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International Conference on Quantum Communications, Networking, and Computing (QCNC)

A General Purification Protocol with Imperfect State Preparation

Golshan Lirabi, Faedi Loulidi, David Elkouss

Published Jul 1, 2024• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Purification protocols take several copies of a mixed state and output a smaller number of copies with higher purity. Recently, a protocol based on the Swap test was shown to have optimal resource consumption, with the number of samples scaling proportional to the inverse of the error. In this work, we consider a more realistic scenario in which all the prepared states are noisy, including the auxiliary qubits used by the protocol. Here, we show that this generalization does not compromise convergence, with the protocol still converging for all non-extreme noise values. Moreover, we estimate the number of iterations and resources needed in the generalized scenario. Such an estimation allows us to address the optimality of the protocol with noisy state preparation and show that the protocol is no longer optimal.

DOI
10.1109/qcnc62729.2024.00057

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Purification protocols take several copies of a mixed state and output a smaller number of copies with higher purity. Recently, a protocol based on the Swap test was shown to have optimal resource consumption, with the number of samples scaling proportional to the inverse of the error. In this work, we consider a more realistic scenario in which all the prepared states are noisy, including the auxiliary qubits used by the protocol. Here, we show that this generalization does not compromise convergence, with the protocol still converging for all non-extreme noise values. Moreover, we estimate the number of iterations and resources needed in the generalized scenario. Such an estimation allows us to address the optimality of the protocol with noisy state preparation and show that the protocol is no longer optimal.
Abstract Quantum state purification is crucial in quantum communication and computation, aiming to recover a purified state from multiple copies of an unknown noisy state. This work introduces a general state purification framework designed to achieve the highest fidelity with a specified probability and characterize the associated trade-offs. For i.i.d. quantum states under depolarizing noise, our framework can replicate the purification protocol proposed by Barenco et al (1997 SIAM J. Comput. 26 1541–57) and further provide exact formulas for the purification fidelity and probability with explicit trade-offs. We prove the protocols’ optimality for two copies of noisy states with any dimension and confirm its optimality for higher numbers of copies and dimensions through numerical analysis. Our methodological approach paves the way for proving the protocol’s optimality in more general scenarios and leads to optimal protocols for other noise models. Furthermore, we present a systematic implementation method via block encoding and parameterized quantum circuits, providing explicit circuits for purifying three-copy and four-copy states under depolarizing noise. Finally, we estimate the sample complexity and generalize the protocol to a recursive form, demonstrating its practicality for quantum computers with limited memory.
Given multiple copies of a mixed quantum state with an unknown, nondegenerate principal eigenspace, quantum state purification is the task of recovering a quantum state that is closer to the principal eigenstate. A streaming protocol relying on recursive swap tests has been proposed and analysed for noisy depolarized states with arbitrary dimension and noise level. Here, we show that the same algorithm applies much more broadly, enabling the purification of arbitrary mixed states with a nondegenerate principal eigenvalue. We demonstrate this through two approaches. In the first approach, we show that, given the largest two eigenvalues, the depolarized noise is the most difficult noise to purify for the recursive swap tests, thus the desirable bounds on performance and cost follow from prior work. In the second approach, we provide a new and direct analysis for the performance of purification using recursive swap tests for the more general noise. We also derive simple lower bounds on the sample complexity, showing that the recursive swap test algorithm attains optimal sample complexity (up to a constant factor) in the low-noise regime.
Quantum error correction physically removes errors from a quantum state, while quantum error mitigation improves observable estimates by processing noisy measurement data. We introduce \emph{purification quantum error suppression} (PQES), a hybrid approach that uses multiple noisy copies of an unknown state to combine these two ideas. The protocol uses SWAP tests to physically reduce errors by purification, while the full outcome record is used to combine all branches without postselection. In this way, PQES avoids the fixed-success-outcome requirement of standard SWAP-test purification while still accessing the power-purified state ρNρ^NρN. The SWAP identities allow purification steps to be interleaved with unitary circuit blocks, so errors can be suppressed during a computation rather than only at the final measurement. We provide both a parallel binary-tree implementation and a more compact register-recycled implementation using O(Mℓ)O(M\ell)O(Mℓ) coherent data qubits for an MMM-qubit register and N=2ℓN=2^\ellN=2ℓ input copies. We analyze the resulting error thresholds under representative noise models. For local depolarizing noise on the product-state family studied here, the threshold is pth=3/4p_{\mathrm{th}}=3/4pth​=3/4 for any register size, while local dephasing of ∣+⟩⊗M|+\rangle^{\otimes M}∣+⟩⊗M has a threshold of pth=1/2p_{\mathrm{th}}=1/2pth​=1/2. Local Clifford twirling can be used to convert dephasing into a depolarization channel and restore the higher threshold.
The precision and sensitivity achievable in quantum metrology are often compromised by the presence of noise. While quantum error correction has emerged as a promising strategy, it is ineffective in addressing noise that is indistinguishable from the signal. To address this challenge, virtual state purification was introduced as a complementary approach to quantum error correction. However, significant noise accumulation can impede its performance. To overcome this limitation, we propose a swap test-based method specifically designed to address indistinguishable noise, even under high noise levels. A systematic error-scaling analysis demonstrates that this method enables quantum-enhanced precision in certain scenarios. Furthermore, numerical simulations demonstrate that our method surpasses virtual state purification in both single- and multi-parameter estimation tasks. The significant improvements in precision across diverse settings underscore the robustness and practicality of our method for real-world applications.
Quantum state purification is the task of recovering a nearly pure copy of an unknown pure quantum state using multiple noisy copies of the state. This basic task has applications to quantum communication over noisy channels and quantum computation with imperfect devices, but has only been studied previously for the case of qubits. We derive an efficient purification procedure based on the swap test for qudits of any dimension, starting with any initial error parameter. Treating the initial error parameter and the dimension as constants, we show that our procedure has sample complexity asymptotically optimal in the final error parameter. Our protocol has a simple recursive structure that can be applied when the states are provided one at a time in a streaming fashion, requiring only a small quantum memory to implement.
State preparation that initializes quantum systems in a fiducial state and measurements to read outcomes after the evolution of quantum states, both essential elements in quantum information processing in general, may contain noise from which errors, in particular, referred to as static errors, may appear even with noise-free evolution. In this work, we consider noisy resources such as faulty manufacturing and improper maintenance of systems by which static errors in state preparation and measurement are inevitable. We show how to suppress static errors and purify noiseless SPAM by repeatedly applying noisy resources. We present the purification protocol for noisy initialization and noisy measurements and verify that a few qubits are immediately cost-effective to suppress error rates up to 10−310^{-3}10−3. We also demonstrate the purification protocol in a realistic scenario. The results are readily feasible with current quantum technologies.