The random purification channel maps n copies of any mixed quantum state to n copies of a random purification of the state. We generalize this construction to arbitrary symmetries: for any group G of unitaries, we construct a quantum channel that maps states contained in the algebra generated by G to random purifications obtained by twirling over G. In addition to giving a surprisingly concise proof of the original random purification theorem, our result implies the existence of fermionic and bosonic Gaussian purification channels. As applications, we obtain the first tomography protocol for fermionic Gaussian states that scales optimally with the number of modes and the error, as well as an improved property test for this class of states.
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21 pages. See related work by Mele, Girardi, Chen, Fanizza, and Lami [arXiv:2512.16878]
The random purification channel maps n copies of any mixed quantum state to n copies of a random purification of the state. We generalize this construction to arbitrary symmetries: for any group G of unitaries, we construct a quantum channel that maps states contained in the algebra generated by G to random purifications obtained by twirling over G. In addition to giving a surprisingly concise proof of the original random purification theorem, our result implies the existence of fermionic and bosonic Gaussian purification channels. As applications, we obtain the first tomography protocol for fermionic Gaussian states that scales optimally with the number of modes and the error, as well as an improved property test for this class of states.
The random purification channel, which, given n copies of an unknown mixed state ρ, prepares n copies of an associated random purification, has proved to be an extremely valuable tool in quantum information theory. In this work, we construct a Gaussian version of this channel that, given n copies of a bosonic passive Gaussian state, prepares n copies of one of its randomly chosen Gaussian purifications. The construction has the additional advantage that each purification has a mean photon number which is exactly twice that of the initial state. Our construction relies on the characterisation of the commutant of passive Gaussian unitaries via the representation theory of dual reductive pairs of unitary groups.
The sample complexity is the minimum number of copies required to learn an accurate classical description of a quantum state. Bosonic and fermionic Gaussian quantum states are families of quantum states that play a key role in quantum science and technology, from quantum optics and many-body physics to quantum chemistry, quantum computing, and quantum information theory. Despite their importance, their sample complexity had not been fully determined. We settle this open problem and show that both bosonic and fermionic Gaussian states can be learned using a number of copies that scales quadratically in the number of modes, regardless of whether the state is pure or mixed, and independently of any energy bound on the state. We derive these results by using the representation theory of Gaussian unitaries and by putting forth a generalization of the random purification channel to this setting and beyond.
The recently introduced random purification channel, which converts n i.i.d. copies of any mixed quantum state into a uniform convex combination of n i.i.d. copies of its purifications, has proved to be an extremely useful tool in quantum learning theory. Here we give a remarkably simple construction of this channel, making its known properties -- and several new ones -- immediately transparent. In particular, we show that the channel also purifies non-i.i.d. states: it transforms any permutationally symmetric state into a uniform convex combination of permutationally symmetric purifications, each differing only by a tensor-product unitary acting on the purifying system. We then apply the channel to give a one-line proof of (a stronger version of) the recently established Uhlmann's theorem for quantum divergences.
The recently introduced random purification channel, which converts n copies of an arbitrary mixed quantum state into n copies of the same uniformly random purification, has emerged as a powerful tool in quantum information theory. Motivated by this development, we introduce a channel-level analogue, which we call the random Stinespring superchannel. This consists in a procedure to transform n parallel queries of an arbitrary quantum channel into n parallel queries of the same uniformly random Stinespring isometry, via universal encoding and decoding operations that are efficiently implementable. When the channel is promised to have Choi rank at most r, the procedure can be tailored to yield a Stinespring environment of dimension r. We present two applications of the random Stinespring superchannel, one in quantum Shannon theory and one in quantum learning theory. In quantum Shannon theory, we prove a channel-level analogue of Uhlmann's theorem for quantum divergences. In quantum learning theory, our construction shows that tomography of quantum channels reduces to tomography of isometries. This yields a simple channel learning algorithm, based on existing isometry learning protocols, that matches the performance of the two recently proposed channel tomography algorithms. Complementarily, whereas the optimality of these algorithms had previously been established only up to a logarithmic factor in the dimension, we close this gap by removing this logarithmic factor from the lower bound. Taken together, our results fully establish the optimality of these recently introduced channel learning algorithms, showing that the optimal query complexity of learning a quantum channel with input dimension dA, output dimension dB, and Choi rank r is Θ(dAdBr).
We present a quantum circuit that implements the random dilation superchannel, transforming parallel queries of an unknown quantum channel into the same number of parallel queries of a randomly chosen dilation isometry of the input channel. This is a natural generalization of the random purification channel, that transforms copies of an unknown mixed state to copies of a randomly chosen purification state. The circuit complexity of our construction is O(poly(n,logdI,logdO)), where n is the number of queries and dI and dO are the input and output dimensions of the input channel, respectively. This random dilation superchannel is extended to the sequential queries approximately, by transforming the parallel random dilation isometry into sequential random dilation unitaries with O(poly(dI)) overhead in the number of queries. We also show that our results can be further extended to the case of quantum superchannels. On the other hand, we show a no-go theorem on the exact random dilation of sequential queries with o(poly(min{dI,dO})) query overhead, showcasing a fundamental difference between the parallel and sequential cases. As an application, we show an efficient storage-and-retrieval of an unknown quantum channel, which improves the program cost exponentially in the retrieval error ε. For the case where the Kraus rank r is the least possible (i.e., r=dI/dO), we show quantum circuits that transform n parallel queries of an unknown quantum channel Λ to Θ(nα) parallel queries of Λ for any α<2 approximately, and implement its Petz recovery map for the maximally mixed reference state probabilistically and exactly.
We give collective tomography protocols for quantum states and channels with known symmetries, using random purification and dilation to reduce learning to pure-state estimation. For states commuting with a compact-group representation with multiplicities mλ, the optimal copy complexity is Θ((∑λmλ2+logη−1)/ε2) for sufficiently small trace-distance error ε and failure probability η for the nontrivial case ∑λmλ2>1. For G-covariant channels with finite-dimensional unitary representations of a compact group G, parallel O(DG/ε2) queries achieve a diamond-distance error $\varepsilon $ at fixed success probability 2/3, where DG counts the real parameters of covariant Choi operators before imposing trace preservation. For permutation-covariant channels on k qudits of fixed local dimension d, at sufficiently small fixed error and fixed success probability 2/3, we obtain the optimal query scalings Θd(kd4−1) for diamond distance and Θd(kd4−d2) for Choi trace distance. Furthermore, we resolve an open problem in quantum tomography of constructing efficient quantum circuits that approximate the Hayashi measurement for optimal pure-state estimation. We encode states in the symmetric subspace into bosonic occupation modes, realize the measurement by heterodyne detection and normalization, and approximate this procedure on qubits using the quantum Hermite transform. Combined with our symmetry-compatible purification and dilation circuits, this yields query-optimal and gate-efficient learners of permutation-covariant states and channels with gate complexity Od(poly(k,ε−1,logη−1)).