Practical Tomography of Multi-Time Processes
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Abstract
Characterising multi-time quantum processes is essential for analysing temporally correlated noise and for designing effective control and mitigation strategies. A complete operational description through multi-time process tomography requires an informationally complete set of probes, which necessarily includes non-deterministic intermediate operations. On present-day quantum devices, such operations are commonly implemented using mid-circuit measurements and reset, which are technologically limited and can introduce noise and overhead in terms of ancilla requirement. In this work, we study the minimal ancillary dimension required for complete characterisation of multi-time processes. We show that sequential interactions with a single qubit ancilla can generate an informationally complete family of correlated probes for processes of arbitrary length, without requiring mid-circuit measurements or reset. Our result provides a resource-efficient route for complete multi-time process tomography and establishes that one qubit of coherent ancillary memory suffices for full reconstruction of arbitrary multi-time dynamics.