This chapter delves deeply into quantum process tomography (QPT) and regression: two critical approaches in the field of processing quantum information. The process of characterizing and estimating unknown quantum processes executed on quantum systems is known as quantum process tomography, while regression aims to find optimal parameters for input states to achieve desired unitary transformations. The chapter begins by introducing the concept of channel-state duality, which establishes a fundamental connection between quantum channels and quantum states. This duality enables the analysis of quantum processes by examining the input and output states, providing insights into their properties and behavior. Quantum process tomography is then discussed in detail, covering various tomographic methods and strategies used to reconstruct unknown quantum processes. Then the mathematical foundations, experimental techniques, and statistical analysis involved in quantum process tomography are explored to provide a comprehensive understanding of the field. Next, the chapter delves into the role of groups, the unitary group, and compact lie groups in the study of quantum processes. These mathematical concepts provide a framework for understanding the structure and symmetries of quantum processes, and representation theory is introduced as a powerful tool for decomposing and analyzing quantum processes into irreducible representations. The concept of storage of unitary and parallel application operations is crucial for the practical implementation of quantum processes insights about techniques such as parallelization and matrix factorization, which optimize the computational resources required for large-scale quantum systems, enabling efficient and scalable execution of quantum processes. The chapter also addresses the concept of finding optimal input states for learning quantum processes, adaptive measurement, and statistical optimization techniques, which enables researchers to identify the input states that provide the most informative data for accurate process estimation. Finally, the chapter concentrates on establishing the unitary operation and defining the parameterization for the initial state to achieve desired transformations. The effective learning criteria and quantum machine learning (QML) for leveraging quantum states provides advantages of QML over classical methods. In summary, this chapter provides a comprehensive exploration of quantum process tomography and regression. By leveraging channel-state duality, representation theory, and optimization techniques, researchers and practitioners can accurately characterize and estimate quantum processes. It also offers insights into the mathematical foundations, experimental methodologies, and practical applications of these techniques, contributing to the advancement of quantum information processing and technology.
This chapter delves deeply into quantum process tomography (QPT) and regression: two critical approaches in the field of processing quantum information. The process of characterizing and estimating unknown quantum processes executed on quantum systems is known as quantum process tomography, while regression aims to find optimal parameters for input states to achieve desired unitary transformations. The chapter begins by introducing the concept of channel-state duality, which establishes a fundamental connection between quantum channels and quantum states. This duality enables the analysis of quantum processes by examining the input and output states, providing insights into their properties and behavior. Quantum process tomography is then discussed in detail, covering various tomographic methods and strategies used to reconstruct unknown quantum processes. Then the mathematical foundations, experimental techniques, and statistical analysis involved in quantum process tomography are explored to provide a comprehensive understanding of the field. Next, the chapter delves into the role of groups, the unitary group, and compact lie groups in the study of quantum processes. These mathematical concepts provide a framework for understanding the structure and symmetries of quantum processes, and representation theory is introduced as a powerful tool for decomposing and analyzing quantum processes into irreducible representations. The concept of storage of unitary and parallel application operations is crucial for the practical implementation of quantum processes insights about techniques such as parallelization and matrix factorization, which optimize the computational resources required for large-scale quantum systems, enabling efficient and scalable execution of quantum processes. The chapter also addresses the concept of finding optimal input states for learning quantum processes, adaptive measurement, and statistical optimization techniques, which enables researchers to identify the input states that provide the most informative data for accurate process estimation. Finally, the chapter concentrates on establishing the unitary operation and defining the parameterization for the initial state to achieve desired transformations. The effective learning criteria and quantum machine learning (QML) for leveraging quantum states provides advantages of QML over classical methods. In summary, this chapter provides a comprehensive exploration of quantum process tomography and regression. By leveraging channel-state duality, representation theory, and optimization techniques, researchers and practitioners can accurately characterize and estimate quantum processes. It also offers insights into the mathematical foundations, experimental methodologies, and practical applications of these techniques, contributing to the advancement of quantum information processing and technology.
Quantum process tomography (QPT) methods aim at identifying a given quantum process. QPT is a major quantum information processing tool, since it especially allows one to characterize the actual behavior of quantum gates, which are the building blocks of quantum computers. The present paper focuses on the estimation of a unitary process. This class is of particular interest because quantum mechanics postulates that the evolution of any closed quantum system is described by a unitary transformation. Unitary processes have significantly fewer parameters than general quantum processes (22nqb vs. 24nqb−22nqb real independent parameters for nqb qubits). By assuming that the process is unitary we develop two methods that scale better with the size of the system. In the present paper, we stay as close as possible to the standard setup of QPT: the operator has to prepare copies of different input states. The properties those states have to satisfy in order for our method to achieve QPT are very mild. Therefore, we choose to operate with copies of 2nqb initially unknown pure input states. In order to perform QPT without knowing the input states, we perform measurements on half the copies of each state, and let the other half be transformed by the system before measuring them (each copy is only measured once). This setup has the advantage of removing the issue of systematic (i.e., same on all the copies of a state) errors entirely because it does not require the process input to take predefined values. We develop a straightforward analytical solution that first estimates the states from the averaged measurements and then finds the unitary matrix (representing the process) coherent with those estimates by using our analytical solution to an extended version of Wahba’s problem. This estimate may then be used as an initial point for a fine tuning algorithm that maximizes the likelihood of the measurements. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Abstract. Quantum learning of a unitary transformation estimates a quantum channel in a process similar to process tomography. The classical counterpart of this goal, finding an unknown function, is regression, although the methodology hardly resembles the outline of classical algorithms. To gain a better understanding what such a methodology means to learning theory, we anchor it to the familiar concepts of active learning and transduction. Learning the unitary translates to storing it in quantum memory, but the procedure also requires an optimal maximally entangled input state; this resembles active learning. The retrieval strategy is a blend of inductive and transductive learning.
Quantum process tomography (QPT) methods aim at identifying, i.e., estimating, a given quantum process. QPT is a major quantum information processing tool, since it especially allows one to characterize the actual behavior of quantum gates, which are the building blocks of quantum computers. However, usual QPT procedures are complicated, since they set several constraints on the quantum states used as inputs of the process to be characterized. In this paper, we extend QPT so as to avoid two such constraints. On the one hand, usual QPT methods require one to know, hence to very precisely control (i.e., prepare), the specific quantum states used as inputs of the considered quantum process, which is cumbersome. We therefore propose a blind, or unsupervised, extension of QPT (i.e., BQPT), which means that this approach uses input quantum states whose values are unknown and arbitrary, except that they are requested to meet some general known properties (and this approach exploits the output states of the considered quantum process). On the other hand, usual QPT methods require one to be able to prepare many copies of the same (known) input state, which is constraining. In contrast, we propose ``single-preparation BQPT methods'' (SBQPT) , i.e., methods which can operate with only one instance of each considered input state. These two concepts are here illustrated with practical (S)BQPT methods which are numerically validated, in the case when (i) random pure states are used as inputs and their required properties are especially related to the statistical independence of the random variables that define them and (ii) the considered quantum process is based on cylindrical-symmetry Heisenberg spin coupling. As a benchmark, we moreover introduce nonblind QPT methods dedicated to the considered Heisenberg process, we analyze their theoretical behavior (this requires the tools developed in this paper for random input states), and we numerically test their sensitivity to systematic and nonsystematic errors, which are most likely to occur in practice. This shows that, even for very low preparation errors (especially systematic ones), these nonblind QPT methods yield much lower performance than our SBQPT methods. Our blind and single-preparation QPT concepts may be extended, e.g., to a much wider class of processes and to SBQPT methods based on other quantum state properties, as outlined in this paper.
Quantum process tomography (QPT) methods aim at identifying a given quantum process. QPT is a major quantum information processing tool, since it especially allows one to characterize the actual behavior of quantum gates, which are the building blocks of quantum computers. The present paper focuses on the estimation of a two-qubit unitary process. This class is of particular interest because quantum mechanics postulates that the evolution of any closed quantum system is described by a unitary transformation. Usual QPT methods can be hard to implement in practice because they require the user to prepare copies of a set of known quantum states. In contrast, the proposed methods only require the user to be able to provide copies of a single unknown input state which can be estimated along with the process. However, we need to be able to make measurements of the state of the system after 5 different time delays ∆t, 2∆t, 3∆t, 4∆t, 5∆t(one measurement per copy). We detail a least square approach which exploits tools used in the aerospace community. A slower but more precise maximum likelihood method is also introduced. It uses a simple parametrization of unitary matrices.
Quantum process tomography (QPT) methods aim at identifying a given quantum process. QPT is a major quantum information processing tool, since it allows one to characterize the actual behavior of quantum gates, which are the building blocks of quantum computers. The present paper focuses on the estimation of a unitary process. This class is of particular interest because quantum mechanics postulates that the evolution of any closed quantum system is described by a unitary transformation. The standard approach of QPT is to measure copies of a particular set of predetermined (generally pure) states after they have been modified by the process to be identified. The main problem with this setup is that preparing an input state and setting it precisely to a predetermined value is challenging and thus yields errors. These errors can be decomposed into a sum of centered errors (i.e., whose average on all the copies is zero) and systematic errors that are the same for all the copies. The latter is often the main source of error in QPT. The algorithm we introduce works for any input states that make QPT theoretically possible (i.e., unless there are several solutions due to, e.g., a lack of diversity in the input states). The fact that we do not require the input states to be precisely set to predetermined values means that we can use a trick to remove the issue of systematic errors by considering that some states' copies are unknown but measured before they go through the process to be identified. We achieve this by splitting the copies of each input state into several groups and measuring the copies of the kth group after they have successively been transferred through k instances of the process to be identified (each copy of each input state is used for only a single measurement). Using this approach, we can compute estimates of the measured states before and after they go through the process without using the knowledge we might have about the initial states. We test our algorithm with simulated data, and we assess its performance with a cnot gate on a trapped-ions qubit quantum computer.
This thesis investigates three distinct facets of the theory of quantum information. The first two, quantum state estimation and quantum process estimation, are closely related and deal with the question of how to estimate the classical parameters in a quantum mechanical model. The third attempts to bring quantum theory as close as possible to classical theory through the formalism of quasi-probability. \n \nBuilding a large scale quantum information processor is a significant challenge. First, we require an accurate characterization of the dynamics experienced by the device to allow for the application of error correcting codes and other tools for implementing useful quantum algorithms. The necessary scaling of computational resources needed to characterize a quantum system as a function of the number of subsystems is by now a well studied problem (the scaling is generally exponential). However, irrespective of the computational resources necessary to just write-down a classical description of a quantum state, we can ask about the experimental resources necessary to obtain data (measurement complexity) and the computational resources necessary to generate such a characterization (estimation complexity). These problems are studied here and approached from two directions. \n \nThe first problem we address is that of quantum state estimation. We apply high-level decision theoretic principles (applied in classical problems such as, for example, universal data compression) to the estimation of a qubit state. We prove that quantum states are more difficult to estimate than their classical counterparts by finding optimal estimation strategies. These strategies, requiring the solution to a difficult optimization problem, are difficult to implement in practise. Fortunately, we find estimation algorithms which come close to optimal but require far fewer resources to compute. Finally, we provide a classical analog of this quantum mechanical problem which reproduces, and gives intuitive explanations for, many of its features, such as why adaptive tomography can quadratically reduce its difficulty. \n \nThe second method for practical characterization of quantum devices takes is applied to the problem of quantum process estimation. This differs from the above analysis in two ways: (1) we apply strong restrictions on knowledge of various estimation and control parameters (the former making the problem easier, the latter making it harder); and (2) we consider the problem of designing future experiments based on the outcomes of past experiments. We show in test cases that adaptive protocols can exponentially outperform their off-line counterparts. Moreover, we adapt machine learning algorithms to the problem which bring these experimental design methodologies to realm of experimental feasibility. \n \nIn the final chapter we move away from estimation problems to show formally that a classical representation of quantum theory is not tenable. This intuitive conclusion is formally borne out through the connection to quasi-probability -- where it is equivalent to the necessity of negative probability in all such representations of quantum theory. In particular, we generalize previous no-go theorems to arbitrary classical representations of quantum systems of arbitrary dimension. We also discuss recent progress in the program to identify quantum resources for subtheories of quantum theory and operational restrictions motivated by quantum computation.