Classical shadow

In quantum computing, classical shadow is a protocol for predicting expectation values of a quantum state using only a logarithmic number of measurements. Given an unknown state ρ, a tomographically complete set of gates U (e.g. Clifford gates), a set of M observables {Oi} and a quantum channel ℰ defined by randomly sampling from U, applying it to ρ and measuring the resulting state, predict the expectation values tr⁡(Oiρ). A list of classical shadows S is created using ρ, U and ℰ by running a Shadow generation algorithm. When predicting the properties of ρ, a Median-of-means estimation algorithm is used to deal with the outliers in S. Classical shadow is useful for direct fidelity estimation, entanglement verification, estimating correlation functions, and predicting entanglement entropy.

Recently, researchers have built on classical shadow to devise provably efficient classical machine learning algorithms for a wide range of quantum many-body problems. For example, machine learning models could learn to solve ground states of quantum many-body systems and classify quantum phases of matter.

Algorithm Shadow generation
Inputs N copies of an unknown n-qubit state ρ

                  A list of unitaries U that is tomographically complete

                  A classical description of a quantum channel ℰ−1

  1. For i ranging from 1 to N:
    1. Choose a random unitary Ui from U
    2. Apply Ui to ρ to get a state ρi
    3. Perform a computational basis measurement on ρi for an outcome bi∈{0,1}n
    4. Classically compute ℰ−1(Ui†|bi⟩⟨bi|Ui) and add it to a list S
Return S

  • "←" denotes assignment. For instance, "largest ← item" means that the value of largest changes to the value of item.
  • "return" terminates the algorithm and outputs the following value.
Algorithm Median-of-means estimation
Inputs A list of observables O1,....,OM

                  A classical shadow S(ρ;N)=[ρ̂1,…,ρ̂N]

                  A positive integer K that specifies how many linear estimates of ρ to calculate.

Return A list [ô1,...,ôM] where ôi=median(trace(Oip1),...,trace(OipK))
where pk=1⌊N/K⌋∑i=(k−1)⌊N/K⌋+1k⌊N/K⌋ρ̂i for k=1,...,K.

  • "←" denotes assignment. For instance, "largest ← item" means that the value of largest changes to the value of item.
  • "return" terminates the algorithm and outputs the following value.

References

  1. 1 2 Huang, Hsin-Yuan; Kueng, Richard; Preskill, John (2020). "Predicting many properties of a quantum system from very few measurements". Nat. Phys. 16 (10): 1050–1057. arXiv:2002.08953. Bibcode:2020NatPh..16.1050H. doi:10.1038/s41567-020-0932-7. S2CID 211205098.
  2. ↑ Koh, D. E.; Grewal, Sabee (2022). "Classical Shadows with Noise". Quantum. 6: 776. arXiv:2011.11580. Bibcode:2022Quant...6..776K. doi:10.22331/q-2022-08-16-776. S2CID 227127118.
  3. ↑ Struchalin, G.I.; Zagorovskii, Ya. A.; Kovlakov, E.V.; Straupe, S.S.; Kulik, S.P. (2021). "Experimental Estimation of Quantum State Properties from Classical Shadows". PRX Quantum. 2 (1) 010307. arXiv:2008.05234. doi:10.1103/PRXQuantum.2.010307. S2CID 221103573.
  4. ↑ Huang, Hsin-Yuan; Kueng, Richard; Torlai, Giacomo; Albert, Victor A.; Preskill, John (2022). "Provably efficient machine learning for quantum many-body problems". Science. 377 (6613) eabk3333. arXiv:2106.12627. doi:10.1126/science.abk3333. PMID 36137032. S2CID 235624289.