A recurring principle in many-body physics is that sufficiently distributed interactions or correlations lead to an effectively mean-field description. For fermionic Gaussian states, we establish a quantitative version of this principle directly at the level of Majorana covariance matrices. The main observation is that the admissibility condition for fermionic covariance matrices imposes a quantitative monogamy constraint on two-point correlations: a fixed region has only a bounded covariance budget to distribute among many disjoint regions. We use this principle in three directions. First, for quadratic fermionic Hamiltonians on finite simple graphs of high degree, we obtain product-state approximations to both the ground-state energy and the finite-temperature free energy, with error of order \(D^{-1/2}\) for \(D\)-regular graphs. Second, we prove a finite fermionic Gaussian de Finetti theorem: a \(k\)-copy Gaussian state that is \(n\)-exchangeable under graded fermionic copy permutations is \(O(k/n)\)-close in trace norm to the product of its one-copy marginal. In particular, infinite exchangeability within the Gaussian class implies exact product structure. Third, for spatial fermionic Gaussian states with exponentially clustering mutual information, we prove that the conditional mutual information across a separating buffer decays as \(O(r^{-1})\), and hence, by recoverability, the state admits an \(O(r^{-1/2})\) trace-norm approximation by a recovered state. These results show that product and de Finetti approximations and recoverability estimates for fermionic Gaussian systems can all be derived directly from covariance-level structure.
A recurring principle in many-body physics is that sufficiently distributed interactions or correlations lead to an effectively mean-field description. For fermionic Gaussian states, we establish a quantitative version of this principle directly at the level of Majorana covariance matrices. The main observation is that the admissibility condition for fermionic covariance matrices imposes a quantitative monogamy constraint on two-point correlations: a fixed region has only a bounded covariance budget to distribute among many disjoint regions. We use this principle in three directions. First, for quadratic fermionic Hamiltonians on finite simple graphs of high degree, we obtain product-state approximations to both the ground-state energy and the finite-temperature free energy, with error of order (D^{-1/2}) for (D)-regular graphs. Second, we prove a finite fermionic Gaussian de Finetti theorem: a (k)-copy Gaussian state that is (n)-exchangeable under graded fermionic copy permutations is (O(k/n))-close in trace norm to the product of its one-copy marginal. In particular, infinite exchangeability within the Gaussian class implies exact product structure. Third, for spatial fermionic Gaussian states with exponentially clustering mutual information, we prove that the conditional mutual information across a separating buffer decays as (O(r^{-1})), and hence, by recoverability, the state admits an (O(r^{-1/2})) trace-norm approximation by a recovered state. These results show that product and de Finetti approximations and recoverability estimates for fermionic Gaussian systems can all be derived directly from covariance-level structure.
We prove an exponential variant of the Gaussian de Finetti theorem: the subsystems of permutation-invariant, free-fermionic Gaussian states are well approximated by convex combinations of almost-i.i.d. states that are Gaussian on subsets of their parts. Our result provides an error bound between the original state and its approximants that decays exponentially in the number of unconstrained parts, becoming super-exponential when the subsystem under consideration is small. The dependence of our bound on the local Hilbert space dimension is polylogarithmic, giving an exponential improvement over the standard de Finetti theorem of [Nat. Phys. 3, 645-649]. Previous works considered Gaussian-symmetric states, which are supported on the trivial irrep of the tensor matchgate representation. We extend these results to the broader class of Gaussian-invariant states, which contains, for example, i.i.d. copies of single-replica mixed Gaussian states. We show that Gaussian-invariant states are precisely the partial traces of Gaussian-symmetric states on locally enlarged replicas and always admit a purification into a larger Gaussian-symmetric state. As an application, we derive explicit convergence bounds for a hierarchy of convex relaxations of polynomial optimisation over fermionic Gaussian states. For variational energy minimisation, the hierarchy gives lower bounds converging to the global Gaussian minimum. Combined with upper bounds from Gaussian trial states, these bounds quantify how far a variational calculation can be from the best energy attainable within the Gaussian family.
We investigate (k_{1},k_{2}) extendibility of fermionic Gaussian states, a property central to quantum correlations and approximations of separability. We show that these states are (k_{1},k_{2})-extendible if and only if they admit a fermionic Gaussian extension, yielding a complete covariance-matrix characterization and a simple semidefinite program (SDP) whose size scales linearly with the number of modes. This provides necessary conditions for arbitrary fermionic states and is sufficient within the Gaussian setting. Our main result is a finite de Finetti-type theorem: we derive trace-norm bounds between (k_{1},k_{2})-extendible fermionic Gaussian states and separable states, improving previous exponential scaling to linear in the number of modes, with complementary relative entropy and squashed entanglement bounds. For two modes, upper and lower bounds match at order 1/sqrt[k_{1}k_{2}]. Extendibility also provides operational support for one of the different notions of separability in fermionic systems. Finally, for fermionic Gaussian channels, we provide a simple semidefinite program criterion for antidegradability and show that entanglement-breaking channels coincide with replacement channels, implying no nontrivial entanglement-breaking fermionic Gaussian channels exist.
Quantum versions of de Finetti’s theorem are powerful tools, yielding conceptually important insights into the security of key distribution protocols or tomography schemes and allowing one to bound the error made by mean-field approaches. Such theorems link the symmetry of a quantum state under the exchange of subsystems to negligible quantum correlations and are well understood and established in the context of distinguishable particles. In this work, we derive a de Finetti theorem for finite sized Majorana fermionic systems. It is shown, much reflecting the spirit of other quantum de Finetti theorems, that a state which is invariant under certain permutations of modes loses most of its anti-symmetric character and is locally well described by a mode separable state. We discuss the structure of the resulting mode separable states and establish in specific instances a quantitative link to the quality of the Hartree-Fock approximation of quantum systems. We hint at a link to generalized Pauli principles for one-body reduced density operators. Finally, building upon the obtained de Finetti theorem, we generalize and extend the applicability of Hudson’s fermionic central limit theorem.
Standard finite quantum de Finetti theorems approximate the k-system marginals of permutation-invariant states of n-systems by mixtures of independent and identically distributed (iid) states, usually in trace distance. We prove both standard and Renner's exponential de Finetti theorems in the stronger form of operator inequalities, implying bounds in every Schatten norm and for every quantum Rényi divergence satisfying data processing. In the standard case, for fixed local dimension, our k/n error bound in max-relative entropy improves on the previously best known k2/n scaling, even in the classical setting. The operator-inequality approach is particularly suited to study channel de Finetti representations because operator order between Choi states is equivalent to completely positive (CP) order between the underlying channels. For permutation-covariant channels N(n):A⊗n→B⊗n, where dA=dimA, we prove that the k-system reduced channel is CP-dominated by a mixture of tensor-power channels with error O(k/n) and polynomial dependence on the local dimensions, addressing a question raised by Berta et al. [Math. Program. 194, 781-829 (2022)]. Under the no-signalling condition, we also prove an exponential channel de Finetti theorem where the approximating mixture consists of Choi-almost-iid channels, whose normalized Choi states are almost-iid in the sense of Mazzola-Sutter-Renner. In the case of r defects, the representation error is at most poly(n)(2dA4k3/(nr2))(r+1)/2 and decays exponentially in n for a suitable choice of parameters r and k.
Fermionic Gaussian states form a central class of classically tractable quantum states, while fermionic non-Gaussianity provides the resource required to go beyond free-fermion dynamics. A key challenge is to quantify this resource through monotones that are both mathematically rigorous and experimentally accessible. Here, we show that the fermionic entropy, defined through the squared Frobenius norm of the correlation matrix, is a strong pure-state Gaussian monotone. Its simple closed-form expression also makes it directly measurable: we show that the associated fermionic purity can be unbiasedly estimated up to additive error ε using O(ε−2) two-copy measurements, independently of the system size. Moreover, we prove that the fermionic entropy obeys asymptotic continuity and, as a direct consequence, establish its operational meaning as the upper bound to the asymptotic rate of non-Gaussianity distillation. We further derive a linear sample complexity bound for tolerant testing of fermionic Gaussian states, providing a quadratic improvement over the state of the art. As a further application of our results, we study unitary designs generated by Matchgate circuits supplemented with Majorana-local non-Gaussian gates. We prove that a linear number of such gates is necessary even to achieve an approximate state 2-design with error below 0.4%. Combined with known nearly linear upper bounds for relative-error designs, this determines the optimal doping level, up to logarithmic factors, across all relevant design notions and reveals the extensive non-Gaussianity cost required to generate Haar-like quantum dynamics in this architecture.
Solving interacting fermionic quantum many-body problems as they are ubiquitous in quantum chemistry and materials science is a central task of theoretical and numerical physics, a task that can commonly only be addressed in the sense of providing approximations of ground states. For this reason, it is important to have tools at hand to assess how well simple ansatzes would fare. In this work, we provide rigorous guarantees on how well fermionic Gaussian product states can approximate the true ground state, given a weighted interaction graph capturing the interaction pattern of the systems. Our result can be on the one hand seen as a extendibility result of fermionic quantum states: It says in what ways fermionic correlations can be distributed. On the other hand, this is a non-symmetric de-Finetti theorem for fermions, as the direct fermionic analog of a theorem due to Brandao and Harrow. We compare the findings with the distinctly different situation of distinguishable finite-dimensional quantum systems, comment on the approximation of ground states with Gaussian states and elaborate on the connection to the no low-energy trivial state conjecture.