillator encodes the kernel through state preparation and postselection, while a qubit register simulates the discretized system operator. The construction applies to time-independent dynamics
u˙=−(L+iH)u, including discretized partial differential equations, and removes the
O(logMa) ancilla-qubit overhead of a discrete-variable (DV)
Ma-term quadrature register. We bound the ideal state's squeezed-Fock coefficient-projection error, which decays superalgebraically in cutoff
N for Schwartz-class kernels and at a stretched-exponential rate under stronger joint decay and smoothness assumptions. The finite squeezed-Fock state generically has stellar rank
N−1, making
N a measure of the oracle's non-Gaussian resource. For oscillator dimension
NFock, a
pth-order product formula reaches error
εt in
O(t1+1/pNFock(p+1)/(2p)εt−1/p) Trotter steps, up to generator-dependent commutator factors. A perturbation bound separates total scaled-map error from postselection probability. We benchmark Law--Eberly synthesis and assess variational SNAP+
D state preparation on heat and advection--diffusion equations. At the prescribed DV sizing, the hybrid CV--DV route has smaller fixed-scale error in all ten instances, while the DV route accepts with fewer repetitions in every instance. These results quantify when a continuous qumode can replace a discretized ancilla register.
Efficient overlap estimation of high-dimensional quantum states is an important task in quantum information and a core element in computational speedups of quantum machine learning. Here we experimentally demonstrate the SWAP test that measures the overlap of two motional states in a system of trapped
171Yb+ ions. To illustrate the versatility of our implementation, we report the overlap measurement of a variety of quantum states: Fock states, coherent states, squeezed vacuum states, and cat states. We highlight applications of the SWAP test by measuring the purity of mixed states. Our results enable quantum information processing with high dimensional quantum states.
While continuous-variable (CV) quantum systems are believed to be more efficient for quantum sensing and metrology than their discrete-variable (DV) counterparts due to the infinite spectrum of their native operators, our toolkit of manipulating CV systems is still limited. We introduce the quantum coherent state transform~(QCST) and a framework for implementing it in CV quantum systems with two ancilla CV states and six two-mode SUM gates. Measurement of the resulting quantum state under the momentum eigenbasis is equivalent to a positive operator-valued measure (POVM) with elements
{π1∣α⟩⟨α∣}α∈C , which provides an efficient way to learn the original CV state. Our protocol makes it possible to estimate the coherent state parameter within minimum-uncertainty precision using a single copy of the state, which finds applications in single-shot gate calibration of beam splitter and rotation gates to arbitrary precision. With repeated runs of our protocol, one can also estimate the parameters of any Gaussian state, which helps to calibrate other Gaussian gates, such as squeezing. For non-Gaussian states, our protocols can be used to perform Husimi Q-function tomography efficiently. With DV systems as ancilla instead, we can realize QCST approximately, which can be used to transfer CV states to DV states and back. The simplicity and broad applicability of the quantum coherent state transform make it an essential tool in continuous-variable quantum information science and engineering.