Can two independently prepared quantum systems require a joint measurement to read a fluctuation with the least possible variance? We prepare two copies of either candidate state. A measured Pearson quantity compares the outcome distributions of the two candidate preparations. Fully-PPT detectors include measurements made separately on each copy. The class maximum is the product of the one-copy optima, attained by measuring an optimal score on each copy. Noncommuting states allow an unrestricted joint measurement to do strictly better. We then fix a state-calibrated collective score as a theoretical witness. Its spectral readout adds no variance, but every unbiased fully-PPT readout must add some. A moment inequality strengthens this necessary bound; the exact restricted minimum remains unknown. Driven and equilibrium models illustrate the bounds without a device demonstration. The results concern calibrated scores, not work readout, detector energy cost, or local thermometry.
Can two independently prepared quantum systems require a joint measurement to read a fluctuation with the least possible variance? We prepare two copies of either candidate state. A measured Pearson quantity compares the outcome distributions of the two candidate preparations. Fully-PPT detectors include measurements made separately on each copy. The class maximum is the product of the one-copy optima, attained by measuring an optimal score on each copy. Noncommuting states allow an unrestricted joint measurement to do strictly better. We then fix a state-calibrated collective score as a theoretical witness. Its spectral readout adds no variance, but every unbiased fully-PPT readout must add some. A moment inequality strengthens this necessary bound; the exact restricted minimum remains unknown. Driven and equilibrium models illustrate the bounds without a device demonstration. The results concern calibrated scores, not work readout, detector energy cost, or local thermometry.
Can collective quantum-noise measurements distinguish different mode temperatures from one common temperature when the coupling spectrum is unknown? For stationary Gaussian oscillator environments, we derive a sharp bandwidth threshold for an exact thermal alias on the integer-time sampling lattice. The threshold depends on temperature order through the quantum response. For frequencies within the first alias period, fixing sufficient integer-time correlations makes one additional fractional-time fluctuation observation enough to exclude every common-temperature fit. A calibrated second pulse width provides another route through the same collective port: both widths must probe one spectrum and retain their measured variance scales. For a specified two-mode example, continuous-frequency certificates cover all common temperatures and uncertainty in a shared pulse ramp. A binary-readout protocol combines randomly interleaved matched references with collective-variance and coherence checks to handle Gaussian oscillator loss and predictable readout drift. The selected fractional-clock and two-width designs require approximately 3.8×107 and 1.6×108 outcomes for at most 5\% type-I error and at least 95\% power on the stated alternative class. These theoretical and numerical acquisition guarantees assume independently validated preparation, spectral support and control specifications; validation costs are additional. The result identifies which new observation makes thermal-model testing informative when mode-resolved access is unavailable.
We determine the optimal sample complexity of low-rank quantum state tomography when each measurement may act jointly on at most t samples. For sufficiently small ε, estimating an unknown state on Cd of rank at most r to trace norm error ε with constant success probability requires, and is achievable with, Θ(ε2drmax{1,tr}) samples. The lower bound allows the protocol to choose each joint measurement adaptively using all previous classical outcomes; the matching upper bound is nonadaptive. Thus joint measurements on at most t samples improve the complexity of algorithms making single-sample measurements by at most a factor t. Further, measuring order r2 samples jointly is necessary and sufficient to attain the unrestricted collective rate.
For the lower bound, we vary the support of a state with fixed uniform spectrum and bound the Fisher information trace of every joint measurement on t samples. The adaptive Fisher chain rule and the van Trees inequality then give the trace norm lower bound. For the upper bound, we construct and analyze a nonadaptive tomography protocol based on a Gaussian joint measurement. An explicit second moment identity and a conditional Gaussian law outside the state's support give a rank-dependent error analysis, yielding the matching rate.
Coherent measurements across multiple copies of an unknown quantum state can substantially reduce the number of samples required to learn its properties, but remain experimentally challenging. Current experiments typically prepare and measure one copy at a time, potentially adapting later measurements to earlier outcomes. A central challenge is adaptivity, which makes the space of possible measurement strategies difficult to characterize. The positive-partial-transpose (PPT) relaxation bypasses this complexity by considering a larger, mathematically tractable class of measurements, at the risk of weakening the resulting bounds. Here we show, surprisingly, that the relaxation loses nothing at the level of asymptotic sample complexity for two fundamental tasks: purity testing and product testing. In both cases, lower bounds against the full class of PPT measurements are matched by nonadaptive single-copy protocols. Moreover, our proof requires only basic symmetric subspace identities, providing a simple route to sharp lower bounds for adaptive single-copy measurements.
Quantum state preparation is a basic primitive of quantum computation and control, but its resource cost is usually analyzed for one target state or under an independent-copy construction. Here we study the many-copy problem under weighted Pauli control, where a Pauli-product rotation eiφP is charged by its rotation angle ∣φ∣, independently of the weight of P. We derive the exact single-qubit preparation cost and show that it is strictly nonadditive: a four-pulse collective protocol prepares two T states at lower cost than two optimal one-copy protocols. We further identify finite regions of the Bloch sphere with collective saving, including trajectories that remain product throughout, showing that transient entanglement is not the only mechanism behind the advantage. Complementarily, a dimension-independent Rényi-entropy speed limit gives an extensive lower bound for every coherent target and an exponential fidelity penalty below a finite preparation rate. These results establish a many-copy geometry of state synthesis in which uncorrelated outputs can nevertheless benefit from collective control.
We determine the least Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) extractability compatible with a Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko (MABK) Bell score for every n≥3. Extractability is the largest squared overlap with a GHZ state obtainable by separate local quantum channels. Between the biseparable bound and the quantum maximum, its exact minimum is the affine interpolation from one half to one. This proves the bound conjectured for six or more parties. The result holds for arbitrary binary measurements and density operators on tensor products of finite- or infinite-dimensional local spaces. We also determine the exact minimum for qubits, which is strictly higher at every interior score. One qutrit and qubits elsewhere attain the unrestricted minimum with measurements fixed as the score varies and, at interior scores, realize the smallest product of ranks of the local reduced states among states attaining that minimum. For n≥4, the attaining state with this rank product is unique at each interior score, up to local isometries and party permutations. On one qutrit and qubits elsewhere, for n≥4 and scores a fixed fraction away from both endpoints, a sufficiently small excess of extractability above the minimum controls trace-norm distance to the attaining state of the same score, up to local unitaries. The dependence is of square-root order, with optimal exponent and explicit constants depending only on that fraction, uniformly in n. Equality and stability concern actual extractability; identical Bell statistics can accompany different extractabilities.
Abstract We study the one-shot reconstruction of a quantum state when a single copy of the source is measured, the outcome is stored in a classical record of fixed finite dimension, and a state is prepared at the destination from the record. This acquisition-limited problem is distinguished from a visible benchmark in which the source label is available to the encoder. For a finite ensemble we derive finite-record bounds on the visible distortion in terms of the cumulative prior mass covered by the record and the optimal discrimination probability, identify the regimes in which they are exact, and solve the two-state visible problem at every record dimension. For pure-state ensembles, exact acquisition-limited reconstruction is possible if and only if the states are perfectly distinguishable, so nonorthogonal targets retain a positive error at every record dimension. For two equiprobable nonorthogonal pure states we derive the optimal trace-distance distortion within the reflection-symmetric two-outcome class in closed variational form and find that unrestricted numerical optimization with up to six outcomes attains the same value; the resulting symmetric value lies strictly below the guess-and-prepare, unambiguous-discrimination, fidelity-optimal, and Haar-random strategies and is realized by one classical bit and one feed-forward rotation. Every classical-record reconstruction is shown to be entanglement breaking, with a quantitative bound on the loss of entanglement with an inaccessible reference, and the record dimension is related to the spectral rank of an energy-constrained memory. These results quantify the separation between a finite classical description and the information obtainable from a single quantum system. MSC Classification: 81P15 , 81P17 , 81P45 , 81P47