Generalized Quantum State Tomography With Hybrid Denoising Priors

Abstract

Quantum state tomography (QST) is the gold standard for estimating the unknown state of quantum systems but suffers from the longstanding problem of exponentially growing measurements. Recent deep learning approaches alleviate the problem by training neural networks in a data-driven manner without theoretical convergence guarantees. They lack reliability in tomography quality and are restricted by retraining when generalized to extensive quantum systems with varying realizations in different environments. To address this issue, we propose the first generalized deep learning method for QST, named HD-QST, that leverages hybrid denoising priors with well-established convergence guarantees to fit extensive quantum states and environments. Hybrid denoising priors are achieved with the convex combination of analytic low-rank denoiser and neural network-based smooth denoiser dynamically determined via reinforcement learning. We demonstrate in theory that, when characterizing a quantum system, HD-QST guarantees a geometric convergence rate under the relaxed condition that the true density matrix is the fixed point of any one denoiser rather than the shared fixed point of multiple denoisers. Extensive experiments show that, compared with existing methods, HD-QST consistently obtains superior fidelity for pure and mixed quantum states in both single-device simulations and cross-device applications. Remarkably, it achieves state-of-the-art fidelity in QST of real-world W states by trapped ions and precise evaluation and comparison on cross-device QST on IBM quantum computers.