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arXiv:2602.13099

Stronger Welch Bounds and Optimal Approximate kkk-Designs

Riccardo Castellano, Dmitry Grinko, Sadra Boreiri, Nicolas Brunner, Jef Pauwels

quant-phmath-phSubmitted Feb 13, 2026• Announced Feb 16, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Feb 26, 2026 (v2)
v1 · Feb 13, 2026v2 · Feb 26, 2026v3 · Sep 29, 2026
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Abstract

A fundamental question asks how uniformly finite sets of pure quantum states can be distributed in a Hilbert space. The Welch bounds address this question, and are saturated by $k$-designs, i.e. sets of states reproducing the $k$-th Haar moments. However, these bounds quickly become uninformative when the number of states is below that required for an exact $k$-design. We derive strengthened Welch-type inequalities that remain sharp in this regime by exploiting rank constraints from partial transposition and spectral properties of the partially transposed Haar moment operator. We prove that the deviation from the Welch bound captures the average-case approximation error, hence characterizing a natural notion of minimum achievable error at fixed cardinality. For $k=3$, we prove that SICs and complete MUB sets saturate our bounds, making them optimal approximate 3-designs of their cardinality. This leads to a natural variational criterion to rule out the existence of a complete set MUBs, which we use to obtain numerical evidence against such set in dimension $6$. As a key technical ingredient, we compute the complete spectrum of the partially transposed symmetric-subspace projector, including multiplicities and eigenvectors, which may find applications beyond the present work.

Comments
8 + 12 pages, 2 figures. Minor updates and improved figure

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Quantum simulators with disordered spin Hamiltonians offer a natural route to Haar-like unitary ensembles, but face a competition. Disorder enhances randomness, yet strong disorder suppresses dynamics and localizes the system in the computational basis. This suggests an optimal intermediate disorder strength for approximating a unitary $k$-design, which has so far been identified mainly empirically. Here, we develop a perturbative theory for the moment gap $Δ^{(k)}$, the deviation of the $k$-th moment operator from its Haar value, for the full spectrum of the interacting XXZ chain in a fixed-magnetization sector. We find the non-monotonic asymptotic scalings $\ln Δ^{(k)}\sim -σ^2$ at weak disorder and $\ln Δ^{(k)}\sim -1/σ$ at strong disorder, whose crossover sets an optimal disorder strength $σ_c\sim J_{xy}$, where $J_{xy}$ is the energy scale of the non-random interaction. We further show that a multi-quench protocol further suppresses the gap exponentially in the number of quenches. Numerical simulations confirm both scalings and this exponential suppression, and we demonstrate the usefulness of the protocol for classical shadow tomography. This work suggests that strong disorder may block both thermalization and the formation of unitary designs through a common localization mechanism.

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A fundamental question asks how uniformly finite sets of pure quantum states can be distributed in a Hilbert space. The Welch bounds address this question, and are saturated by kkk-designs, i.e. sets of states reproducing the kkk-th Haar moments. However, these bounds quickly become uninformative when the number of states is below that required for an exact kkk-design. We derive strengthened Welch-type inequalities that remain sharp in this regime by exploiting rank constraints from partial transposition and spectral properties of the partially transposed Haar moment operator. We prove that the deviation from the Welch bound captures the average-case approximation error, hence characterizing a natural notion of minimum achievable error at fixed cardinality. For k=3k=3k=3, we prove that SICs and complete MUB sets saturate our bounds, making them optimal approximate 3-designs of their cardinality. This leads to a natural variational criterion to rule out the existence of a complete set MUBs, which we use to obtain numerical evidence against such set in dimension 666. As a key technical ingredient, we compute the complete spectrum of the partially transposed symmetric-subspace projector, including multiplicities and eigenvectors, which may find applications beyond the present work.
Unitary designs provide finite-moment approximations to Haar-random unitaries, with wide-ranging applications across physics and quantum information, from scrambling and black-hole dynamics to foundational primitives in quantum algorithms. Strong unitary designs capture a more demanding operational notion of approximation, requiring indistinguishability from Haar randomness even for quantum algorithms that may access a unitary not only in the forward direction, but also through its inverse, transpose, and complex conjugate. Motivated by the physical requirement that scrambling arise within the system itself, Schuster, Ma, Lombardi, Brandão, and Huang (arXiv:2509.26310) left open whether strong unitary designs can be generated in logarithmic depth using only the system qubits. For every fixed design order kkk and measurable-error tolerance, we construct strong approximate unitary kkk-designs in optimal Θ(log⁡n)Θ(\log n)Θ(logn) all-to-all circuit depth using only the nnn original system qubits. Our new ingredient is a logarithmic-depth Pauli-mixing bound for the perfect-matching ensemble, whose layers pair the qubits uniformly at random and apply independent random two-qubit gates. This bound controls the mixed forward-reverse two-query case, which we combine with existing design and gluing results to obtain strong unitary designs of arbitrary fixed order.
Mutually Unbiased bases has various application in quantum information procession and coding theory. There can be maximum d + 1 MUBs in C^d and d/2 +1 MUBs in R^d. But , over R^d MUBs are known to be non existent when d is odd and for most of the other even d there are mostly 3 Real MUBs. In case of C^d the construction for complete set of MUBs are known for only Prime Power dimension. Thus in general large set of MUBs are not known, particularly for composite dimensions which are not of the form of prime powers. Because of this, there are many constructions of Approximate version of MUBs. In this paper we make an attempt to define certain measures to characterise the AMUBs. Our construction of measures derives its inspiration from the applications of MUBs, and based on them, we define certain quantifiable measures, which are can be computed and gives estimates of how close the Approximate MUBs are to the MUBs. We use geometric interpretation, projective design features of MUBs and applications like Optimal State determination and Entropic Uncertainty of MUBs. We show generic relationship between these measures and show that it can be evaluated for APMUBs without known the exact construction details, thereby showing that definition of APMUB is sufficient completely characterise it. We also evaluate these measure for an interesting class of AMUBs called Weak MUBs and certain AMUBs constructed using RBDs.
Random unitaries are useful in quantum information and related fields but hard to generate with limited resources. An approximate unitary k-design is a measure over an ensemble of unitaries such that the average is close to a Haar (uniformly) random ensemble up to the first k moments. A strong notion of approximation bounds the distance from Haar randomness in relative error: the weighted twirl induced by an approximate design can be written as a convex combination involving that of an exact design and vice versa. The main focus of our work is on efficient constructions of approximate designs, in particular whether relative-error designs in sublinear depth are possible. We give a positive answer to this question as part of our main results: 1. Twirl-Swap-Twirl: Let A and B be systems of the same size. Consider a protocol that locally applies k-design unitaries to A^k and B^k respectively, then exchanges l qudits between each copy of A and B respectively, then again applies local k-design unitaries. This protocol yields an ε-approximate relative k-design when l = O(k log k + log(1/ε)). In particular, this bound is independent of the size of A and B as long as it is sufficiently large compared to k and 1/ε. 2. Twirl-Crosstwirl: Let A_1, … , A_P be subsystems of a multipartite system A. Consider the following protocol for k copies of A: (1) locally apply a k-design unitary to each A_p for p = 1, … , P; (2) apply a "crosstwirl" k-design unitary across a joint system combining l qudits from each A_p. Assuming each A_p’s dimension is sufficiently large compared to other parameters, one can choose l to be of the form 2 (Pk + 1) log_q k + log_q P + log_q(1/ε) + O(1) to achieve an ε-approximate relative k-design. As an intermediate step, we show that this protocol achieves a k-tensor-product-expander, in which the approximation error is in 2 → 2 norm, using communication logarithmic in k. 3. Recursive Crosstwirl: Consider an m-qudit system with connectivity given by a lattice in spatial dimension D. For every D = 1, 2, …, we give a construction of an ε-approximate relative k-design using unitaries of spatially local circuit depth O ((log m + log(1/ε) + k log k ) k polylog(k)). Moreover, across the boundaries of spatially contiguous sub-regions, unitaries used in the design ensemble require only area law communication up to corrections logarithmic in m. Hence they generate only that much entanglement on any product state input. These constructions use the alternating projection method to analyze overlapping Haar twirls, giving a bound on the convergence speed to the full twirl with respect to the 2-norm. Using von Neumann subalgebra indices to replace system dimension, the 2-norm distance converts to relative error without introducing system size. The Recursive Crosstwirl construction answers one variant of [Harrow and Mehraban, 2023, Open Problem 1], showing that with a specific, layered architecture, random circuits produce relative error k-designs in sublinear depth. Moreover, it addresses [Harrow and Mehraban, 2023, Open Problem 7], showing that structured circuits in spatial dimension D of depth << m^{1/D} may achieve approximate k-designs.
Approximate unitary designs reproduce the statistics of Haar-random unitaries to a given order and accuracy. Recent constructions realize such designs with logarithmic-depth circuits, enabling shallow measurement protocols for various quantum state-learning tasks while preserving performance. These results raise the question of whether approximate designs can replace exact designs more generally. We show that even exponentially small design error need not preserve the learning guarantees of exact designs. This motivates deriving learning guarantees directly from the measurement circuit structure. For observable estimation with classical shadows, we prove that logarithmic-depth two-layer Clifford circuits yield an unbiased estimator matching the global Clifford variance scaling for every state and Hermitian observable. Beyond observable estimation, this bound allows shallow measurements to retain global Clifford guarantees for other tasks, including setting-efficient tomography, mixed-state metrology, and stabilizer structure learning. We complement these statistical guarantees with a compact, exact tensor-network representation of the inverse shadow channel. When measurement bases are reused, approximate unitary designs of arbitrarily high order need not uniformly match the Haar variance in the many-shot limit. For the all-to-all random two-local circuits considered, doing so requires nearly linear depth. Together, our results reveal the capabilities and limitations of shallow quantum state learning, highlighting the distinction between approximating Haar randomness and reproducing its learning guarantees.
Abstract Random unitaries are useful in quantum information and related fields, but hard to generate with limited resources. An approximate unitary k -design is an ensemble of unitaries with an underlying measure over which the average is close to a Haar random ensemble up to the first k moments. A particularly strong notion of approximation bounds the distance from Haar randomness in relative error. Such relative-error approximate designs are secure against queries by an adaptive adversary trying to distinguish it from a Haar ensemble. We construct relative-error approximate unitary k -design ensembles for which communication between subsystems is O (1) in the system size. These constructions use the alternating projection method to analyze overlapping Haar averages, giving a bound on the convergence speed to the full averaging with respect to the 2-norm. Using von Neumann subalgebra indices to replace system dimension, the 2-norm distance converts to relative error without introducing any additional dimension dependence. We use these constructions as the building blocks of a two-step protocol that achieves a relative-error design in O((log⁡m+log⁡(1/ϵ)+klog⁡k)k polylog(k))O \big ( (\log m + \log (1/\epsilon ) + k \log k ) k\, \text {polylog}(k) \big )O((logm+log(1/ϵ)+klogk)kpolylog(k)) O ( ( log m + log ( 1 / ϵ ) + k log k ) k polylog ( k ) ) depth, where m is the number of qudits in the complete system and ϵ\epsilon ϵ ϵ the approximation error. This sublinear depth construction answers a variant of [21, Harrow and Mehraban 2023, Section 1.5, Open Question 1] and [21, Harrow and Mehraban 2023, Section 1.5, Open Question 7]. Moreover, entanglement generated by the sublinear depth scheme follows area laws on spatial lattices up to corrections logarithmic in the full system size.
Optimal Disorder Strength for Approximate Unitary kkk-Designs in Spin Chains
Quantum simulators with disordered spin Hamiltonians offer a natural route to Haar-like unitary ensembles, but face a competition. Disorder enhances randomness, yet strong disorder suppresses dynamics and localizes the system in the computational basis. This suggests an optimal intermediate disorder strength for approximating a unitary kkk-design, which has so far been identified mainly empirically. Here, we develop a perturbative theory for the moment gap Δ(k)Δ^{(k)}Δ(k), the deviation of the kkk-th moment operator from its Haar value, for the full spectrum of the interacting XXZ chain in a fixed-magnetization sector. We find the non-monotonic asymptotic scalings ln⁡Δ(k)∼−σ2\ln Δ^{(k)}\sim -σ^2lnΔ(k)∼−σ2 at weak disorder and ln⁡Δ(k)∼−1/σ\ln Δ^{(k)}\sim -1/σlnΔ(k)∼−1/σ at strong disorder, whose crossover sets an optimal disorder strength σc∼Jxyσ_c\sim J_{xy}σc​∼Jxy​, where JxyJ_{xy}Jxy​ is the energy scale of the non-random interaction. We further show that a multi-quench protocol further suppresses the gap exponentially in the number of quenches. Numerical simulations confirm both scalings and this exponential suppression, and we demonstrate the usefulness of the protocol for classical shadow tomography. This work suggests that strong disorder may block both thermalization and the formation of unitary designs through a common localization mechanism.