In the paper of F.A. Mele, A.A. Mele, L. Bittel, J. Eisert, V. Giovannetti, L. Lami, L. Leone, S.F.E. Oliviero, ArXiv:2405.01431, estimates for the trace-norm distance between two quantum Gaussian states in terms of the mean vectors and covariance matrices were derived and used to evaluate the sample complexity of learning quantum energy-constrained Gaussian states. In the present paper we obtain different estimates; our proof is based on a fidelity-like quantity which we call states overlap, and is more straightforward leading to estimates which are sometimes even more stringent, especially in the cases of pure or gauge-invariant states. They do not depend on number of modes and hence can be extended to the case of bosonic field with infinite number of modes. These derivations are not aimed to replace the useful inequalities from ArXiv:2405.01431; they just show an alternative approach to the problem leading to different results. In the Appendix we briefly recall our results concerning estimates of the overlap for general fermionic Gaussian states of CAR. The problem studied in this paper can be considered as a noncommutative analog of estimation of the total variance distance between Gaussian probability distributions in the classical probability theory.
In the paper of F.A. Mele, A.A. Mele, L. Bittel, J. Eisert, V. Giovannetti, L. Lami, L. Leone, S.F.E. Oliviero, ArXiv:2405.01431, estimates for the trace-norm distance between two quantum Gaussian states in terms of the mean vectors and covariance matrices were derived and used to evaluate the sample complexity of learning quantum energy-constrained Gaussian states. In the present paper we obtain different estimates; our proof is based on a fidelity-like quantity which we call states overlap, and is more straightforward leading to estimates which are sometimes even more stringent, especially in the cases of pure or gauge-invariant states. They do not depend on number of modes and hence can be extended to the case of bosonic field with infinite number of modes. These derivations are not aimed to replace the useful inequalities from ArXiv:2405.01431; they just show an alternative approach to the problem leading to different results. In the Appendix we briefly recall our results concerning estimates of the overlap for general fermionic Gaussian states of CAR. The problem studied in this paper can be considered as a noncommutative analog of estimation of the total variance distance between Gaussian probability distributions in the classical probability theory.
Abstract Upper bounds for the Bures distance as well as for the trace-norm distance between quantum Gaussian states of CCR in terms of the mean vectors and covariance matrices are obtained, basing on a fidelity-like quantity which we call the states overlap. We argue that these bounds are better adapted to the Bures distance and hence to the corresponding methods of state estimation. We also briefly recall our results concerning bounds for the states overlap for fermionic Gaussian states of CAR. The problems studied in this paper can be considered as a noncommutative analog of estimation of the Hellinger distance and the total variance distance between Gaussian probability distributions in the classical probability theory.
Continuous-variable systems enable key quantum technologies in computation, communication, and sensing. Bosonic Gaussian states emerge naturally in various such applications, including gravitational-wave and dark-matter detection. A fundamental question is how to characterize an unknown bosonic Gaussian state from as few samples as possible. Despite decades-long exploration, the ultimate efficiency limit remains unclear. In this work, we study the necessary and sufficient number of copies to learn an n-mode Gaussian state, with energy less than E, to ε trace distance with high probability. We prove a lower bound of Ω(n3/ε2) for Gaussian measurements, matching the best known upper bound up to doubly-log energy dependence, and Ω(n2/ε2) for arbitrary measurements. We further show an upper bound of O(n2/ε2) given that the Gaussian state is promised to be either pure or passive. Interestingly, while Gaussian measurements suffice for nearly optimal learning of pure Gaussian states, non-Gaussian measurements are provably required for optimal learning of passive Gaussian states. Finally, focusing on learning single-mode Gaussian states via non-entangling Gaussian measurements, we provide a nearly tight bound of Θ(E/ε2) for any non-adaptive schemes, showing adaptivity is indispensable for nearly energy-independent scaling. As a byproduct, we establish sharp bounds on the trace distance between Gaussian states in terms of the total variation distance between their Wigner distributions, and obtain a nearly tight sample complexity bound for learning the Wigner distribution of any Gaussian state to ε total variation distance. Our results significantly advance quantum learning theory in the bosonic regimes and have practical impact in quantum sensing and benchmarking applications.
Gaussian states of bosonic quantum systems enjoy numerous technological applications and are ubiquitous in nature. Their significance lies in their simplicity, which in turn rests on the fact that they are uniquely determined by two experimentally accessible quantities, their first and second moments. But what if these moments are only known approximately, as is inevitable in any realistic experiment? What is the resulting error on the Gaussian state itself, as measured by the most operationally meaningful metric for distinguishing quantum states, namely, the trace distance? In this work, we fully resolve this question by demonstrating that if the first and second moments are known up to an error ε , the trace distance error on the state also scales as ε , and this functional dependence is optimal. To prove this, we establish tight bounds on the trace distance between two Gaussian states in terms of the norm distance of their first and second moments. As an application, we improve existing bounds on the sample complexity of tomography of Gaussian states.
We investigate the computational complexity of estimating the operator norm distance T∞(ρ0,ρ1), defined via the operator norm ∥A∥∞=σmax(A), given poly(n)-size state-preparation circuits of n-qubit quantum states ρ0 and ρ1. We provide efficient quantum estimators for the operator norm distance whose complexity is independent of the rank (and thus the dimension) of the states:
1. When one state is pure, we establish an optimal quantum estimator using Θ(1/ε) queries to the state-preparation circuits. Consequently, for constant additive error, say ε=1/5, our estimator runs in poly(n) time. Since the operator norm distance T∞(∣ψ⟩⟨ψ∣,ρ) is exactly half of the trace distance T(∣ψ⟩⟨ψ∣,ρ), our result also gives rank-independent query complexity for estimating both quantities, whereas the approaches due to van Apeldoorn, Cornelissen, Gily{é}n, and Nannicini (SODA 2023) and Wang and Zhang (TIT 2024) have query complexity scaling at least linearly with rank(ρ), which can be exp(n) in general.
2. For general quantum states, we also provide a quantum estimator using O(1/ε3/2) queries to the state-preparation circuits, which shows that the corresponding promise problem is BQP-complete and improves the QMA upper bound sketched by Liu and Wang (ESA 2025). Together with an Ω(1/ε) quantum query complexity lower bound, this leaves only square-root room for improvement.
The key intuition behind our estimators is that, when one state is pure, the pure state ∣ψ⟩ has overlap at least 1/2 with the top unit eigenvector of ∣ψ⟩⟨ψ∣−ρ, reflecting a structural feature specific to the operator norm distance.
This paper reviews recent advances in quantum learning theory for continuous-variable (CV) systems. Quantum learning theory investigates how to extract classical information from quantum systems as efficiently as possible. CV systems are ubiquitous in nature and in quantum technologies, as they describe bosonic and quantum-optical systems. While quantum learning theory for finite-dimensional systems has been extensively studied, the corresponding theory for CV systems has only recently begun to develop; here we provide a concise review. We focus on the following questions: what is the minimum number of copies (the sample complexity) required to learn a non-Gaussian state, possibly under energy constraints? What is the sample complexity for learning Gaussian states? How does the performance of CV state learning depend on non-Gaussianity? How can one test whether a state is Gaussian or far from the set of Gaussian states? And how can Gaussian processes be learned efficiently? Central to these topics, we also review several bounds on the trace distance between CV states in terms of their covariance matrices, which may be of independent interest. Overall, this work summarises selected developments in tomography of CV systems and highlights a selection of open problems.