Bell sampling is a simple yet powerful tool based on measuring two copies of a quantum state in the Bell basis, and has found applications in a plethora of problems related to stabiliser states and measures of magic. However, it was not known how to generalise the procedure from qubits to $d$-level systems -- qudits -- for all dimensions $d > 2$ in a useful way. Indeed, a prior work of the authors (arXiv'24) showed that the natural extension of Bell sampling to arbitrary dimensions fails to provide meaningful information about the quantum states being measured. In this paper, we overcome the difficulties encountered in previous works and develop a useful generalisation of Bell sampling to qudits of all $d\geq 2$. At the heart of our primitive is a new unitary, based on Lagrange's four-square theorem, that maps four copies of any stabiliser state $|\mathcal{S}\rangle$ to four copies of its complex conjugate $|\mathcal{S}^\ast\rangle$ (up to some Pauli operator), which may be of independent interest. We then demonstrate the utility of our new Bell sampling technique by lifting several known results from qubits to qudits for any $d\geq 2$: 1. Learning stabiliser states in $O(n^3)$ time with $O(n)$ samples; 2. Solving the Hidden Stabiliser Group Problem in $\tilde{O}(n^3/\varepsilon)$ time with $\tilde{O}(n/\varepsilon)$ samples; 3. Testing whether $|ψ\rangle$ has stabiliser size at least $d^t$ or is $\varepsilon$-far from all such states in $\tilde{O}(n^3/\varepsilon)$ time with $\tilde{O}(n/\varepsilon)$ samples; 4. Clifford circuits with at most $n/2$ single-qudit non-Clifford gates cannot prepare pseudorandom states; 5. Testing whether $|ψ\rangle$ has stabiliser fidelity at least $1-\varepsilon_1$ or at most $1-\varepsilon_2$ with $O(d^2/\varepsilon_2)$ samples if $\varepsilon_1 = 0$ or $O(d^2/\varepsilon_2^2)$ samples if $\varepsilon_1 = O(d^{-2})$.

Clifford circuit optimization is an important step in the quantum compilation pipeline. Major compilers employ heuristic approaches. While they are fast, their results are often suboptimal. Minimization of noisy gates, like 2-qubit CNOT gates, is crucial for practical computing. Exact approaches have been proposed to fill the gap left by heuristic approaches. Among these are SAT based approaches that optimize gate count or depth, but they suffer from scalability issues. Further, they do not guarantee optimality on more important metrics like CNOT count or CNOT depth. A recent work proposed an exhaustive search only on Clifford circuits in a certain normal form to guarantee CNOT count optimality. But an exhaustive approach cannot scale beyond 6 qubits. In this paper, we incorporate search restricted to Clifford normal forms in a SAT encoding to guarantee CNOT count optimality. By allowing parallel plans, we propose a second SAT encoding that optimizes CNOT depth. By taking advantage of flexibility in SAT based approaches, we also handle connectivity restrictions in hardware platforms, and allow for qubit relabeling. We have implemented the above encodings and variations in our open source tool Q-Synth. In experiments, our encodings significantly outperform existing SAT approaches on random Clifford circuits. We consider practical VQE and Feynman benchmarks to compare with TKET and Qiskit compilers. In all-to-all connectivity, we observe reductions up to 32.1% in CNOT count and 48.1% in CNOT depth. Overall, we observe better results than TKET in the CNOT count and depth. We also experiment with connectivity restrictions of major quantum platforms. Compared to Qiskit, we observe up to 30.3% CNOT count and 35.9% CNOT depth further reduction.

We search for efficient disentanglers on random Clifford circuits of two-qubit gates arranged in a brick-wall pattern, using the proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm \cite{schulman2017proximalpolicyoptimizationalgorithms}. Disentanglers are defined as a set of projective measurements inserted between consecutive entangling layers. An efficient disentangler is a set of projective measurements that minimize the averaged von Neumann entropy of the final state with the least number of total projections possible. The problem is naturally amenable to reinforcement learning techniques by taking the binary matrix representing the projective measurements along the circuit as our state, and actions as bit flipping operations on this binary matrix that add or delete measurements at specified locations. We give rewards to our agent dependent on the averaged von Neumann entropy of the final state and the configuration of measurements, such that the agent learns the optimal policy that will take him from the initial state of no measurements to the optimal measurement state that minimizes the entanglement entropy. Our results indicate that the number of measurements required to disentangle a random quantum circuit is drastically less than the numerical results of measurement-induced phase transition papers. Additionally, the reinforcement learning procedure enables us to characterize the pattern of optimal disentanglers, which is not possible in the works of measurement-induced phase transitions.

We give an algorithm that efficiently learns a quantum state prepared by Clifford gates and $O(\log(n))$ non-Clifford gates. Specifically, for an $n$-qubit state $\lvert \psi \rangle$ prepared with at most $t$ non-Clifford gates, we show that $\mathsf{poly}(n,2^t,1/\epsilon)$ time and copies of $\lvert \psi \rangle$ suffice to learn $\lvert \psi \rangle$ to trace distance at most $\epsilon$. This result follows as a special case of an algorithm for learning states with large stabilizer dimension, where a quantum state has stabilizer dimension $k$ if it is stabilized by an abelian group of $2^k$ Pauli operators. We also develop an efficient property testing algorithm for stabilizer dimension, which may be of independent interest.

Recent work has shown that $n$-qubit quantum states output by circuits with at most $t$ single-qubit non-Clifford gates can be learned to trace distance $\epsilon$ using $\mathsf{poly}(n,2^t,1/\epsilon)$ time and samples. All prior algorithms achieving this runtime use entangled measurements across two copies of the input state. In this work, we give a similarly efficient algorithm that learns the same class of states using only single-copy measurements.

Given a dataset of input states, measurements, and probabilities, is it possible to efficiently predict the measurement probabilities associated with a quantum circuit? Recent work of Caro and Datta (2020) studied the problem of PAC learning quantum circuits in an information theoretic sense, leaving open questions of computational efficiency. In particular, one candidate class of circuits for which an efficient learner might have been possible was that of Clifford circuits, since the corresponding set of states generated by such circuits, called stabilizer states, are known to be efficiently PAC learnable (Rocchetto 2018). Here we provide a negative result, showing that proper learning of CNOT circuits is hard for classical learners unless $\textsf{RP} = \textsf{NP}$. As the classical analogue and subset of Clifford circuits, this naturally leads to a hardness result for Clifford circuits as well. Additionally, we show that if $\textsf{RP} = \textsf{NP}$ then there would exist efficient proper learning algorithms for CNOT and Clifford circuits. By similar arguments, we also find that an efficient proper quantum learner for such circuits exists if and only if $\textsf{NP} \subseteq \textsf{RQP}$.

We show that quantum states with "low stabilizer complexity" can be efficiently distinguished from Haar-random. Specifically, given an $n$-qubit pure state $|\psi\rangle$, we give an efficient algorithm that distinguishes whether $|\psi\rangle$ is (i) Haar-random or (ii) a state with stabilizer fidelity at least $\frac{1}{k}$ (i.e., has fidelity at least $\frac{1}{k}$ with some stabilizer state), promised that one of these is the case. With black-box access to $|\psi\rangle$, our algorithm uses $O\!\left( k^{12} \log(1/\delta)\right)$ copies of $|\psi\rangle$ and $O\!\left(n k^{12} \log(1/\delta)\right)$ time to succeed with probability at least $1-\delta$, and, with access to a state preparation unitary for $|\psi\rangle$ (and its inverse), $O\!\left( k^{3} \log(1/\delta)\right)$ queries and $O\!\left(n k^{3} \log(1/\delta)\right)$ time suffice. As a corollary, we prove that $\omega(\log(n))$ $T$-gates are necessary for any Clifford+$T$ circuit to prepare computationally pseudorandom quantum states, a first-of-its-kind lower bound.

The task of learning a probability distribution from samples is ubiquitous across the natural sciences. The output distributions of local quantum circuits form a particularly interesting class of distributions, of key importance both to quantum advantage proposals and a variety of quantum machine learning algorithms. In this work, we provide an extensive characterization of the learnability of the output distributions of local quantum circuits. Our first result yields insight into the relationship between the efficient learnability and the efficient simulatability of these distributions. Specifically, we prove that the density modelling problem associated with Clifford circuits can be efficiently solved, while for depth $d=n^{\Omega(1)}$ circuits the injection of a single $T$-gate into the circuit renders this problem hard. This result shows that efficient simulatability does not imply efficient learnability. Our second set of results provides insight into the potential and limitations of quantum generative modelling algorithms. We first show that the generative modelling problem associated with depth $d=n^{\Omega(1)}$ local quantum circuits is hard for any learning algorithm, classical or quantum. As a consequence, one cannot use a quantum algorithm to gain a practical advantage for this task. We then show that, for a wide variety of the most practically relevant learning algorithms -- including hybrid-quantum classical algorithms -- even the generative modelling problem associated with depth $d=\omega(\log(n))$ Clifford circuits is hard. This result places limitations on the applicability of near-term hybrid quantum-classical generative modelling algorithms.

There is currently a large interest in understanding the potential advantages quantum devices can offer for probabilistic modelling. In this work we investigate, within two different oracle models, the probably approximately correct (PAC) learnability of quantum circuit Born machines, i.e., the output distributions of local quantum circuits. We first show a negative result, namely, that the output distributions of super-logarithmic depth Clifford circuits are not sample-efficiently learnable in the statistical query model, i.e., when given query access to empirical expectation values of bounded functions over the sample space. This immediately implies the hardness, for both quantum and classical algorithms, of learning from statistical queries the output distributions of local quantum circuits using any gate set which includes the Clifford group. As many practical generative modelling algorithms use statistical queries -- including those for training quantum circuit Born machines -- our result is broadly applicable and strongly limits the possibility of a meaningful quantum advantage for learning the output distributions of local quantum circuits. As a positive result, we show that in a more powerful oracle model, namely when directly given access to samples, the output distributions of local Clifford circuits are computationally efficiently PAC learnable by a classical learner. Our results are equally applicable to the problems of learning an algorithm for generating samples from the target distribution (generative modelling) and learning an algorithm for evaluating its probabilities (density modelling). They provide the first rigorous insights into the learnability of output distributions of local quantum circuits from the probabilistic modelling perspective.

We investigate how the addition of quantum resources changes the statistical complexity of quantum circuits by utilizing the framework of quantum resource theories. Measures of statistical complexity that we consider include the Rademacher complexity and the Gaussian complexity, which are well-known measures in computational learning theory that quantify the richness of classes of real-valued functions. We derive bounds for the statistical complexities of quantum circuits that have limited access to certain resources and apply our results to two special cases: (1) stabilizer circuits that are supplemented with a limited number of T gates and (2) instantaneous quantum polynomial-time Clifford circuits that are supplemented with a limited number of CCZ gates. We show that the increase in the statistical complexity of a quantum circuit when an additional quantum channel is added to it is upper bounded by the free robustness of the added channel. Finally, we derive bounds for the generalization error associated with learning from training data arising from quantum circuits.