Wigner function learning is a central tool for characterizing continuous variable quantum systems. A fundamental challenge in this setting is to infer a continuous phase-space function from sparse pointwise measurement data, a task that becomes increasingly demanding as the effective dimension enlarges. Here, we develop a general machine learning framework to reconstruct Wigner functions directly as continuous functions from sparse phase-space data. For states with sparse Fock-space or coherent-state representations, such as binomial code states and cat states, we devise provably efficient regression models whose measurement complexity scales only logarithmically with the effective Hilbert-space dimension. For more general states, such as the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) states, we design a deep learning model that reconstructs the Wigner function from sparse measurements and generalizes to arbitrary phase-space resolution. We demonstrate the broad applicability of our framework on both simulated data and experimental data from a circuit quantum electrodynamic (circuit-QED) system. Interestingly, on experimental data, we find that our model reconstructs Wigner functions of GKP code states across multiple rounds of quantum error correction and identifies the dominant error process using significantly fewer measurements than conventional estimation techniques.
Wigner function learning is a central tool for characterizing continuous variable quantum systems. A fundamental challenge in this setting is to infer a continuous phase-space function from sparse pointwise measurement data, a task that becomes increasingly demanding as the effective dimension enlarges. Here, we develop a general machine learning framework to reconstruct Wigner functions directly as continuous functions from sparse phase-space data. For states with sparse Fock-space or coherent-state representations, such as binomial code states and cat states, we devise provably efficient regression models whose measurement complexity scales only logarithmically with the effective Hilbert-space dimension. For more general states, such as the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) states, we design a deep learning model that reconstructs the Wigner function from sparse measurements and generalizes to arbitrary phase-space resolution. We demonstrate the broad applicability of our framework on both simulated data and experimental data from a circuit quantum electrodynamic (circuit-QED) system. Interestingly, on experimental data, we find that our model reconstructs Wigner functions of GKP code states across multiple rounds of quantum error correction and identifies the dominant error process using significantly fewer measurements than conventional estimation techniques.
Continuous-variable quantum state tomography is limited by the cost of resolving non-Gaussian structure in high-dimensional phase space. We introduce QST-Flow, a quantum state tomography framework via flow-based generative modeling that represents experimentally accessible phase-space quasiprobability distributions with normalized, samplable neural densities rather than a truncated density matrix. The framework has two variants: QST-QFlow models the positive Husimi-Q function with a single normalizing flow, while QST-WFlow models sign-changing Wigner functions as a trainable difference of two normalized flows. This construction preserves quasiprobability normalization and enables exact density evaluation, direct sampling, and importance-sampled learning from finite phase-space measurements without a fixed grid. Benchmarks on non-Gaussian cat, binomial, Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill, number, and Fock states show accurate single-mode reconstructions, extension to multimode states, robustness on noisy Wigner data, and improved reconstruction error compared with prior machine-learning tomography methods. QST-Flow opens a promising route toward scalable, measurement-efficient phase-space tomography of nonclassical bosonic systems.
Bosonic quantum systems provide a hardware-efficient platform for quantum information processing but remain challenging to characterise due to their large Hilbert space and the high measurement cost of state tomography. Existing approaches estimate the fidelity with respect to a single target state, making them unsuitable for applications in which physically equivalent states differ by phase space translations, rotations, or other transformations. Here, we introduce an adaptive reconstruction technique that estimates the fidelity with respect to a family of bosonic states while reconstructing the underlying Wigner function from a small number of measurements. The method combines a physics-informed parametric model with Bayesian inference, bootstrap, and active learning to iteratively select the most informative phase space sampling points. We implement the approach on a circuit quantum electrodynamics platform and benchmark it on Schrödinger cat states with amplitudes α∈[1,3]. The reconstruction yields reproducible fidelity estimates within a few minutes, remains robust to substantial displacements and rotations in phase space despite using a mismatched prior, and is sensitive to subtle state imperfections. We further compare the adaptive strategy with existing Wigner function sampling protocols experimentally, demonstrating the advantage of adaptive sampling for measurement-efficient fidelity estimation with respect to a family of cat states. Finally, we incorporate the reconstructed fidelity into the figure of merit used in a proof-of-principle closed-loop quantum optimal control experiment, demonstrating the applicability of the method to autonomous optimisation of bosonic quantum states.
Solving the ground state and the ground-state properties of quantum many-body systems is generically a hard task for classical algorithms. For a family of Hamiltonians defined on an m -dimensional space of physical parameters, the ground state and its properties at an arbitrary parameter configuration can be predicted via a machine learning protocol up to a prescribed prediction error ɛ , provided that a sample set (of size N ) of the states can be efficiently prepared and measured. In a recent work [Huang , ], a rigorous guarantee for such a generalization was proved. Unfortunately, an exponential scaling for the provable sample complexity, N = m O ( 1 ɛ ) , was found to be universal for generic gapped Hamiltonians. This result applies to the situation where the dimension of the parameter space is large, while the scaling with the accuracy is not an urgent factor, not entering the realm of more precise learning and prediction. In this work, we consider an alternative relevant scenario, where the effective dimension m is a finite, not necessarily large constant, while the scaling with the prediction error becomes the central concern. By jointly preserving the fundamental properties of density matrices in the learning protocol and utilizing the continuity of quantum states in the parameter range of interest, we rigorously obtain a polynomial sample complexity for predicting quantum many-body states and their properties, with respect to the prediction error ɛ and the number of qubits, n , with N = poly ( ɛ − 1 , n , ln 1 δ ) , where poly denotes a polynomial function, and ( 1 − δ ) is the probability of success. Moreover, if restricted to learning local quantum-state properties, the number of samples can be further reduced to N = poly ( ɛ − 1 , ln n δ ) . Numerical demonstrations confirm our findings, and an alternative approach utilizing statistical learning theory with reproducing kernel Hilbert space achieves consistent results. The mere continuity assumption indicates that our results are not restricted to gapped Hamiltonian systems and properties within the same phase. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Characterizing the origin of quantum computational advantage amounts to identifying the key properties, or quantum resources, that distinguish quantum computers from their classical counterparts. Fault-tolerant computation, however, requires error-correcting codes to encode logical information into a larger, physical quantum system. This makes the task of resource identification more difficult, as what constitutes a resource from the logical and physical points of view can differ significantly. Here, we introduce a framework to correctly identify quantum resources in general encoded computations. For a given quantum code, our construction provides a Wigner function that accounts for how the symmetry of the code space is contained within the symmetry of the physical space, resulting in an object capable of describing the logical content of any physical state, both within and outside the code space. We illustrate our general construction with the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill encoding of qudits with odd dimension. The resulting Wigner function, which we call the Zak–Gross Wigner function, is shown to correctly identify quantum resources through its phase-space negativity. For instance, it is positive for encoded stabilizer states and negative for the bosonic vacuum. We further show that its negativity provides a measure of magic for the logical content of a state and that its marginals are modular measurement distributions associated with conjugate Zak patches.
The representation of quantum states via phase-space functions constitutes an intuitive technique to characterize light. However, the reconstruction of such distributions is challenging as it demands specific types of detectors and detailed models thereof to account for their particular properties and imperfections. To overcome these obstacles, we derive and implement a measurement scheme that enables a reconstruction of phase-space distributions for arbitrary states whose functionality does not depend on the knowledge of the detectors, thus defining the notion of detector-agnostic phase-space distributions. Our theory presents a generalization of well-known phase-space quasiprobability distributions, such as the Wigner function. We implement our measurement protocol, using state-of-the-art transition-edge sensors without performing a detector characterization. Based on our approach, we reveal the characteristic features of heralded single- and two-photon states in phase space and certify their nonclassicality with high statistical significance.
Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes encode a qubit in displaced phase-space combs of a continuous-variable (CV) quantum system and are useful for correcting a variety of high-weight photonic errors. Here we propose atomic ensemble analogs of the single-mode CV GKP code by using the quantum central limit theorem to pull back the phase-space structure of a CV system to the compact phase space of a quantum spin system. We study the optimal recovery performance of these codes under error channels described by stochastic relaxation and isotropic ballistic dephasing processes using the diversity combining approach for calculating channel fidelity. We find that the spin GKP codes outperform other spin system codes such as cat codes or binomial codes. Our spin GKP codes based on the two-axis countertwisting interaction and superpositions of SU(2) coherent states are direct spin analogs of the finite-energy CV GKP codes, whereas our codes based on one-axis twisting do not yet have well-studied CV analogs. A state preparation scheme for the spin GKP codes is proposed which uses the linear-combination-of-unitaries method, applicable to both the CV and spin GKP settings. Finally, we discuss a fault-tolerant approximate gate set for quantum computing with spin-GKP-encoded qubits, obtained by translating gates from the CV GKP setting using the quantum central limit theorem.