Quantum resources can dramatically reduce the data required to learn physical systems, with exponential improvements in sample complexity demonstrated in several quantum learning tasks. However, these advantages have typically relied on quantum resources that scale with problem complexity, most notably increasing system dimension or entanglement. This raises a fundamental question: can exponential quantum learning advantages arise within a fixed, unentangled quantum system? In this paper, we address this question by considering the learning of an unknown random-displacement distribution whose complexity is determined not by the dimensionality of the physical system, but by the Fourier resolution of its features. We show that the quantum-limited noise of vacuum probes progressively obscures high-frequency features, leading to an exponential growth in sample complexity. We establish an information-theoretic lower bound for arbitrary classical-state probes and show that squeezing overcomes this classical limit by extending the accessible Fourier bandwidth. Experimentally, we demonstrate an exponential reduction in sample complexity using squeezed vacuum probes for both binary hypothesis testing and characteristic-function reconstruction. Our results show that a single bosonic mode can exhibit exponential quantum learning advantages without entanglement or an increase in system size, identifying accessible Fourier bandwidth as a fundamentally distinct resource for quantum-enhanced learning.
Quantum resources can dramatically reduce the data required to learn physical systems, with exponential improvements in sample complexity demonstrated in several quantum learning tasks. However, these advantages have typically relied on quantum resources that scale with problem complexity, most notably increasing system dimension or entanglement. This raises a fundamental question: can exponential quantum learning advantages arise within a fixed, unentangled quantum system? In this paper, we address this question by considering the learning of an unknown random-displacement distribution whose complexity is determined not by the dimensionality of the physical system, but by the Fourier resolution of its features. We show that the quantum-limited noise of vacuum probes progressively obscures high-frequency features, leading to an exponential growth in sample complexity. We establish an information-theoretic lower bound for arbitrary classical-state probes and show that squeezing overcomes this classical limit by extending the accessible Fourier bandwidth. Experimentally, we demonstrate an exponential reduction in sample complexity using squeezed vacuum probes for both binary hypothesis testing and characteristic-function reconstruction. Our results show that a single bosonic mode can exhibit exponential quantum learning advantages without entanglement or an increase in system size, identifying accessible Fourier bandwidth as a fundamentally distinct resource for quantum-enhanced learning.
We show that quantum entanglement can provide an exponential advantage in learning properties of a bosonic continuous-variable (CV) system. The task we consider is estimating a probabilistic mixture of displacement operators acting on n bosonic modes, called a random displacement channel. We prove that if the n modes are not entangled with an ancillary quantum memory, then the channel must be sampled a number of times exponential in n in order to estimate its characteristic function to reasonable precision; this lower bound on sample complexity applies even if the channel inputs and measurements performed on channel outputs are chosen adaptively or have unrestricted energy. On the other hand, we present a simple entanglement-assisted scheme that only requires a number of samples independent of n in the large squeezing and noiseless limit. This establishes an exponential separation in sample complexity. We then analyze the effect of photon loss and show that the entanglement-assisted scheme is still significantly more efficient than any lossless entanglement-free scheme under mild experimental conditions. Our work illuminates the role of entanglement in learning CV systems and points toward experimentally feasible demonstrations of provable entanglement-enabled advantage using CV quantum platforms.
Sensing time-varying signals is essential for precision measurement and for characterizing fluctuations in physical systems. In this work, we show that quantum entanglement provides an exponential advantage in the acquisition time required to learn the temporal statistics of a stationary classical signal. The task is to estimate the characteristic function of joint displacements on selected bosonic modes within a fixed-duration window, using continuous measurements of one signal realization. We present an entanglement-assisted scheme based on two-mode squeezed probes and local Bell measurements with protected idlers, and bound its acquisition time accounting for readout noise and correlations between signal windows. For a strictly stationary pulse family, it achieves polynomial acquisition time at inverse-polynomial accuracy with logarithmic squeezing and polynomial photon number. On the other hand, we prove that any local idler-free protocols require acquisition time exponential in the number of selected temporal modes per window. This lower bound holds for both sequentially prepared and arbitrarily temporally entangled probes, allowing non-Gaussian inputs and measurements and causal classical feedback, as long as each output is measured destructively within its time bin. These results establish an exponential quantum learning advantage for a single continuously monitored stationary signal, with the sensing cost measured by total acquisition time.
Modern precision experiments often probe unknown classical fields with bosonic sensors in quantum-noise-limited regimes where vacuum fluctuations limit conventional readout. We introduce Quantum Signal Learning (QSL), a sensing framework that extends metrology to a broader property-learning setting, and propose a quantum-enhanced protocol that simultaneously estimates many properties of a classical signal with shot noise suppressed below the vacuum level. Our scheme requires only two-mode squeezing, passive optics, and static homodyne measurements, and enables post-hoc classical estimation of many properties from the same experimental dataset. We prove that our protocol enables a quantum speedup for common classical sensing tasks, including measuring electromagnetic correlations, real-time feedback control of interferometric cavities, and Fourier-domain matched filtering. To establish these separations, we introduce an optimal-transport conditioning method, and show both worst-case exponential separations from all entanglement-free strategies and practical speedups over homodyne and heterodyne baselines. We further show that when squeezing is treated as a resource, a protocol with squeezed light can sense a structured classical background exponentially faster than any coherent classical probe.
Quantum technology has the potential to transform scientific discovery, but quantum advantages often require processing capabilities well beyond the reach of experimental platforms. We show that coupling a single controllable qubit to an otherwise conventional sensor can exponentially reduce the number of measurements required to learn classical signals. These rigorous quantum advantages apply to fundamental sensing tasks, including learning Fourier coefficients, extracting temporal correlations from time-varying signals, and estimating transformations of physical observables. Using a superconducting cavity--qubit architecture, we experimentally demonstrate 107-fold reductions in the number of measurements required for Fourier-amplitude and time-varying signal learning. Our quantum feature sensing algorithms further enable orders-of-magnitude improvements in simulations of weak-signal dark matter detection and wireless communication applications. These quantum advantages are derived from Quantum Phase-Space Inference (QΨ), a unifying theory of quantum-enhanced experiments that simultaneously converts a set of experimental objectives and constraints into tight lower bounds and optimal quantum-enhanced learning algorithms while producing a certificate of quantum advantage. QΨ extends beyond the regimes captured by quantum Fisher information and provides a framework for systematically identifying rigorous quantum advantages in practical experimental tasks. Together, our results establish that near-term quantum technology can exponentially enhance our ability to learn from classical signals.
Learning unknown noise processes in quantum systems reveals their physical origin and informs error suppression, mitigation, and correction. Characterizing a general quantum process requires exponentially many parameters inferred from noncommuting measurements. Because these measurements cannot be performed simultaneously, the sample complexity grows exponentially. For Pauli channels, quantum memory and entangling operations can transform this task into measurements of commuting observables, reducing complexity exponentially. However, noise in these resources increases the overhead, leaving open whether any advantage remains in realistic devices. Here, we introduce error-mitigated entanglement-enhanced learning, analyze it theoretically, and demonstrate it experimentally. We quantify the noise-induced overhead, perform hypothesis testing with up to 64 qubits, and learn intrinsic noise in parallel-gate layers using up to 16 qubits of a superconducting processor. We show that noisy quantum memory provides a learning advantage, with a current experimental overhead of 1.33 ± 0.05 per qubit, below the no-entanglement lower bound of 2. The authors show that entanglement with noisy quantum memory can significantly speed up learning of quantum processes. With error mitigation, their method characterizes quantum noise at scale and outperforms entanglement-free approaches.
While entanglement is known to enable exponential improvements in the sample complexity of quantum learning, it remains unclear which properties of entangled resources are responsible for such improvements. We address this question through the reduction criterion, a condition obeyed by all bound-entangled states. In n-qubit Pauli-channel learning, we show that restricting either the input states or the measurement effects to satisfy this criterion rules out an exponential advantage for incoherent adaptive protocols. An exponential lower bound persists for the one-sided coherent adaptive protocols considered here, even when the unrestricted side retains quantum correlations across channel uses. Using conditional min-entropy, we further quantify how the sample-complexity lower bounds weaken as larger violations of the reduction criterion are allowed. Finally, we show that the same obstruction appears in conjugate-state learning: restricted joint measurements cannot reproduce the logarithmic-sample advantage of unrestricted joint measurements on ρ⊗ρ∗. These results identify violation of the reduction criterion as a necessary condition for an exponential advantage in the learning tasks considered here.