Estimation of Nonlinear Physical Quantities By Measuring Ancillas

Abstract

In this article, we present quantum algorithms for estimating von Neumann entropy and Renyi entropy, which are crucial physical and information-theoretical properties of a given quantum state $\rho$. Although there have been existing works that achieved the same goal, some prior developments assume the unitary that prepares the purification to the target state $\rho$. Here, we consider an alternative setting where only copies of $\rho$ are given and construct a quantum algorithm that estimates the desired entropy. Our framework can complete the given task by measuring a small number of ancilla qubits without directly measuring the system, and that it achieves significant improvement over prior relevant developments. For example, for the Renyi entropy of the order of non-integral $\alpha$, our method achieves almost power-of-two improvement in sample complexity with respect to the rank of the given state and almost a power-of-two improvement in error tolerance compared with the work by Wang et al. [Phys. Rev. Applied 19, 044041 (2023)].