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.
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.
The reconstruction of quantum states from experimental measurements, often achieved using quantum state tomography (QST), is crucial for the verification and benchmarking of quantum devices. However, performing QST for a generic unstructured quantum state requires an enormous number of state copies that growsexponentiallywith the number of individual quanta in the system, even for the most optimal measurement settings. Fortunately, many physical quantum states, such as states generated by noisy, intermediate-scale quantum computers, are usually structured. In one dimension, such states are expected to be well approximated by matrix product operators (MPOs) with a matrix/bond dimension independent of the number of qubits, therefore enabling efficient state representation. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether efficient QST can be performed for these states in general. In other words, there exist no rigorous bounds on the number of state copies required for reconstructing MPO states that scales polynomially with the number of qubits. In this paper, we attempt to bridge this gap and establish theoretical guarantees for the stable recovery of MPOs using tools from compressive sensing and the theory of empirical processes. We begin by studying two types of random measurement settings: Gaussian measurements and Haar random projective measurements. We show that the information contained in an MPO with a constant bond dimension can be preserved using a number of random measurements that depends onlylinearlyon the number of qubits, assuming no statistical error of the measurements. We then study MPO-based QST with Haar random projective measurements that can in principle be implemented on quantum computers. We prove that only apolynomialnumber of state copies in the number of qubits is required to guarantee bounded recovery error of an MPO state. Remarkably, such recovery can be achieved by measuring the state in each random basis only once, despite the large statistical error associated with the outcome of each measurement. Our work may be generalized to accommodate random local or t-design measurements that are more practical to implement on current quantum computers. It may also facilitate the discovery of efficient QST methods for other structured quantum states.
Quantum state tomography (QST) is a crucial technique for characterizing the state of quantum systems. However, traditional QST requires a large number of measurements, leading to significant experimental overhead in terms of time, resources, and data acquisition. This work proposes a novel approach to QST by leveraging compressed sensing (CS) techniques. CS allows for accurate reconstruction of the quantum state from a significantly reduced set of measurements, thereby mitigating the experimental burden. We employ sparsity regularization, a key component of CS, to minimize the number of measurements needed. The theoretical framework and the underlying principles are presented, focusing on the mathematical formulation of the problem and the optimization strategies involved. This method offers a pathway to more efficient and cost-effective QST, particularly for complex quantum states or when limited experimental resources are available. We demonstrate the potential of this approach through a detailed mathematical analysis.
Since the complexity of quantum state tomography (QST) scales exponentially with system size, exploiting priors such as low-rankness, tensor-network structures, and neural-network representations is essential for scalable QST in terms of sample complexity and parameter complexity. In this paper, we introduce a unified framework, termed structured factorization, that builds on BurerMonteiro-type factorization by parametrizing the density matrix as FF†, where the factor F is constrained to belong to a structured model class. This factorization guarantees physical validity by construction while allowing a broad range of structural priors to be incorporated directly through the choice of the factor space, ranging from the generic Cholesky decomposition to low-rank matrices, matrix product operators, and neural density operators based on multilayer perceptron and transformer architectures. Building on this structured factorization framework, we formulate QST as an optimization problem over the factor space from measurement data. We first develop a unified statistical analysis of the sample complexity of least-squares estimation for a broad class of structured quantum states. We then propose a projected gradient descent method that operates directly on the factor space and accommodates a wide range of structural parametrizations and reconstruction objectives. To further exploit the geometry of the maximum-likelihood estimation formulation and the constraints on the factors, we derive a power method that yields a step-size-free algorithm with fast convergence, recovering Covers method as a special case when the factor is unconstrained.
Quantum state tomography (QST) has attracted considerable attention due to its fundamental role in quantum information processing. In this paper, we develop a unified theoretical framework for analyzing the sample complexity of structured QST under noisy observations arising from state preparation noise, measurement noise, and finite-shot statistical noise. The proposed framework applies to a broad family of structured quantum-state classes, including general mixed states, sparse states, low-rank states, matrix product states (MPSs), matrix product operators (MPOs), projected entangled-pair states (PEPSs), and projected entangled-pair operators (PEPOs), while further introducing physically consistent structured models---including low-rank and sparse states, low-rank MPOs (LR-MPOs), and low-rank PEPOs (LR-PEPOs)---that simultaneously exploit low-dimensional structures and preserve the physical constraint. Within this framework, we derive unified non-asymptotic sample complexity guarantees for two constrained least-squares estimators under noisy observations: a noise-aware estimator that incorporates the calibrated noise model and a noise-unaware estimator based on the ideal Born measurement model. For the noise-aware estimator, we derive unified trace-norm recovery guarantees that explicitly characterize the dependence of the sample complexity on three fundamental quantities: the complexity of the underlying structured state class, the complexity of the measurement ensemble, and the state preparation and measurement noise levels. For the noise-unaware estimator, we establish a unified non-asymptotic recovery guarantee consisting of a statistical error term and an additional deterministic bias term arising from the mismatch between the assumed reconstruction model and the noisy observation process.
Quantum state tomography (QST) is a crucial technique for characterizing quantum states, forming the bedrock of quantum information processing and quantum metrology. However, traditional QST relies on a large number of measurements, making it computationally expensive and experimentally demanding. This work addresses this challenge by proposing a novel algorithm that integrates compressed sensing (CS) and Bayesian inference to achieve accurate quantum state reconstruction from limited measurement data. The core idea is to exploit the inherent sparsity of quantum states and leverage CS principles to significantly reduce the required measurement count. The algorithm utilizes a sparse dictionary learned from prior knowledge of the quantum state and employs Bayesian inference to estimate the state parameters, providing a robust and efficient reconstruction process. The results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach, offering a pathway towards more practical and accessible QST methods. Key mathematical formulations are presented, including the Bayesian inference framework and the CS reconstruction process.
Recent experimental progress in the preparation and control of quantum systems has brought to light the importance of Quantum State Tomography (QST) in validating the results. In this thesis we investigate several aspects of QST, whose central problem is to devise estimation schemes for the recovery of an unknown state, given an ensemble of n independent identically prepared systems. The key issues in tackling QST for large dimensional systems is the construction of physically relevant low dimensional state models, and the design of appropriate measurements. Inspired by compressed sensing tomography, in chapters 4, 5 we consider the statistical problem of estimating low rank states (r ≪ d) in the set-up of Multiple Ions Tomography (MIT), where r and d are the rank and the dimension of the state respectively. We investigate how the estimation error behaves with a reduction in the number of measurement settings, compared to ‘full’ QST in two setups - Pauli and random bases measurement designs. We study the estimation errors in this ‘incomplete’ measurement setup in terms of a concentration of the Fisher information matrix. For the random bases design we demonstrate that O(r logd) settings suffice for the mean square error w.r.t the Frobenius norm to achieve the optimal O(1/n) rate of estimation. When the error functions are locally quadratic, like the Frobenius norm, then the expected error (or risk) of standard procedures achieves this optimal rate. However, for fidelity based errors such as the Bures distance we show that no ‘compressive’ recovery exists for states close to the boundary, and it is known that even with conventional ‘full’ tomography schemes the risk scales as O(1/√n) for such states and error functions. For qubit states this boundary is the surface of the Bloch sphere. Several estimators have been proposed to improve this scaling with ‘adaptive’ tomography. In chapter 6 we analyse this problem from the perspective of the maximum Bures risk over all qubit states. We propose two adaptive estimation strategies, one based on local measurements and another based on collective measurements utilising the results of quantum local asymptotic normality. We demonstrate a scaling of O(1/n) for the maximum Bures risk with both estimation strategies, and also discuss the construction of a minimax optimal estimator. In chapter 7 we return to the MIT setup and systematically compare several tomographic estimators in an extensive simulation study. We present and analyse results from this study, investigating the performance of the estimators across various states, measurement designs and error functions. Along with commonly used estimators like maximum likelihood, we propose and evaluate a few new ones. We finally introduce two web-based applications designed as tools for performing QST simulations online.