Quantum purity amplification for arbitrary eigenstates and multiple outputs
Quantum purity amplification (QPA) is the task of coherently transforming $n$ copies of a mixed state into high-fidelity copies of a chosen eigenstate. We develop a general theory of QPA for $n$ input copies, $m$ output copies, and arbitrary choices of target eigenstate, local dimension $d$, and input spectrum. We introduce the overhang-removal protocol, derive its all-site and one-site fidelities across output regimes, and show that it is optimal in several regimes, both asymptotically and nonasymptotically. For the asymptotic analysis, we use a path-graph parametrization to show that, when the target eigenvalue has a constant spectral gap $D_{k,\mathrm{min}}$, achieving worst-case all-site error $\varepsilon$ scales as $O(m/(\varepsilon D_{k,\mathrm{min}}^2))$. When $m/n$ approaches a constant, the performance exhibits phase-like regimes, which we characterize explicitly. For the nonasymptotic analysis, we develop a theory of generalized Young diagrams that yields tight sample complexity bounds and provides the first tight dimension-uniform guarantee for optimal QPA. We also provide asymptotically efficient implementations of the overhang-removal protocol. Together, these results establish QPA as a rigorous example of coherent quantum information processing with dimension-uniform sample complexity, supplying the technical foundation for the coherent-incoherent separation developed in the companion work.
Authors
- Aram W. Harrow (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3220-7682)
- Isaac Chuang
- Zhaoyi Li
- Elias Theil (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1962-4539)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review A
- Published
- 2026-10-30
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/1wtb-xfqt
- Primary Topic
- Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Villum Fonden
- Office of Science
- HORIZON EUROPE European Research Council