We develop quantum algorithms for estimating properties of general matrix functions of Hermitian matrices, with applications to phase estimation, Green's function evaluation, and estimating measurement distributions of time-evolved states. The resulting methods exhibit commutator scaling in matrix parameters similar to that usually found for product formulae, lower circuit depth in other parameters, and require only a single ancillary qubit. Our central primitive consists of classically postprocessing randomly chosen product formulae circuits, which mathematically corresponds to an approximation of a Richardson extrapolation. Within our framework, we introduce a protocol for approximating the measurement distributions of quantum states, extending beyond standard observable estimation. We also provide tightened gate complexity bounds for practically relevant systems, including those with k-local interactions, long-tailed matrix ensembles, and conserved quantities. Finally, numerical experiments confirm that our method can achieve significantly shallower circuit depths than standard product formulae in certain parameter regimes, and highlight the potential of their heuristic application.
We develop quantum algorithms for estimating properties of general matrix functions of Hermitian matrices, with applications to phase estimation, Green's function evaluation, and estimating measurement distributions of time-evolved states. The resulting methods exhibit commutator scaling in matrix parameters similar to that usually found for product formulae, lower circuit depth in other parameters, and require only a single ancillary qubit. Our central primitive consists of classically postprocessing randomly chosen product formulae circuits, which mathematically corresponds to an approximation of a Richardson extrapolation. Within our framework, we introduce a protocol for approximating the measurement distributions of quantum states, extending beyond standard observable estimation. We also provide tightened gate complexity bounds for practically relevant systems, including those with k-local interactions, long-tailed matrix ensembles, and conserved quantities. Finally, numerical experiments confirm that our method can achieve significantly shallower circuit depths than standard product formulae in certain parameter regimes, and highlight the potential of their heuristic application.
We introduce the first randomized algorithms for Quantum Singular Value Transformation (QSVT), a unifying framework for many quantum algorithms. Standard implementations of QSVT rely on block encodings of the Hamiltonian, which are costly to construct, requiring a logarithmic number of ancilla qubits, intricate multi-qubit control, and circuit depth scaling linearly with the number of Hamiltonian terms. In contrast, our algorithms use only a single ancilla qubit and entirely avoid block encodings. We develop two methods: (i) a direct randomization of QSVT, where block encodings are replaced by importance sampling, and (ii) an approach that integrates qDRIFT into the generalized quantum signal processing framework, with the dependence on precision exponentially improved through classical extrapolation. Both algorithms achieve gate complexity independent of the number of Hamiltonian terms, a hallmark of randomized methods, while incurring only quadratic dependence on the degree of the target polynomial. We identify natural parameter regimes where our methods outperform even standard QSVT, making them promising for early fault-tolerant quantum devices. We also establish a fundamental lower bound showing that the quadratic dependence on the polynomial degree is optimal within this framework. We apply our framework to two fundamental tasks: solving quantum linear systems and estimating ground-state properties of Hamiltonians, obtaining polynomial advantages over prior randomized algorithms. Finally, we benchmark our ground-state property estimation algorithm on electronic structure Hamiltonians and the transverse-field Ising model with long-range interactions. In both cases, our approach outperforms prior work by several orders of magnitude in circuit depth, establishing randomized QSVT as a practical and resource-efficient alternative for early fault-tolerant quantum devices.
We introduce shadow quantum singular value transformation (Shadow QSVT): given an initial state ∣ψ⟩, a Hermitian matrix H, a polynomial f, and a set of observables {O1,…,Om}, the goal is to estimate ⟨ψ∣f(H)†Ojf(H)∣ψ⟩ for all j∈{1,…,m}. Shadow QSVT provides a systematic route to reduce the quantum resources required by standard QSVT, which constructs a unitary block-encoding of f(H). It uses structure in the input state and observables, together with the fact that many applications require only observable estimates rather than synthesizing the full unitary.
We present three algorithms that exploit structure in the initial state and observables to reduce quantum circuit depth. First, we develop a state-aware QSVT algorithm that prepares the target state with low circuit depth when the Krylov subspace associated with H and ∣ψ⟩ is low-dimensional or admits an accurate low-dimensional approximation. Second, we introduce an observable-aware Shadow QSVT algorithm that combines a new observable-aware Krylov subspace with history states to further reduce circuit depth and gate complexity. Finally, we develop Classical Shadow QSVT, which constructs a classical representation from H, f, and ∣ψ⟩ without prior knowledge of the observables or explicit preparation of the target state proportional to f(H)∣ψ⟩. This representation enables estimation of the target quantities for observables specified after the quantum computation. Together, these three algorithms provide tools for reducing the circuit depth of QSVT-based computations across a range of settings.
Quantum phase estimation plays a central role in quantum simulation as it enables the study of spectral properties of many-body quantum systems. Most variants of the phase estimation algorithm require the application of the global unitary evolution conditioned on the state of one or more auxiliary qubits, posing a significant challenge for current quantum devices. In this work, we present an approach to quantum phase estimation that uses only locally controlled operations, resulting in a significantly reduced circuit depth. At the heart of our approach are efficient routines to measure the complex phase of the expectation value of the time-evolution operator, the so-called Loschmidt echo, for both circuit dynamics and Hamiltonian dynamics. By tracking changes in the phase during the dynamics, the routines trade circuit depth for increased sampling cost and classical postprocessing. Our approach does not rely on reference states and is applicable to any efficiently preparable state, regardless of its correlations. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the sample complexity and illustrate the results with numerical simulations. Our methods offer a practical pathway for measuring spectral properties in large many-body quantum systems using current quantum devices.
Quantum phase estimation (QPE) is the workhorse behind any quantum algorithm and a promising method for determining ground state energies of strongly correlated quantum systems. Low-cost QPE techniques make use of circuits which only use a single ancilla qubit, requiring classical post-processing to extract eigenvalue details of the system. We investigate choices for phase estimation for a unitary matrix with low-depth noise-free or noisy circuits, varying both the phase estimation circuits themselves as well as the classical post-processing to determine the eigenvalue phases. We work in the scenario when the input state is not an eigenstate of the unitary matrix. We develop a new post-processing technique to extract eigenvalues from phase estimation data based on a classical time-series (or frequency) analysis and contrast this to an analysis via Bayesian methods. We calculate the variance in estimating single eigenvalues via the time-series analysis analytically, finding that it scales to first order in the number of experiments performed, and to first or second order (depending on the experiment design) in the circuit depth. Numerical simulations confirm this scaling for both estimators. We attempt to compensate for the noise with both classical post-processing techniques, finding good results in the presence of depolarizing noise, but smaller improvements in 9-qubit circuit-level simulations of superconducting qubits aimed at resolving the electronic ground state of a H 4 -molecule.
The efficient implementation of matrix arithmetic operations underpins the speedups of many quantum algorithms. We develop a suite of methods to perform matrix arithmetics—with the result encoded in the off-diagonal blocks of a Hamiltonian—using Hamiltonian evolutions of input operators. We show how to maintain this Hamiltonian block encoding , so that matrix operations can be composed one after another, and the entire quantum computation takes ≤ 2 ancilla qubits. We achieve this for matrix multiplication, matrix addition, matrix inversion, Hermitian conjugation, fractional scaling, integer scaling, complex phase scaling, as well as singular value transformation for both odd and even polynomials. We also present an overlap estimation algorithm to extract classical properties of Hamiltonian block encoded operators, analogous to the well known Hadamard test, at no extra cost of qubit. Our Hamiltonian matrix multiplication uses the Lie group commutator product formula and its higher-order generalizations due to Childs and Wiebe. Our Hamiltonian singular value transformation employs a dominated polynomial approximation, where the approximation holds within the domain of interest, while the constructed polynomial is upper bounded by the target function over the entire unit interval. We describe a circuit for simulating a class of sum-of-squares Hamiltonians, attaining a commutator scaling in step count, while leveraging the power of matrix arithmetics to reduce the cost of each simulation step. In particular, we apply this to the doubly factorized tensor hypercontracted Hamiltonians from recent studies of quantum chemistry, obtaining further improvements for initial states with a fixed number of particles. We achieve this with 1 ancilla qubit.
Abstract Quantum effects like entanglement and coherent amplification can be used to drastically enhance the accuracy of quantum parameter estimation beyond classical limits. However, challenges such as decoherence and time-dependent errors hinder Heisenberg-limited amplification. We introduce Quantum Signal-Processing Phase Estimation algorithms that are robust against these challenges and achieve optimal performance as dictated by the Cramér-Rao bound. These algorithms use quantum signal transformation to decouple interdependent phase parameters into largely orthogonal ones, ensuring that time-dependent errors in one do not compromise the accuracy of learning the other. Combining provably optimal classical estimation with near-optimal quantum circuit design, our approach achieves a standard deviation accuracy of 10−4 radians for estimating unwanted swap angles in superconducting two-qubit experiments, using low-depth ( < 10) circuits. This represents up to two orders of magnitude improvement over existing methods. Theoretically and numerically, we demonstrate the optimality of our algorithm against time-dependent phase errors, observing that the variance of the time-sensitive parameter φ scales faster than the asymptotic Heisenberg scaling in the small-depth regime. Our results are rigorously validated against the quantum Fisher information, confirming our protocol’s ability to achieve unmatched precision for two-qubit gate learning.