We characterize two-step quantum processes with a prescribed first channel whose unperturbed final evolution exactly recovers the input. For a system of dimension d and a first channel of Kraus rank k > 1, the compatible family is affinely bijective to the set of channels from dimension d(k−1) to dimension d. For qubit dephasing with residual coherence r, an intermediate X intervention not only reconstructs the parametrizing channel but also attains the optimal operational distance, equal to (1−r²) times the diamond distance between the parametrizing channels. We determine the classical subfamily, its minimum register cardinality, and the maximal temporal negativity (1−r²)/2. For imperfect recovery, we prove O(√δ) proximity to the exact family while preserving the first channel, with dimension-independent constants. An explicit two-qubit example shows that the exponent 1/2 cannot be uniformly improved. Finally, we derive a Pauli-cycle witness whose exact classically attainable region is characterized by a quadratic inequality involving the cyclic coherence and two return probabilities. The witness requires neither population preservation nor perfect recovery. A linear version uses twelve experimental settings and admits explicit finite-sample significance bounds with calibrated control errors. Analytical proofs are accompanied by reproducible code. No experimental data or departures from standard quantum mechanics are claimed.
We characterize two-step quantum processes with a prescribed first channel whose unperturbed final evolution exactly recovers the input. For a system of dimension d and a first channel of Kraus rank k > 1, the compatible family is affinely bijective to the set of channels from dimension d(k−1) to dimension d. For qubit dephasing with residual coherence r, an intermediate X intervention not only reconstructs the parametrizing channel but also attains the optimal operational distance, equal to (1−r²) times the diamond distance between the parametrizing channels. We determine the classical subfamily, its minimum register cardinality, and the maximal temporal negativity (1−r²)/2. For imperfect recovery, we prove O(√δ) proximity to the exact family while preserving the first channel, with dimension-independent constants. An explicit two-qubit example shows that the exponent 1/2 cannot be uniformly improved. Finally, we derive a Pauli-cycle witness whose exact classically attainable region is characterized by a quadratic inequality involving the cyclic coherence and two return probabilities. The witness requires neither population preservation nor perfect recovery. A linear version uses twelve experimental settings and admits explicit finite-sample significance bounds with calibrated control errors. Analytical proofs are accompanied by reproducible code. No experimental data or departures from standard quantum mechanics are claimed.
A quantum memory can preserve a subsystem perfectly while discarding information needed by a later operation. We study the total intermediate dimension required for channel synthesis when the first stage protects a b-dimensional subsystem and has a prescribed noncommutative graph imposing full confusability on an a-dimensional control register. For a finite family of classically controlled branches, exact synthesis is possible if and only if the target graph contains the prescribed graph of the first stage. For every feasible family, we construct a single processor that implements all branches exactly. The processor uses pairwise nonorthogonal pure program states in a register of dimension at most a. A target graph may be realizable with a carrier of dimension b, while synthesizing a channel with that graph can require dimension ab. We also characterize the closure of the attainable channels, distinguishing exact synthesis from arbitrarily accurate approximation. Finally, for a family built from the trine communication task, a four-dimensional carrier permits exact synthesis with quantum programs under output depolarization. At the same total carrier dimension and without free shared randomness, classical programs have optimal normalized diamond error (1−η)/4, where 0≤η≤1 is the depolarization strength. For η<1, the gap persists under sufficiently small perturbations of the target branches.
What must a quantum error-correction decoder know about temporally correlated noise, and what does it cost to learn? We study this question for fixed stabilizer memory experiments with known system-environment interactions. We formulate calibration in terms of the fidelity differences that select a Pauli recovery and relate missing information to the resulting fidelity loss. Our main example uses weak coherent X rotations in a class of CSS codes including Shor, Steane, and odd-distance rotated surface codes. All physical qubits share a sign either fixed throughout a run or independently redrawn each interval. The two models have identical syndrome statistics and the same spatiotemporal Pauli process (SPP), obtained by Pauli-twirling every noise interval. Yet at suitable storage times, they require different logical corrections. In the weak-noise limit, each model is almost perfectly correctable when known. Without model information, even the best final recovery has a worst-case fidelity loss approaching 1/2 relative to the noise-aware optimum, despite access to the full syndrome record. For this pair of models, at fixed code and fixed positive target loss below 1/2, we prove matching calibration bounds. With logical preparation and final readout, complete QEC cycles require a number of noise intervals scaling as the inverse rotation angle raised to the code's X distance. Allowing two uninterrupted intervals before one extraction reduces the optimal cost to inverse-square scaling. Physical Pauli twirling of every noise interval changes both recovery performance and its information requirements. Discarding the record of applied random Pauli operations makes the SPP sufficient for optimal recovery. Keeping this record can improve the attainable fidelity, but reaching that optimum may require additional noise information.
This preprint studies operational equivalence and recovery in a twenty-dimensional residual system with a fixed four-sector representation of dimensions 8, 8, 2 and 2. It distinguishes what a declared observation algebra can detect, what a channel preserves, and what a retained classical record makes recoverable. Record-resolved criteria separate useful reversible-error records from unrelated labels and measured-sector records, even when the discarded channel is the same. For a specified coarse-record model, the work identifies exactly recoverable observable algebras and proves an optimal entanglement-fidelity expression on a fixed four-state orbit code. Preparation-aware recovery is then classified over all one-use isometric subspaces in the stated family. An explicit ten-dimensional marker code attains exact recovery under a specified stochastic record where the whole-sector support restriction permits only eight dimensions. Its encoding, nonbaseline marker measurement, and conditional inverse operations remain supplied resources. Scoped Lean evidence verifies the explicit arbitrary-complex-matrix recovery construction and related finite identities; it does not formalize the general complete-positivity/reference framework or optimal-dimension theorem. The recorded-error model is not derived from the companion exchange-timing model, and no protection of its long pulse sequence is claimed.
Quantum process tomography (QPT) protocols are often designed by lifting quantum state tomography (QST) protocols through the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism, at the cost of an extra step enforcing the trace-preserving (TP) constraint. Existing approaches fall into two classes. The folklore partial normalization, which sandwiches the density estimate between inverse square roots of its input marginal, has a closed form but is used as a heuristic, its only analyses being asymptotic and losing a factor polynomial in the dimension. Projection-based methods are principled but have no closed forms and scale poorly with dimension. We resolve this dichotomy by showing that the partial normalization is the exact projection onto the Choi states of quantum channels in fidelity (equivalently in Bures or purified distance). Consequently, any QST algorithm with guarantees in fidelity lifts to a QPT algorithm that inherits its sample complexity, through a single closed-form congruence that preserves the Choi rank and is computed in Kraus form without any eigendecomposition of Choi dimension. We lift two single-copy protocols and prove that the non-adaptive one (Fidelity Projected Least Squares) recovers the Choi rank and reaches infidelity ε from a number of channel uses proportional to 1/ε. Numerically, for channels of low Choi rank, it improves on the state-of-the-art projected least squares in accuracy, and by orders of magnitude in the time and memory of the TP-regularization step and of the returned estimate.
When quantum information initially stored in a local qubit disappears, it need not be lost: it may have moved into nearby degrees of freedom or become inaccessible to shallow local control. We introduce finite-window recoverability as an operational channel benchmark that separates these possibilities. It compares optimal recovery from the target site, recovery by a bounded-depth decoder on a finite window, and the unrestricted optimum for that window. Its operational component, local variational recovery, uses local state preparation, window-local control, and target-qubit Pauli readout to certify recoverable memory beyond the target and quantify how much of the same-window advantage is accessible to shallow control. In a disordered kicked-Ising Floquet chain, a depth-6 decoder on a five-site window realizes Q0opt<Q2shallow<Q2opt across the crossover regime, with positive certified gain for most disorder realizations and substantial shallow-accessibility fractions. The signal differs from target-site persistence and reconstructed coherent-information increments. Positive radius-2 gain also persists when the task is embedded in longer open chains using an independent tensor-network backend. Guided by this hierarchy, we test a carrier-deletion task in which the original target register is reset after the dynamics. A depth-8 decoder repairs the input from a radius-3 surrounding halo with held-out median Favg=0.758, above the single-qubit classical benchmark 2/3, and outperforms optimal one-, two-, and three-site halo-subwindow counterfactuals. These results establish finite-window recovery as a local-control benchmark for off-site quantum memory, diagnosing both where local quantum information remains and whether bounded-depth control can refocus it.
The Pauli-ball discrepancy, a quadratic discrepancy summed over all error radii, measures how uniformly the Pauli error images of a K-dimensional quantum code cover the d-dimensional Hilbert space. At parameters attaining equality in the quantum Singleton bound with minimum code distance ≥3, or in the one-error Hamming bound with prime-power local dimension, the discrepancy of every projector of the prescribed rank equals an explicit benchmark plus an exact nonnegative remainder, which vanishes precisely for pure quantum maximum-distance-separable codes and nondegenerate perfect codes, respectively. For a Pauli ball of radius e below half the target distance and size Ve, this remainder linearly bounds the squared Hilbert--Schmidt distance of the error-image Gram matrix from the identity. When KVe≤d, it linearly bounds the diamond error and entanglement infidelity of a noise-independent polar recovery under any noise in that ball's span. For five qubits, we obtain the sharp rank-two Gram constant and exact logical channels of rotated codes attaining this linear order in diamond error. For pure states, the discrepancy equals a pure-state benchmark plus a positive weighted sum of marginal-purity defects, so absolutely maximally entangled states, when they exist, are exactly the minimizers.