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Sample Complexity of Composite Quantum Hypothesis Testing

Published: January 13, 2026 | arXiv ID: 2601.08588v2

By: Jacob Paul Simpson, Efstratios Palias, Sharu Theresa Jose

Potential Business Impact:

Helps computers guess what's inside tiny things better.

Business Areas:
Quantum Computing Science and Engineering

This paper investigates symmetric composite binary quantum hypothesis testing (QHT), where the goal is to determine which of two uncertainty sets contains an unknown quantum state. While asymptotic error exponents for this problem are well-studied, the finite-sample regime remains poorly understood. We bridge this gap by characterizing the sample complexity -- the minimum number of state copies required to achieve a target error level. Specifically, we derive lower bounds that generalize the sample complexity of simple QHT and introduce new upper bounds for various uncertainty sets, including of both finite and infinite cardinalities. Notably, our upper and lower bounds match up to universal constants, providing a tight characterization of the sample complexity. Finally, we extend our analysis to the differentially private setting, establishing the sample complexity for privacy-preserving composite QHT.

Country of Origin
🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Page Count
8 pages

Category
Physics:
Quantum Physics