Quantum Computing Research Archive

In materials chemistry, identifying common parameters that can organize magnetic ground states across complex intermetallic compounds remains a central challenge. Researchers have long used chemically tunable parameters to control magnetic properties. One is valence-electron concentration, commonly discussed as the electron-per-atom (e/a) ratio. The e/a ratio has been widely used to classify magnetic ground states in metallic systems such as Heusler alloys and approximant crystals.

Insider Brief Classiq introduced its Fault Tolerance Engine to translate optimized logical quantum programs into architecture-aware fault-tolerant execution plans. The engine estimates physical qubit requirements, error-correction cycles, code distance, runtime, routing, scheduling, and accumulated error from the execution plan it generates. The capability extends Classiq ’s existing modeling and synthesis workflow to help users assess the physical feasibility and resource requirements of quantum applications on specific hardware. PRESS RELEASE — Classiq today announced its Fault Tolerance Engine, a new product capability that translates optimized logical quantum programs into fault-tolerant execution plans, and measures from those same plans the physical resources and reliability required to run the application on a real machine. Fault-tolerant quantum computing introduces a fundamentally different software challenge. A logical quantum operation cannot simply be passed directly to hardware. It may need to be implemented across many physical qubits, protected through repeated quantum error-correction cycles, and coordinated with layout, routing, scheduling, classical feedback and specialized resources. Classiq ’s Fault Tolerance Engine performs that translation. It carries the logical quantum program built in Classiq’s high-level modeling and synthesis environment through to a concrete fault-tolerant implementation: how the protected qubits are laid out, how their interactions are routed, and the schedule that runs them. The engine can produce an architecture-aware execution plan and resource estimates covering factors including physical qubit requirements, error-correction cycles, code distance, runtime, routing, scheduling, and accumulated error. It can also account for particularly expensive fault-tolerant operations, including T gates and the magic-state resources commonly required to implement them. Because these figures are measured from the plan the eng

Insider Brief QuantLase says it tested its PIPU photonic computing platform on seven financial market datasets to evaluate how optical dynamics can process changing information and generate predictions. The experiments combined physical optical processing with GPU support and included comparisons with an AI forecasting system and a digital simulation of PIPU. The announcement provides no numerical results establishing an advantage over conventional methods, and QuantLase plans broader testing and further engineering before external access. QuantLase Research and Development Center says it has tested an experimental light-based computing platform on seven financial market datasets, examining whether optical dynamics can process complex information that changes over time. The experiments evaluated how its Photonic Intelligence Processing Unit, or PIPU, followed observed data and generated predictions beyond the supplied data window, according to a blog post . The work extends the center’s research from an initial concept demonstration to tests using real-world information. QuantLase ’s account does not provide numerical accuracy results or establish that the platform outperformed conventional methods. It says a second whitepaper includes quantitative analysis and comparisons with an AI forecasting system and a digital simulation of PIPU. The datasets covered Apple , Amazon , NVIDIA , JPMorgan Chase , First Abu Dhabi Bank, ADNOC and Reliance Industries. QuantLase says financial data provided a demanding test environment, rather than a foundation for an investment or trading product. Computing Through Optical Dynamics PIPU explores whether light’s physical behavior can perform part of a computation rather than simply transmit information between electronic components. The platform combines coherent light, whose waves maintain a consistent relationship, with equipment that modifies its spatial pattern. Light passes through an optical system, reaches a detector and partic

The Roadrunner Quantum Lab (RQL) has opened a 35,000-square-foot facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, serving as a hub for quantum technology testing and commercialization. Supported by $25 million in state funding, it houses 15 quantum hardware, software, sensing, and capital partners, facilitating the transition of quantum physics research into commercial hardware. The RQL integrates various quantum technologies and provides access to national lab scientists, aiming to be a key launchpad for utility-scale quantum hardware commercialization. The post Roadrunner Quantum Lab Opens 35,000-Square-Foot Albuquerque Facility with Initial Cohort of Quantum Startups, National Labs, and Ecosystem Partners appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Researchers at Stony Brook University and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa have been awarded a $600,000 NSF grant to develop Quantum Intelligent Sensor Networks (QISNs). This project aims to advance quantum metrology by engineering distributed, entangled sensor nodes that work together as a coordinated system, rather than optimizing single isolated sensors. The research will focus on using distributed quantum resources to extract weak, spatially varying signals beyond classical sensing limits, with applications in environmental monitoring, disaster preparedness, magnetic field imaging, and resilient communications. The post NSF Awards $600,000 to Stony Brook and University of Hawaiʻi to Advance Distributed Quantum Intelligent Sensor Networks appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Executive Summary The summer break is definitely over. France’s quantum sector focused on the manufacturing, software and commercial relationships needed to put quantum computers into wider use in September 2026. Quobly reported progress on chips made through an industrial semiconductor process, while Alice & Bob and Quandela outlined efforts to connect quantum processors with conventional computing infrastructure. Quobly reported qubit readout and single- and two-qubit operations on devices fabricated at STMicroelectronics’ commercial 300 mm facilities in Crolles, France. The results provided an initial validation of its approach to manufacturing silicon quantum processors. The company also expanded its collaboration with CEA-Leti through access to the FAMES Pilot Line, where it can evaluate manufacturing processes for later processor generations. Supporting infrastructure featured in two other Quobly agreements. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with Orange Quantum Systems to collaborate on testing silicon spin-qubit devices at scale. A separate industrial partnership with Absolut System will support the cooling systems needed for successive generations of Quobly’s computers, following an initial milestone in their cryogenic platform program. Software integration emerged as another major theme. CEA and Alice & Bob said they would develop software connecting quantum processors with traditional supercomputers, citing the importance of avoiding dependence on a single software ecosystem. Quandela published a white paper describing an architecture for integrating photonic quantum processors with NVIDIA infrastructure, with quantum hardware acting as a specialized accelerator alongside CPUs and GPUs. Pasqal ’s financial results illustrated both commercial growth and the cost of developing quantum tech. Separately, Pasqal said it would end its participation in the French defense program LSQUARE, also known as PROQCIMA, and focus its public-sector c

UCSB faculty will participate in three NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI), sharing $290 million in renewed and new funding. This initiative, under the National Quantum Initiative Act, focuses on accelerating quantum research into manufacturing by integrating academic researchers with national laboratories and private industry. The QLCI program also aims to develop a quantum engineering talent pipeline through various educational and internship programs. The post UC Santa Barbara Researchers Join Three NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes Under $290 Million Portfolio Renewal appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Insider Brief NATO’s new quantum roadmap sets priorities and deadlines for testing military applications, protecting communications and preparing allied forces to adopt quantum technologies. Planned activities include quantum sensing sea trials in 2026 and 2027, initial military pilot assessments in 2027 and a quantum-resilient communications pilot linking NATO headquarters in Brussels and Mons. The roadmap calls for quantum-resistant cryptography, common standards and workforce training, while making broader operational deployment dependent on technical progress and trial results. NATO has set deadlines for testing quantum technologies in military operations and strengthening its defenses against quantum threats, turning its research ambitions into a schedule of trials, assessments and security projects. The alliance’s new Quantum Technology Roadmap calls for sea trials of quantum sensors in 2026 and 2027, an initial report on military pilot evaluations in early 2027 and a communications pilot linking NATO headquarters in Brussels with its military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, by the end of 2027. The plan also calls for developing a concept for an allied quantum computing access network in the fourth quarter of 2027. That milestone is focused on the network’s design, rather than a commitment to have an operational network running by then. According to NATO’s public summary, the roadmap is intended to move promising quantum applications from research toward military use while protecting networks, infrastructure and operations against the risks the technology could create. It puts practical steps behind the quantum strategy NATO adopted in November 2023. The alliance frames that work as a matter of strategic competition. Potential adversaries and competitors are investing heavily in quantum research, creating capabilities that could weaken NATO’s ability to deter attacks and defend its members, according to the roadmap,. However, the document stops short of promisi

Infleqtion and Riverlane have partnered to integrate real-time quantum error correction with neutral-atom hardware. This collaboration aims to close the latency gap in qubit error detection and processing, enabling scalable logical qubits. They will combine Infleqtion's neutral-atom QPU and qLDPC software with Riverlane's Deltaflow decoding platform to run dynamic error correction cycles without interrupting execution. The post Infleqtion and Riverlane Execute Strategic MOU to Integrate Neutral-Atom Hardware with Real-Time QEC Decoders appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has launched a multi-year enterprise quantum strategy focusing on internal R&D, post-quantum cybersecurity, academic partnerships, and hardware investments. This initiative includes collaborations with Xanadu, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Toronto to develop quantum applications for financial modeling, optimize portfolios, analyze risk, and enhance cryptographic security. RBC is also migrating to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) standards and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and has invested in Photonic Inc. The post Royal Bank of Canada Launches Enterprise Quantum Strategy and Academic Workforce Pipelines appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Researchers at Tohoku University, in collaboration with the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and the University of Tokyo, have taken an important step toward semiconductor quantum computing using zinc oxide (ZnO).

By superimposing two ultrashort laser pulses that converge from different directions, a team of physicists at the University of Oldenburg has succeeded in generating three-dimensional light fields.

Xanadu and Bluefors have formed a multi-million dollar partnership to develop a modular cryogenic infrastructure for utility-scale quantum data centers. Their joint effort focuses on replacing large, centralized cryoplants with compact, mass-manufacturable cryogenic modules designed for high-density detector arrays operating near 2 Kelvin. This collaboration aims to address cooling bottlenecks and provide a scalable, standardized cryogenic solution for fault-tolerant photonic quantum processors. The post Xanadu and Bluefors Form Multi-Million Dollar Strategic Partnership to Develop Modular Cryogenic Infrastructure for Utility-Scale Quantum Data Centers appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Most magnets have two poles: north and south, or positive and negative, in a familiar arrangement called a "dipole." But researchers are increasingly uncovering more complex forms of magnetism.

Insider Brief A Quantum Insider report commissioned by FloridaCommerce identifies defense and practical deployment as central to Florida’s quantum technology opportunities. The assessment identifies post-quantum cryptography, quantum sensing, resilient navigation and secure communications as near-term priorities, drawing on 130 programs across 25 countries. The report proposes a five-year roadmap covering statewide strategy, funded pilots and testbed access, with full findings to be presented at Quantum Beach on Oct. 22, 2026. WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — 30th September, 2026 — The Quantum Insider today announced the release of Florida Quantum Ecosystem: A Strategic Assessment of Florida’s Quantum Technology Position and Opportunities , a comprehensive study of the state’s quantum assets, competitive position and path to leadership. The report was prepared by The Quantum Insider in partnership with the Business Development Board of the Palm Beaches (BDB), with support from FloridaCommerce, which commissioned the study. The full report will be presented at Quantum Beach 2026, Florida’s statewide quantum conference, on October 22, 2026 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach. A preview of the findings is available now at thequantuminsider.com and bdb.org. Florida’s defense advantage The assessment finds that Florida’s quantum opportunity is deployment-led, and that national defense is at its center. The state hosts 21 major military installations and three combatant commands — U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, and U.S. Southern Command in Doral — alongside a research base that includes the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the University of Florida’s HiPerGator supercomputer, CREOL at the University of Central Florida and the Florida LambdaRail research network. Drawing on a global review of 130 defense-relevant and quantum-secure programs across 25 countries, the report shows quantum defense ac

Cloudflare is becoming a public Certificate Authority (CA) to secure the web against quantum threats by introducing an open, automated, and high-scale issuance service. This initiative will provide both classical TLS certificates and next-generation Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs) to prevent widespread web outages and combat "harvest now, decrypt later" adversary campaigns. By acquiring GlobalSign's Root CA key material and applying for inclusion in major root programs, Cloudflare aims to establish immediate backward compatibility and build standing under emerging browser policies. The post Cloudflare Launches Public Certificate Authority to Secure the Web Against Quantum Threats appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Insider Brief Charles Black, director of Brookhaven National Laboratory ’s Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA), is applying decades of materials science and semiconductor research to quantum computing. C2QA researchers are investigating superconducting materials, including tantalum, to improve qubit performance and develop quantum hardware compatible with scalable manufacturing. Black’s work at C2QA builds on research at Brookhaven ’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials and IBM focused on nanoscale materials, semiconductor devices, and manufacturing. PRESS RELEASE — When Charles (Chuck) Black was a doctoral student at Harvard University, he, like many other physicists, used superconducting materials as vehicles for exploring fundamental physics questions. The materials — which can conduct electricity without losing energy when cooled to very cold temperatures — had niche technology applications at the time. But Black never expected to work with them again after earning his degree. Now, 30 years later, superconductors have emerged as a leading platform for quantum computing — and Black leads a national research center that is using them to help build practical quantum computers. “I feel like I’ve come full circle,” said Black, who was named director of the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) in June 2025. C2QA is a National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. Spanning 28 premier institutions from National Labs, academia, and industry, C2QA is delivering breakthroughs in materials science and modular system architectures to enable scalable, fault-tolerant quantum systems. “Leading a center that’s tackling the scientific challenges standing between today’s quantum technologies and practical quantum computing is an exciting opportunity,” said Black, who also serves as deputy associate laboratory director for the Energy and Photon Science

Insider Brief Quantum eMotion has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Plurilock Security in a proposed transaction that would expand QeM’s quantum-secure cybersecurity business with an established commercial platform. The proposed acquisition would add Plurilock’s enterprise and government customers, procurement channels, cybersecurity services, and AI-driven capabilities in risk analysis, authentication, and identity. The transaction remains subject to shareholder, court, regulatory and other approvals, with the companies expecting to close shortly after Plurilock’s anticipated November 2026 shareholder meeting if conditions are satisfied. PRESS RELEASE — Quantum eMotion Corp. (“QeM” or the “Company”) (NYSE American: QNC; TSXV: QNC; FSE: 34Q0), a developer of quantum-secure cybersecurity technologies, and Plurilock Security Inc. (“Plurilock”) (TSXV: PLUR) are pleased to announce that they have entered into a definitive arrangement agreement (the “Arrangement Agreement”) on September 28, 2026 whereby QeM will acquire, either directly or indirectly through a wholly-owned subsidiary of QeM, 100% of the issued and outstanding Plurilock Shares by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) (the “Arrangement”). The proposed acquisition is intended to accelerate QeM’s transition from primarily developing and validating quantum-secure technologies toward a broader commercial cybersecurity business with existing revenues, customers, sales channels and delivery capabilities. Through the proposed acquisition, QeM expects to add an established cybersecurity revenue base and operating platform, including enterprise and government customer relationships, public-sector procurement channels, cybersecurity services, sales and delivery capabilities, and intellectual property in AI-centric cybersecurity, risk analysis, authentication and identity. QeM believes this combination could shorten the path from product valid

Diraq is expanding its U.S. operations by opening a new quantum R&D lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in collaboration with the New Mexico Technology and Innovation Office and Roadrunner Venture Studios. This expansion, supported by New Mexico's quantum technology allocation, will focus on characterizing high-density silicon spin-qubit chips for the DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. The lab, operational by late 2026, aims to advance utility-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing by leveraging CMOS fabrication for high-density qubit packing. The post Diraq Expands U.S. Footprint with New Mexico Quantum R&D Laboratory to Advance DARPA QBI Milestones appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Project Eleven has acquired Riva Labs to create a comprehensive post-quantum cryptography and blockchain infrastructure. This merger addresses vulnerabilities in current public-key cryptography by integrating quantum-resistant solutions directly into the technology stack. The combined entity will focus on developing agile post-quantum migration frameworks, utilizing AI-driven research to adapt to evolving cryptographic standards and ensure practical, scalable solutions for decentralized networks. The post Project Eleven Acquires Riva Labs to Scale Post-Quantum Cryptography and Blockchain Infrastructure Stack appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Insider Brief Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers developed LuGo, a quantum algorithm that reduced quantum gate requirements by more than 95% in a fluid-flow modeling problem. LuGo performs more calculations on classical computers before encoding data into quantum circuits, cutting the required gate count from 2 million to 91,000. Researchers validated the algorithm through classical simulations and evaluated it on quantum processors, with potential future applications in microfluidics, groundwater flow and porous media flow. Image: A 2023 simulation on Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit supercomputer used trillions of grid points to model turbulence in ocean water. LuGo, a quantum algorithm developed by ORNL researchers, could open new possibilities for such quantum studies of turbulence. (Miles Couchman) PRESS RELEASE — Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory used the world’s fastest supercomputer for open science to develop a quantum algorithm that could lead to more advanced models in fluid dynamics and other scientific fields. The results of the  study , supported by the  Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility ’s  Frontier  supercomputer and  Quantum Computing User Program  (QCUP), highlight new opportunities to explore quantum computing’s emerging potential to fuel scientific discovery. The findings could ultimately support applications in such real-world problems as microfluidics, groundwater flow and porous media flow as scientists work to develop  more accurate, “fault-tolerant” quantum computers with lower error rates . The innovation received a 2026 R&D 100 Award from science and technology media group  R&D World , one of a record 22 of the annual awards for ORNL. “We wanted to find a smarter approach to dealing with a major computational bottleneck in quantum modeling of fluid dynamics,” said Chao Lu, an ORNL postdoctoral researcher who led the study presente

There exists a stark tension among different formulations of quantum theory as some are inherently time-symmetric while others are time-asymmetric. This tension is crisply captured when considering physical theories as theories of processes. We present the process theory of quantum physics, QPhys, which treats classical systems as internal to quantum theory. We provide three ways to incorporate time symmetry in QPhys. The first restricts the process theory of QPhys to one that satisfies an additional retrocausality constraint. The second is a novel approach, which extends the notions of causality and retrocausality to apply to systems along with processes. Utilizing this approach, we create a toy model for particle physics , where the causal and retrocausal systems correspond to particles and anti-particles respectively. The third approach extends QPhys to a supertheory that satisfies neither a causality nor a retrocausality constraint. To avoid unphysical predictions we modify either its composition rule or its processes.

Studies have shown that quantum states reside in a Hilbert space bundle. When a quantum system depends on continuous external parameters, these parameters define additional dimensions in the base space of the bundle. While much of the existing literature focuses on eigenstate subbundles, where geometric properties like Berry curvature arise, this work considers the entire Hilbert space bundle. Although the Hilbert space bundle has been found to be locally flat, suggesting that the system's topology may appear trivial, we revisit this assumption. Specifically, we examine how an arbitrary quantum state evolves when transported along closed parameter loops, a phenomenon characterized by holonomy. Our results demonstrate that nontrivial holonomy can emerge in the presence of exceptional points. Consequently, exceptional points naturally manifest as topological defects. Finally, we show that this nontrivial topology manifests in physical, time-dependent evolutions, providing a simple experimental signature to detect exceptional points by comparing state transport along distinct paths.

Qubit shuttling promises to advance some quantum computing platforms to the qubit register sizes needed for effective quantum error correction (QEC), but also introduces additional errors whose impact must be evaluated. The established method to investigate the performance of QEC codes in a realistic scenario is to employ a standard noise model known as circuit-level noise, where all quantum operations are modeled as noisy. In the present work, we take this noise model and single out the effect of shuttling errors by introducing them as an additional so-called error location. This hardware abstraction is motivated by the SpinBus architecture and allows a systematic numerical investigation to map out the resulting two-dimensional parameter space. To this end, we take the Surface code and perform large scale simulations, most notably extracting the threshold across said two-dimensional parameter space. We study two scenarios for shuttling errors, depolarization on the one hand and dephasing on the other hand. For a purely dephasing shuttling error, we find a threshold of several percent, provided that all other operations have a high fidelity. The qubit overhead needed to reach a logical error rate of 10 − 12 (known as the "teraquop" regime \cite{Gidney2021Jul} increases only moderately for shuttling error rates up to about 1 % per shuttling operation. The error rates at which practically useful, i.e. well below threshold error correction is predicted to be possible are comfortably higher than what is expected to be achievable for spin qubits. Our results thus show that it is reasonable to expect shuttling operations to fall below threshold already at surprisingly large error rates. With realistic efforts in the near term, this offers positive prospects for spin qubit based quantum processors as a viable avenue for scalable fault-tolerant error-corrected quantum computing.

If a unitary transformation has a circuit representation with no directed path from input a to output b , then a does not influence b through the overall unitary. Conversely, if a unitary satisfies a number of no-influence conditions, it is natural to wonder whether a circuit decomposition exists in which all of them are represented by absences of paths. Such decompositions are known as causal decompositions; determining their existence in general is a central open problem in the study of causal structure in quantum theory. We present progress towards a general solution by considering the special case of unitary causal decompositions, i.e. decompositions in terms of unitary circuits in the traditional quantum circuit formalism that do not require the generalisation to 'extended' or 'routed' quantum circuits prompted by earlier research on this topic. We identify a combinatorial condition that characterises precisely those sets of no-influence constraints G for which any unitary transformation satisfying G admits a unitary causal decomposition representing the constraints. Our approach is systematic, grounded in lattice theory and finite-dimensional operator algebra, and offers hope for extensions to more general (e.g. routed unitary) causal decompositions in the future.

Abstract We show how magnetostatic higher-order multipole traps can be used to generate macroscopic quantum interference of the motion of levitated superconducting microparticles. An appropriate combination of multipolar magnetic fields offers great versatility in constructing various trap potentials, including anharmonic trap potentials such as Duffing or double-well types. Crucially, the anharmonic trap potentials realize a nonlinearity on the order of hundred times the zero-point motion, i.e., on a length scale below nanometers. These anharmonic potentials allow for the generation of quantum features of the center-of-mass motion of a magnetically levitated superconducting microparticle. Importantly, they can be easily generated with a static arrangement of coils, requiring only that the current running through them is tunable. We propose protocols exploiting the versatility of the magnetic trap landscape to generate non-Gaussian motional states. We solve the dynamics of the center-of-mass motion of the particle in phase space and analyze its parameter dependence. Furthermore, we give a recipe to distinguish classical from quantum behavior in a statistically meaningful way through measurement of the position of the particle. Our results open a path to accessing the quantum regime of the center-of-mass motion of objects with masses larger than picogram, i.e., 10^13 atomic mass units. This will enable fundamental physics experiments for studying the transition between quantum and classical behavior, exploring the intersection between quantum physics and gravity as well as probing of certain types of dark matter.

Abstract Efficiently characterizing large quantum states and processes is a central yet notoriously challenging task in quantum information science, as conventional tomography methods typically require resources that grow exponentially with system size. Here, we introduce a structure-agnostic learning framework for noisy n-qubit quantum circuits under i.i.d. single-qubit noise. We first prove that quantum states with unital noise channels admit an efficient learnable representation in the logarithmic-depth regime. We then extend this framework to quantum process tomography under constant noise, deriving a unified protocol that applies to both unital and non-unital noisy channels and retains efficient guarantees for logarithmic-depth circuits. This process-learning formulation is input-agnostic and imposes no distributional assumptions on the input quantum states. We further study a more general regime with arbitrary noise strength. In this setting, low-weight Pauli propagation induces a terminal truncation whose threshold depends logarithmically on the inverse accuracy, leading to quasi-polynomial complexity and near-unit success probability in the average case. In contrast to the preceding two results, this arbitrary-noise guarantee does not impose any restriction on the circuit depth, and therefore covers arbitrary-depth circuits, including both the noiseless limit (γ = 0) and the strong-decoherence regime (γ = Θ(1)). Numerical simulations of two-dimensional Hamiltonian dynamics further demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the approach, including for structured circuits beyond the random-circuit setting assumed in the theoretical analysis. These results provide a scalable and practically relevant route toward characterizing large-scale noisy quantum devices, addressing a key bottleneck in the development of quantum technologies.

Abstract Many potential future events have devastating consequences, from the onset of earthquakes to financial black swan events. Accurate predictions of their probability of occurrence are vital. Yet as the stochastic systems underlying such events become increasingly complex, these probabilities can depend on ever-growing amounts of past data, which require ever more memory to track. The accuracy of our estimates is ultimately limited by both computational and memory constraints; the former to reduce sampling error, the latter to avoid sampling bias. Traditional quantum algorithms -- such as amplitude estimation -- address only the former, and become untenable especially in near-future quantum devices where quantum memory is a premium. Here, we offer quantum-algorithmic means to reduce systematic bias while maintaining a quadratic speed-up. Our results thus advance the timeline for the practical deployment of quantum technologies, and illustrate their additional benefits when simulating processes of growing complexity.

Abstract Monitored quantum circuits host a rich variety of exotic non-equilibrium phases. Among the most representative examples are measurement-induced phase transitions between distinct area-law entangled states. However, because these transitions are characterized by specific entanglement quantities such as mutual information or topological entanglement entropy that are nonlinear functionals of the density matrix, their experimental observation requires multiple identical quantum trajectories via post-selection, which becomes exponentially infeasible for large systems. Here, we leverage modern machine learning tools to address this challenge. We devise a neural network architecture combining a convolutional neural network with an attention mechanism, and use raw measurement outcomes directly as input to classify trivial, long-range entangled, and symmetry-protected topological phases. Rather than estimating trajectory-resolved entanglement measures, the network acts as a classifier of the unconditional distribution of measurement records, trained at the pure-phase points and calibrated against phase boundaries independently established from entanglement diagnostics. We show that the system's relaxation to a steady-state phase manifests as a sharp convergence in the classifier's accuracy, without any quantum state reconstruction. We systematically study the performance of our network as a function of sample size, input data, spatial and temporal constraints, and system size scalability. Our results demonstrate that this approach is robust and post-selection-free, offering a practical pathway for experimentally probing measurement-induced phases.

Abstract Quantum control has achieved remarkable success in state transfer, trajectory tracking, and optimal control, yet a fundamental gap remains between trajectory generation and dynamics shaping. Unlike robotic and mechanical systems, where feedback design can directly prescribe transient behaviors such as convergence rates, damping, and robustness, most quantum control methods focus on identifying control fields that achieve a desired evolution without explicitly shaping the dynamics along that evolution. Here we bridge
this gap by extending the fully actuated system (FAS) paradigm from classical control to finite-dimensional bilinear quantum systems. We show that controllability does not imply full actuation in quantum dynamics: the Lie-group structure of quantum evolution generally prevents a controllable quantum system from being represented as a fully actuated system. To overcome this limitation, we introduce virtual quantum measurements and construct a local partial FAS representation in the output space, where the highest-order output derivatives are directly assignable by the control Hamiltonians. This representation enables explicit cancellation of nonlinear input–output dynamics and provides a constructive framework for quantum dynamics shaping. The resulting closed-loop behavior can be prescribed through arbitrary pole placement or fixed-time convergence with preassigned settling-time bounds. We further develop an offline closed-loop emulation procedure that converts the feedback law into implementable open-loop control waveforms. Numerical studies on single-qubit and two-qubit systems demonstrate accurate trajectory tracking, fixed-time convergence, prescribed gate-error decay quantified by average gate fidelity, and tunable trade-offs among convergence speed, robustness, and control effort.

Abstract The multimode bunching probability is expected to provide a useful criterion for validating boson sampling experiments. Its applicability, however, is challenged by the existence of anomalous bunching, namely paradoxical situations in which partially distinguishable particles exhibit a higher bunching probability in two or more modes than perfectly indistinguishable ones. Using multimode bunching as a reliable criterion of genuine indistinguishability, therefore, requires a clear identification of the interferometric configurations in which anomalous bunching can or cannot occur. In particular, since uncontrolled small time delays between single-photon pulses constitute a common source of mode mismatch in current photonic platforms, it is essential to determine whether the resulting photon distinguishability might lead to anomalous bunching. Here, we first identify a broad class of interferometric configurations in which anomalous bunching is rigorously excluded, thereby establishing regimes where multimode bunching-based validation remains valid. Then, we find that, quite unexpectedly, temporal mode mismatch does not belong to this class. We exhibit a specific interferometric setup in which temporal distinguishability enhances multimode bunching, demonstrating that time delays can induce an anomalous behavior. These results help clarify the conditions under which multimode bunching remains a reliable validation tool.

We revisit an established Quantum Control objective, characterize its exact local metric geometry, and reposition it as a rigorous benchmark for Search and Optimization. The trap-free topology of the landscape, established two decades ago, guarantees unhindered optimal pathways, but global topology alone does not govern convergence speed. Although the so-called Quantum Sphere is defined by the fourth power of the control field, we show that its yield gap admits an exact representation as a nonnegative linear combination of $\sin^2$ terms. From this single identity, we derive a two-sided quadratic sandwich with ratio $4/π^2$ on a certified, worst-case quarter-wave region, proving the optimal peak nondegenerate modulo its affine gauge and well-conditioned. For white-box optimization, on a halved (eighth-wave) region, the objective satisfies a Polyak-Łojasiewicz inequality with an explicit constant, granting Gradient Descent a linear rate of $1 - 16/(π^4κ_r)$, where $κ_r$ is the condition number of the relevant Hessian block. For black-box optimization, we prove that the elitist single-parent Evolution Strategy converges linearly, almost surely and in expected hitting time, from a certified sublevel set, despite the landscape's continuous gauge symmetry and its lattice of periodic optima; the certified level is explicit whenever the landscape is trap-free, and near the optimum the strategy provably sees only the quadratic tangent of the peak. Systematic numerical simulations corroborate the theory. Finally, we show that additive input (actuator) noise reweights each term of the representation by a Debye-Waller factor without disrupting the landscape's structure, and outline open challenges: output (signal) noise, far-field plateau escape, angular-synchronization certificates, and another physically scalable benchmark (SHG with Glass).

For quantum machine learning, the exact boundary between classical and quantum advantage is still poorly understood. Direct comparison between quantum neural networks (QNNs) and existing classical models, which encompass fundamentally different function classes, often fails to provide broader insight into the difference between the two. Inspired by the techniques of Neural Quantum States and Random Fourier Features, this work introduces Neural Fourier Surrogates (NFS), a stochastic classical neural network architecture for efficiently learning coefficients over the same finite Fourier series support as quantum neural networks. Testing on a selection of tabular benchmark datasets, we find that NFS is an effective classifier architecture broadly competitive with established classical baselines, including a comparable Random Fourier Features model, and possessing comparable performance to data-reuploading QNNs; combined with additional analysis comparing the learned Fourier spectra of QNNs and NFS on synthetic data, these results establish NFS as a natural classical baseline for evaluating QNN performance.

Remote state preparation is a fundamental quantum-information protocol that exploits prior knowledge of a target state to reduce the communication resources required for quantum-state distribution. Here, we propose a remote-state-preparation protocol for a stationary electron-spin qubit using hybrid entanglement between the electron spin and a coherent-state light pulse, generated by spin-dependent reflection from a spin-cavity system. Unlike single-photon encodings, the coherent-state encoding is naturally tolerant of photon loss: a loss channel attenuates the coherent-state amplitude, leading to a gradual reduction in preparation fidelity rather than probabilistic protocol failure. The central difficulty---implementing the projection onto superpositions of nonorthogonal coherent states required in the conventional protocol---is circumvented by coupling the transmitted pulse to an auxiliary spin, followed by homodyne detection and a spin projective measurement. The protocol therefore avoids direct coherent-state-superposition measurements and photon-number-resolving detection. In the ideal limit, deterministic preparation of a particular class of target states can be achieved using only one bit of classical communication. We analytically quantify the effects of coherent-state nonorthogonality, fiber loss, and spin dephasing on the preparation fidelity. Increasing the coherent-state amplitude improves state distinguishability and hence the preparation fidelity, but also enhances which-branch information leakage caused by photon loss, resulting in an optimal amplitude at each transmission distance. For experimentally relevant parameters, the optimized average fidelity remains well above the classical benchmark over distances of tens of kilometers. We also discuss a possible implementation using diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers.

We study mixed-state entanglement in Gibbs states with strong $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ symmetry, focusing on locally interacting spin systems with ferromagnetic interactions. Our main result is to show that finite-temperature ordering transitions are associated with entanglement transitions, and therefore the steady state of strongly symmetric Lindbladians can exhibit entanglement transitions. While in the paramagnetic phase it is known that the distillable entanglement and logarithmic entanglement negativity between two halves of a large system grow logarithmically with the square root of the number of spins, we show that in ferromagnetic phases these quantities grow parametrically faster with system size. To arrive at this result we first establish relations between these mixed-state entanglement measures and spin correlations in states that are singlets under global $\rm{SU}(2)$ symmetry transformations. We then introduce a semiclassical theory for $\rm{SU}(2)$ singlet thermal states. While the global singlet constraint generally enters this theory as a complicated function of the full semiclassical spin configuration, we show that in large $S$ limit it simplifies drastically to a Gaussian suppression of total magnetization in disordered phases as well as in ordered phases in the vicinity of continuous thermal phase transitions. This leads us to a field theory describing spin correlations in the singlet sector. Using this we determine the behavior of various probes of mixed-state entanglement at low and at high temperatures, supporting our analytical results using numerical Monte Carlo simulations of a three-dimensional lattice realization of our semiclassical theory. We also use exact numerics in one-dimensional spin-$1/2$ systems to confirm our predictions for the scaling of mixed-state entanglement with correlation length and system size in the paramagnetic phase.

In dispersive readout of superconducting qubits, the common baseline is a boxcar averager: a uniformly weighted average over a fixed window followed by threshold-based state assignment. We ask when additional digital processing improves fidelity. We evaluated an adaptive finite-impulse-response (FIR) filter trained in real time by the least-mean-squares (LMS) algorithm on an FPGA quantum controller, and analyzed measured readout shots offline to compare the frozen filter with boxcar averaging and to test per-sample weighting and sequential detection. For the fixed FIR filters tested, summing the filtered samples gives the boxcar sum multiplied by one complex number, apart from a small edge correction (the kernel collapse). This scales state separation and noise equally, so discrimination cannot improve (the boxcar limit). The frozen LMS filter reduces trace noise without a resolved fidelity improvement at the tested readout lengths. Replayed on the same shots offline, each filtered shot carries 99.4% of the boxcar shot's discrimination signal-to-noise ratio at the 8 $μ$s operating point of the 2D transmon qubit (Q1). On Q1, optimizing the readout window's start and duration improves contrast readout fidelity by +2.4% to +5.6% across four readout lengths. Per-sample weighting adds up to +3.0% over full-window integration, and only +0.33% beyond the tuned window at 8 $μ$s. Remaining results are from a 3D ancilla qubit (Q2), which sits above the early-decision crossover that Q1 sits below. Hardware sweeps locate the crossover window near 1 $μ$s. Offline, the sequential test decided most shots early, with fidelity within 0.5 percentage points of the boxcar. About 30 labeled shots per class build a matched-filter template nearly as good as one from hundreds. The results form an operating-point record that separates waveform denoising from decision improvement.

We establish duality relations for conditional entropies relative to subalgebras of arbitrary von Neumann algebras, including the Umegaki relative entropy as well as the sandwiched- and Petz-Rényi divergences. Even in finite dimensions, these results extend the familiar dualities for conditional entropies from tensor-product subsystems to general subalgebras, while also lifting the framework to the fully infinite-dimensional setting. As an application, we establish an infinite-dimensional extension of quantum Stein's lemma when the alternative hypothesis is the state space of a finite-index subalgebra, which gives an operational interpretation of the relative entropy to a subalgebra as the optimal asymptotic error exponent in composite quantum hypothesis testing-the first beyond finite dimensions.

A graphene slit junction is investigated as a compact geometry for directional electron-beam formation, coherent interference, and symmetry-controlled spin filtering. Atomistic tight-binding calculations combined with the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism show that trigonal warping in monolayer graphene produces strongly directional electron beams near E~2.7eV. Boundary reflections redirect these beams toward a common drain, where the transmission exhibits magnetic flux-dependent oscillations consistent with an h/e Aharonov-Bohm period, whose modulation is characterized by Fourier analysis and harmonic fitting. A local electrostatic gate provides additional control of the interference phase. In separate self-consistent mean-field Hubbard calculations, the pristine antiferromagnetic ground state is shown to have spin-degenerate transmission, whereas structural or electrostatic breaking of the left-right symmetry enables spin filtering. Complementary valley-resolved calculations using a four-band continuum model demonstrate analogous beam formation in bilayer graphene at E = 50meV. The results identify the slit junction as a common geometry for electron-optical and spin-dependent transport and motivate further investigation of low-energy bilayer implementations.

Uncovering new phenomena in nature requires experiments. For centuries, their design has been exclusively a human endeavor. Today, a new paradigm is emerging in which artificial intelligence and computational methods can design experiments themselves. Realizing this form of automated scientific discovery requires simulators that are sufficiently expressive to represent the diverse physical processes and couplings from which new experiments can be constructed. In this direction, we introduce \textsc{esQueranto}, a differentiable software that brings photon-number quantum optics and structured-light propagation into a common description, allowing the spatial evolution of light to directly influence non-classical quantum states and their interference. \textsc{esQueranto} is implemented in JAX, providing automatic differentiation and hardware-accelerated evaluation for optimization and automated search. We demonstrate the framework across a broad range of quantum-optical applications that exercise complementary aspects of its physical description. By combining quantum and structured-light physics within a single differentiable simulator, \textsc{esQueranto} takes an important step towards the dream of a foundational simulator in physics.

Negative Kirkwood--Dirac quasiprobabilities are credited with the quantum advantage of interaction-free measurement and postselected metrology. We test that claim on the task interaction-free measurement was designed for: learning about a sample letting it absorb as little light as possible. The Kirkwood--Dirac distribution of path and output gives the linear response to a weak sample: its real part responds to absorption, its imaginary part to a phase. For a pure single photon passing once through any interferometer, the Fisher information about transmittance per absorbed photon is the direct-transmission value minus a sum of squared imaginary parts: no interferometer or readout beats direct transmission. Negativity plays no role beyond concentrating information in weakly lit outputs. The imaginary parts of the Kirkwood-Dirac distribution depend on the output basis here, not on the sample, so a basis exists in which every term is real, which is optimal. A single photon gains information per absorbed photon only through a phase response, which for an optical line needs a thick or inhomogeneously broadened sample, or through many passes when absorptions go uncounted, as shown by a critically coupled resonator. For detecting a weak absorber, negativity gives a single-shot advantage that does not accumulate over multiple trials; advantage instead accumulates when there are outputs which are dark without the object, a case which needs no negativity.

Excited organic dyes chemically bound to an icosahedral virus shell can spontaneously synchronize and emit a superradiant burst of light. The mechanism that allows it to occur at room temperature, despite collisional dephasing and inhomogeneous broadening, is not understood. Few other known low-dimensional condensed matter systems exhibit room-temperature superradiance (SR). In the fluctuation-prone environment of molecular-based systems, electron--vibrational coupling has been proposed to play a central role. Here, we addressed experimentally the existence of underdamped virus capsid phonon-like modes and theoretically their involvement in the transition from uncorrelated to cooperative emission. We find that SR-active dye-labeled capsids exhibit underdamped low-frequency oscillations that modulate the dye excited-state response, and modeling shows how such capsid motion can promote the collective polarization required for superradiant emission.

Constraint-preserving mixers keep QAOA within a feasible subspace, but feasibility and global mixer connectivity do not determine which feasible configurations are available to a particular shallow circuit. We study constrained QAOA at the level of the circuit actually executed: a specified feasible initial state, finite depth, and finite schedule of mixer interactions. We define the finite-depth accessible set $R_p(M,x_0)$ and show that the computational-basis support of the ideal QAOA circuit is contained within it. This gives a parameter-independent objective ceiling $f_R^\star=\max_{x\in R_p}f(x)$ and a normalized reachable-quality diagnostic $Q_R$, separating accessible volume from the objective quality contained within it. We evaluate this framework using resource-matched block-local XY mixer schedules for constrained portfolio optimization and synthetic block-constrained quadratic problems. Across 207 favorable-tail CVaR QAOA configurations, $Q_R$ shows the strongest association with realized shallow-QAOA performance among the structural diagnostics considered, with Pearson and Spearman correlations of $0.7003$ and $0.8057$; the relationship remains positive under controlled and dependence-aware analyses. The distinction persists across changes in feasible initialization, portfolio size, and objective family. A compilation-only study further shows that, for the dense portfolio Hamiltonians considered here, phase-separator routing dominates the compiled two-qubit resource scale, while mixer schedules with comparable compiled two-qubit cost can exhibit markedly different finite-depth accessible quality. These results motivate objective-relevant finite-depth accessibility as a complementary diagnostic for resource-bounded constrained QAOA.

We consider multi-dimensional quasiperiodic Schrödinger operators with monotone sawtooth-type potentials in the perturbative localization regime. We prove that a given gap is closed iff a corresponding (via a natural gap labeling) eigenfunction vanishes at the origin. Using this, we show that for a generic choice of the sampling function $f$, the spectrum of such an operator is a Cantor set, with all possible gaps being open. We also provide a class of functions $f$ for which some gaps are closed. Finally, we observe that certain gaps are more difficult to close than the others.

We present a routing-aware pruning strategy for quantum circuits that selectively removes parametric two-qubit gates whose computational contribution is outweighed by the fidelity cost of their execution, and assess it across both Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) and fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) architectures. Each two-qubit gate of a circuit is evaluated by comparing an architecture-independent lower bound on the fidelity cost of omitting the gate against a hardware-specific model for the routing execution cost in each setting. We additionally provide an analytical characterization of the pruning boundary as a function of rotation angle, qubit distance, and hardware noise. Simulations on benchmark circuits demonstrate gate count reductions of up to 48.6% and fidelity improvements of up to 47.7% in the NISQ regime, while a feasibility analysis on FT hardware indicates that pruning is expected to remain relevant across a range of code distances and physical error rates. These results establish routing-aware pruning as a practical and unified compilation strategy across the quantum computing stack.

We construct Feynman rules for Lindblad master equations in the operator language of quantum optics: a fixed algebra of elementary operator moves and closed-form propagators for perturbation theory about an exactly solvable, in most cases Gaussian, generator. The expansion separates into a kinematic part (the shift algebra on the Wick-ordered eigenoperators $O_{mn}=:(c^\dagger)^m c^n:$, from which the vertex table for a specified interaction is assembled) and a dynamical part that enters only through the resolvent of the unperturbed generator, diagonal and additive for any stable, diagonalizable Gaussian $L_0$, including thermal and squeezed reservoirs and correlated decay, and equally available for a two-level emitter, driven or undriven. In the driven Kerr cavity the loop expansion is the semiclassical expansion and the series is asymptotic. In a strongly driven two-level atom, dressed lines replace a series of finite radius by one accurate deep into saturation, one line per Mollow component. For Kerr rings and chains the cost is polynomial in the number of sites at fixed perturbative order. On a three-site ring the diagrams recover the non-Gaussian part of the three-photon correlation that the Gaussian cumulant closure lacks; carried to tenth order they give the smallest $g^{(3)}$ error of the methods compared for $U\leq0.25κ$ at a cost below that of a fourth-order closure, and third- and fourth-order closures are more accurate at moderate coupling. The same rules, extended to the counting-field-tilted generator, give the photon-counting cumulants of a disordered eight-site chain beyond direct diagonalization; quantum-jump trajectories at three couplings agree with them to within $1.6$ standard errors, within one at the strongest coupling, where they place the third cumulant six standard errors above the Gaussian value.

We introduce a finite-dimensional state-space representation of bisexuality in Dirac notation, specify normalized amplitude weights, and analyze the limits of inference from one single observation. We extend the basis for discussing attraction across genders, then define a distinct state space for gender identity with an illustrative normalized time-dependent trajectory. The model is an analogy, not a physical theory or a measurement procedure for human sexuality.

Non-ergodic quantum many-body dynamics offers a route to persistent quantum coherence far from equilibrium, beyond the conventional expectations of thermalizing statistical mechanics. Most known examples have been identified through intuition, analogy, or numerical search, rather than by systematic Hamiltonian design. This leaves few general methods for engineering robust non-ergodic dynamics in disorder-free interacting quantum many-body systems, especially in higher dimensions where enhanced connectivity generally disfavors ergodicity breaking. Here, we use an eigenstate-to-Hamiltonian construction approach to systematically engineer two-dimensional quantum spin Hamiltonians with tunable non-ergodic properties. Starting from a common parent model and input eigenstate, we construct two target Hamiltonians on the square lattice that differ in their interaction geometry: axial versus diagonal. We show that the resulting interaction geometry and coupling pattern control the Hilbert-space structure and dynamics. The axial model forms a connected Hilbert-space network and exhibits an anisotropy-driven crossover from ergodic to non-ergodic behavior through the suppression of resonances. In contrast, the diagonal model exhibits Hilbert-space fragmentation and, within its largest irreducible sector, signatures of quantum many-body scar dynamics including towers of highly localized, low-entanglement eigenstates, and long-lived coherent revivals. These results establish a direct link between Hamiltonian design, Hilbert-space network structure, and emergent non-ergodic dynamics.

In quantum mechanics, the properties of an unstable system are closely related to its corresponding energy distribution. One of the predictions of the theory is the emergence of a late-time power law in the survival probability $P(t)$ of the unstable state. However, in complex systems, similar effects may emerge due to other phenomena. This is the case for nonextensive statistical models, for some continuous lifetime distribution models, and also for certain energy-migration models applied to fluorescence. In this work, these alternative interpretations are confronted with data from time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy experiments with erythrosine B and eosine Y as fluorophores. It turns out that some of the features expected within the quantum-mechanical description, such as the sharp transition from the exponential to the power-law regime, cannot be reproduced by the specific statistical and energy-migration parametrizations fitted in the analysis.

Bell nonlocality allows secret key to be certified without trusting the internal operation of the devices, and even against eavesdroppers constrained only by the no-signaling principle. We ask whether generalized contextuality, a notion of nonclassicality available in prepare-and-measure experiments on a single system, can play an analogous role. In our approach, Alice and Bob first establish operational equivalences among their local preparation and measurement procedures, which are then treated as theory-independent constraints that any physical intervention on the communication channel, including that of an adversary, must respect. Eve is otherwise unrestricted, that is, her intervention on the transmitted system is not assumed to be described by quantum theory. Within this adversarial model, we show that Eve's optimal guessing probability against individual attacks is the solution of a finite linear program, and hence that a worst-case asymptotic key rate follows from the observed statistics and the operational equivalences alone. We prove that contextuality is necessary for a positive key rate. However, we also show that it is not sufficient. Concretely, the (3,2)-parity-oblivious random access code, known to yield secret key against a quantum eavesdropper, yields none certifiable key rate against a post-quantum one. Conversely, operational equivalences with no analogue among no-signaling constraints can strictly increase the asymptotic key rate. We illustrate this with the prepare-and-measure version of the standard CHSH protocol with an aligned key-generating setting.

It is well-known that every n-qubit unitary can be decomposed into a product of controlled single-qubit unitaries. We show that the control conditions in such a decomposition naturally define a quasi-process function, an object that originally came up in the study of indefinite causal order. Here quasi-process functions yield a representation of every n-qubit unitary in a canonical form, namely, as a quasi-process function unitary (qPFU). We use this representation to show how quantum nonlocality without entanglement (QNLWE) can be understood in terms of unitaries that encode the trade-off between causal order and locality noted in R. Kunjwal and Ä. Baumeler, arXiv:2202.00440. Specifically, we obtain two sufficient (but not necessary) criteria---mutual exclusivity of control conditions (MECC) and Unambiguity---for a unitary to be a process function unitary (PFU), i.e., it admits a qPFU representation where the quasi-process function is a process function, an object that can model paradox-free classical causal loops. We also show the inequivalence of these criteria, neither implying the other. We then show that the circuit depth of MECC unitaries admits a characterization in terms of clique-partitioning problems on Hamming graphs and use this correspondence to provide bounds on the circuit depth of n-qubit MECC unitaries. Finally, we show how MECC unitaries provide a recipe for constructing a unitary purification of the associated process function, thereby providing a large class of unitary processes of interest in quantum causality. The generality of this causality-inspired representation of unitaries makes it a versatile tool for analyzing the structure of quantum circuits in other domains.

When non-adiabatic coupling mixes electronic states of a molecule, vibronic states of different electronic symmetry become interleaved across the same spectral region. The symmetry of these states cannot be accessed in conventional spectroscopy due to orientation averaging. We show that molecular-frame angular signatures, which are preserved even when states with different symmetry overlap in energy, can be used to resolve them. Using vacuum-ultraviolet transient absorption spectroscopy of aligned carbon dioxide molecules, we separate two electronically distinct classes of vibronic states ($A^{'}$ and $A^{''}$) that arise from Renner-Teller splitting of the $^1Δ_u$ state. We reconstruct molecular-frame anisotropy continuously across the vibronic manifold showing that the anisotropy crosses over from perpendicular to parallel transition character and maps the interleaved electronic symmetry landscape. By scanning the femtosecond delay between the VUV and a near-infrared pulse through temporal overlap, we measure symmetry-dependent coherence dephasing times of these states and find that the parallel ($A^{'}$) states dephase faster than the perpendicular ($A^{''}$) states. We attribute this to faster departure of the $A^{'}$ wavepacket from the Franck-Condon region due to the distinct topology of the $A^{'}$ excited-state surface. These measurements probe symmetry-resolved ultrafast wavepacket dynamics on the coupled excited-state potential energy surfaces.

Photon loss is a dominant noise process in bosonic quantum hardware, including superconducting cavities. Fixed-total-photon-number qubit encodings in two bosonic modes retain the loss-detection advantage of dual-rail qubits while supporting photon loss correction. Optimizing entanglement fidelity in this setting for $4\leq n\leq25$ over arbitrary encoders and decoders reveals finite-group structure in every best-found code: 11 correspond to two-dimensional irreducible representations and 11 to reducible ones. Motivated by this emergence, we derive the necessary-and-sufficient Knill-Laflamme conditions for arbitrary finite-group-invariant codes, reducing their construction to equations on representation multiplicity spaces. For every finite subgroup of $SU(2)$ and every tensor rank, we explicitly construct the minimum number of operators required to impose all corresponding loss-correction constraints. These results produce analytic counterparts to most numerical codes and predict constructions missed by the initial search. Exact MacWilliams-Farkas certificates show that our codes achieve the maximum possible loss distance in 21 of the 22 sectors, and we prove that the resulting distance bound is monotone in total photon number. Beyond the scan, we identify a binary-polyhedral sequence with photon number $n_d=\lceil(3d^2+1)/4\rceil$ and construct each corresponding code through distance $d=10$. To our knowledge, the constructed $(n,d)=(28,6),(49,8),(76,10)$ codes give the smallest reported $n$ for their respective distances; all members through $d=9$ attain the fixed-$n$ LP distance bound. Together, these constructions, certificates, and a symmetry-reduced constraint count provide evidence for an infinite code family conjectured to attain every distance at the minimum photon number.

Developing classical simulation algorithms for noisy quantum circuits is essential to delineating the limits of quantum advantage. Existing classical sampling approaches for general circuits require circuit depths to grow logarithmically with system size, so that noise drives the global output state close to a trivial state. Here we show that local accumulation of noise at a depth independent of system size is already sufficient. Specifically, we prove that any geometrically local circuit composed of unital operations and interspersed with single-qubit depolarizing noise of strength $p$ after $Ω(p^{-1} \log p^{-1})$ depth can be approximately sampled from a polynomial-time classical computer. Our proof maps the output state of the circuit to a polymer model in statistical mechanics, and combines a convergent cluster expansion with hypercontractivity of the depolarizing channel.

We establish functional aggregate queries (FAQs) as a unifying language for exact classical simulation of quantum circuits. A circuit becomes a sum-product query: factors encode gates, internal wire variables are aggregated, and free boundary variables index transition amplitudes. The central insight is that distinct sources of simulation tractability can be exploited within the same InsideOut evaluation scheme. The query specifies what is computed; the evaluation plan, semiring, and representation of intermediate factors determine the cost. This view unifies structural and algebraic simulation guarantees. With explicit factor representations, FAQ evaluation recovers the treewidth bound for tensor-network contraction and yields finer sparsity-sensitive bounds via fractional covers. Over a formal phase semiring, compressed intermediate factors recover rank-width-based simulation for compatible quadratic phase representations. For Clifford circuits, affine-quadratic factors are closed under multiplication and marginalization and remain polynomial in size, yielding polynomial-time exact amplitude computation without any bounded-width assumption. Beyond these recoveries, the framework yields a new tractability criterion: tensor layout symmetry width. This parameter combines local cut-rank with separator symmetry through exact tree-tensor representations. We give a constructive evaluation bound and exhibit a circuit family with bounded tensor layout symmetry width but unbounded phase-graph rank-width and circuit line-graph treewidth. These results establish representation-aware FAQ evaluation as a common algorithmic foundation for classical simulation and a systematic route to new tractable regimes.

The Hamiltonian of a natural quantum system is usually determined indirectly, by proposing microscopic models and comparing their predicted observables with experiment. A more direct approach is to extract information about the Hamiltonian from measurements on the system itself. In many settings, however, direct access to the full system is unavailable and measurements can be performed only through controllable probes, as in quantum sensing and boundary spectroscopy. Existing Hamiltonian learning protocols under such restricted access typically require a special symmetry, a known parametric form, or controlled operations beyond free evolution. We introduce Quantum Krylov Learning (QKL), a restricted-access framework that avoids these requirements. QKL uses single temperature probe autocorrelators and their operator Krylov structure to extract model-independent spectral information about the unknown system. Rather than fitting a parametrized Hamiltonian, it reconstructs the operator Krylov Jacobi matrix representing the dynamical modes accessible to the probe. The method assumes that the unobserved system is at, or near, infinite temperature. Under this condition, the Jacobi matrix can be reconstructed directly from the autocorrelation of a probe observable, without oracle access to the Hamiltonian. The required operations are free evolution under the unknown $H$, together with probe state preparation and measurement. The learning core therefore requires no symmetry, no parametric model, and no controlled-unitary gates. We show a Lieb--Robinson bound for the operator Krylov chain and derive a data-driven criterion for the required observation window. We also establish an end-to-end sample complexity guarantee: under generic conditions on the spectral gaps and weights, the number of measurement shots required to achieve spectral precision $\varepsilon$ is polynomial in $1/\varepsilon$.

Local-unitary (LU) equivalence asks whether two quantum states differ only by independent changes of basis on their qubits. For graph states, whether this relation can be decided in polynomial time has remained open for over a decade. We give a deterministic algorithm that decides LU equivalence for graphs on $n$ labelled vertices in $\widetilde O(n^{6.38})$ bit operations and constructs exact single-qubit unitaries whenever the states are equivalent. Building on Claudet and Perdrix's quasipolynomial algorithm, we replace the enumeration of vertex subsets by a compact system of constraints generated from pairs and triples. The remaining graph transformation is found by solving linear equations over the binary field. These new steps cost $\widetilde O(n^5)$ bit operations; the inherited graph preprocessing sets the overall bound. We also count the local-Clifford (LC) classes of graph states within any LU class: their number is a power of two, computable within the same bound. For any given graph state, this decides whether single-qubit Clifford gates reach every graph state in its LU class, and supplies a counterexample when they do not. The method also decides LU equivalence of stabilizer codes encoding one logical qubit.

Sipser and Spielman constructed LDPC codes from either bipartite \emph{spectral} expanders or one-sided \emph{lossless} expanders. In higher dimensions, \emph{spectral} expansion similarly played a central role in the constructions of asymptotically good classical LTCs and qLDPC codes by Dinur, Evra, Livne, Lubotzky, and Mozes and by Panteleev and Kalachev. Alternatively, Lin and Hsieh constructed classical LTCs and qLDPC codes from two-dimensional \emph{lossless} cubical complexes. In this work we develop the higher-dimensional \emph{lossless} approach. We do not construct the required high-dimensional lossless cubical complexes; rather, we investigate what their existence would imply. We associate with a high-dimensional cubical complex a \emph{level chain complex}, whose chain groups are supported on the level sets of the Boolean cube rather than on its cells. Our main technical contribution is a clean local-to-global theorem for this structure: suitable one-dimensional lossless expansion in the directional graphs implies small-set coboundary expansion of the global level complex. As a consequence, sufficiently imbalanced, two-sided lossless four-dimensional cubical complexes give rise to asymptotically good quantum locally testable codes. We expect the local-to-global principle developed here to have further applications.

Quantum simulations based on first-quantized approaches can offer lower space and gate complexities than second-quantized approaches. The gate requirements for these simulations can be further reduced by employing pseudopotentials, a technique widely used in classical quantum chemistry calculations to decrease the number of simulated electrons. However, implementing pseudopotentials in quantum circuits remains challenging due to their non-local nature. In this study, we proposed a method to efficiently implement non-local potentials using matrix product state (MPS) encoding. MPS encoding allows us to efficiently implement a Trotter step operator with a circuit depth of $O(\mathrm{deg}(V_{\mathrm{loc}}) n^{\mathrm{deg}(V_{\mathrm{loc}})} + 8Lnn_{\mathrm{atom}}χ^2 + 2n^2)$, where $\mathrm{deg}(V_{\mathrm{loc}})$ is the degree of the polynomial local potential, $n_{\mathrm{atom}}$ is the number of atoms in the system, $L$ is the maximum number of projector functions across all atoms, and $n$ is the number of qubits used to represent the binary-encoded wave function in one-dimensional space. We demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach by applying it to a model of the ionization of a one-dimensional hydrogen atom driven by an ultrashort laser pulse. Our results showed that MPS encoding significantly reduces the required circuit depth compared to a direct unitary decomposition, providing a pathway for practical first-quantized simulations.

Ground-state preparation, energy estimation, and property estimation are fundamental tasks in quantum simulation. Existing ground-state preparation algorithms achieve near-optimal complexity using block encodings or controlled Hamiltonian evolution, raising a natural question: is controlled Hamiltonian evolution necessary, or can the same scaling be attained in the weaker access model that provides access to only uncontrolled Hamiltonian evolution? We resolve this question by giving two algorithms that access the input Hamiltonian $H$ only through queries to $U_H$ and its inverse $U_H^\dagger$, where $\|H\|\leα_H$ and $τ=Θ(1/α_H)$. Given an input state with ground-state weight at least $η$ and a spectral gap of $H$ of at least $γ$, our first algorithm uses fresh copies of the input state and requires $\widetilde O(α_H/(γη))$ queries to $U_H$ and $U_H^\dagger$, while our second algorithm uses coherent access to the input-state preparation unitary and its inverse to improve this complexity to $\widetilde O(α_H/(γ\sqrtη))$. The latter bound matches the known lower bound up to logarithmic factors, showing that algorithms with additional access to controlled Hamiltonian evolution cannot improve the query complexity for ground-state preparation beyond logarithmic factors. Both algorithms are based on a simple mechanism that we call the spectral descent principle, in which the algorithm starts from the input state $|ψ\rangle$ and progressively descends through the energy spectrum, moving closer to the ground state until the desired fidelity is reached. We also extend this framework to ground-state property and energy estimation and give explicit complexity guarantees for both tasks.

We prove that quantum blind-unforgeability implies quantum plus-one unforgeability, settling an open question in the literature. Since plus-one unforgeability is known not to imply blind-unforgeability, our result establishes that blind-unforgeability is \emph{strictly stronger} than plus-one unforgeability in the quantum setting. The implication is proven using a new \emph{smoothing} technique that coherently rescales the query histories of a quantum-query algorithm in a black-box manner. This enables us to transform any successful plus-one attacker into a blind-unforgeability attacker with only inverse-polynomial loss. Our proof represents a conceptual shift from merely extracting a useful query history as in earlier attempts, which we show inevitably fails in general, to first coherently reshaping how query histories interfere.

We study quantum query complexity under several models of imperfect oracle access, and develop lower bounds through a common framework based on fractional block sensitivity (\(\fbs\)). For a negligent oracle that applies the correct query with probability \(1-p\), we prove a lower bound in terms of \(\fbs(f,0^n)\). We also show, perhaps surprisingly, that negligence need not destroy quantum speedups: any function \(f\) can be transformed into a partial function \(f'\) whose negligent query complexity essentially preserves the quantum query complexity of \(f\). This gives partial functions with exponential quantum speedups even under negligent queries, and in particular rules out a general lower bound in terms of \(\fbs(f)\) for partial functions in this model. For two other models, we obtain general lower bounds in terms of \(\fbs(f)\) for all Boolean functions. For hybrid algorithms using \(Q\) coherent and \(C\) classical queries, we prove the tradeoff \(C+Q^2=Ω(\fbs(f))\). For an IID dephasing noisy model where each query dephases the query-index register at rate \(p\) independently, we prove \(Ω\!\left(p\,\fbs(f)\right)\) queries are necessary. Finally, we introduce a broader family of time-varying dephasing models and identify a variational resource that is always lower bounded by \(\fbs(f)\). Computing this resource reduces to a convex optimization problem, providing a simple way to derive lower bounds for new noise schedules. As applications, we recover the hybrid and IID dephasing bounds and determine the query complexity of unstructured search when the dephasing rate grows over time.

Neural quantum states (NQS) have emerged as powerful representations of quantum states with rapidly expanding applications across quantum many-body physics. Yet our understanding of when neural networks can efficiently represent physical quantum states remains limited, in part due to the nonlinear parameterization of NQS, the intricate sign structure of quantum states, and the sensitive dependence on basis choice. We introduce Walshness, a complexity metric of a quantum state which quantifies whether it admits a compact neural-network representation. We rigorously prove that a general quantum many-body state admits an efficient NQS representation if and only if it has bounded Walshness for various NQS architectures. We provide an algorithm for finding the optimal basis by minimizing the energy of a corresponding classical spin model. This allows us to empirically improve the learnability of various physical quantum states, including ground states of the transverse-field Ising model and mixed-field toric code, often reducing infidelity by orders of magnitude, and recovers and generalizes the basis choice given by the well-known Marshall sign rule in frustrated antiferromagnets. Our results provide an intrinsic complexity metric for quantum states with provable connections to their neural-network representability.

Post-selection improves the logical reliability of quantum computation by rejecting shots which are likely to result in logical failure. We introduce graph neural networks that predict decoder failure without additional decoder executions, using only syndromes, and for high-rate quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes, existing belief-propagation posteriors. We evaluate rotated surface and bivariate bicycle (BB) code memories under uniform depolarising circuit-level noise. Retaining 90% of shots gives approximately 3700x and 740x reductions in logical error rates for [[72,12,6]] and [[144,12,12]] BB codes at realistic physical error rates. For the distance 5 surface code at physical noise p=0.003, our neural post-selector achieves logical error suppression comparable to the leading complementary gap method without running the decoder.

Regev's reduction is a quantum algorithmic framework for finding codewords satisfying nonlinear constraints by decoding the dual code. To date, applications that have not been dequantized have relied on efficient classical decoders and coordinate-wise constraints specifying a set of allowed values for each coordinate. We push past these two restrictions separately via two separate contributions. Our first contribution uses a quantum decoder to find solutions $\mathbf{y}\in(\mathbb{F}_q\setminus\{0\})^m$ to $\mathbf{B}\mathbf{y}=0$, where $\mathbf{B}\in\mathbb{F}_q^{n\times m}$. For fixed prime $q>2$, Chen, Liu, and Zhandry (Eurocrypt 2022) solve this problem for random matrices with $m=Ω(n^2)$, a regime now covered by classical algorithms. We adapt their template to codes (spanned by the rows of $\mathbf{B}$) with a ``two-fold multiplication property'': the coordinate-wise products of pairs of codewords span a space of dimension much smaller than $m$. Our second contribution retains classical decoding but allows global constraints on symbol frequencies. We study ``histogram-local'' constraints, which specify the allowed numbers of occurrences of each symbol. For broad families of these constraints, we show that a uniformly random satisfying vector remains satisfying with constant probability after resampling a uniformly random coordinate. This stability provides sufficient Fourier mass at decodable Hamming weights, yielding efficient quantum algorithms for variants of optimal polynomial intersection (OPI).

Extensions of relativity that include superluminal reference frames have recently been proposed by Dragan and Ekert as a way to reconcile relativistic symmetry with quantum uncertainty. In this work, we develop a causal modelling framework to formally study this proposal and prove a no-go theorem demonstrating that a theory permitting superluminal reference frames can avoid superluminal signalling only if it severely constrains which spacetime regions are accessible to operational protocols, if the choice of reference frame has observable consequences or if free variables do not exist or their existence depends on the reference frame. Crucially, our result goes beyond the familiar intuition that superluminal transformations may lead to superluminal signalling; our no-go result shows that Dragan and Ekert's proposal of introducing objective uncertainty does not, by itself, eliminate this conflict. In fact, because superluminal signalling might instead be avoided by relaxing other fundamental assumptions in the presence of superluminal reference frames, the proposed objective uncertainty may not be necessary at all. Our results clarify the limitations of uncertainty-based resolutions and the causal trade-offs faced by superluminal extensions of relativity.

Open quantum systems can exhibit inherently mixed quantum orders, such as strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking (SW-SSB), which have no analogue in pure states. It is generally expected that a finite-depth local quantum channel cannot induce a phase transition to SW-SSB in one spatial dimension. We circumvent this obstruction by introducing a long-range quantum channel, which implements two-body dephasing on pairs of sites with probability falling off according to a power-law in the site separation. Applying this channel to a one-parameter family of matrix product states interpolating between trivial and symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases, we construct a phase diagram that hosts trivial, mixed SPT, and SW-SSB phases with respect to Rényi-2 diagnostics. Notably, the mixed SPT phase is distinct from previously studied decohered SPT phases: it hosts two logical qubits and exhibits nonvanishing Rényi-2 string order, despite vanishing conventional string order. Through a series of mappings to a classical statistical mechanics model, we establish a direct connection between the loss of logical information and the onset of SW-SSB in this model. Finally, we consider the feasibility of experimental realization of the phenomena we have studied. We emphasize that our family of mixed states can be tuned to regimes of high purity, substantially reducing measurement overhead and enabling their experimental realization and detection on near-term quantum hardware.

In a previous work 2511.21852, we explored the hypothesis that in general theories of quantum gravity, spacetime regions known as generalized entanglement wedges (introduced by Bousso and Penington) have an associated subalgebra of observables in a semiclassical limit. We defined an entropy associated with these subalgebras that obeys the same monotonicity and strong subadditivity properties as the generalized gravitational entropy of generalized entanglement wedges. Here, we test aspects of these ideas making use of tensor network toy models for holography. In this context, the analog of a generalized entanglement wedge is a region for which no region containing it has a smaller number of boundary legs. In the limit of large bond dimension (analogous to the semiclassical limit), we argue that each such region has a canonically associated subalgebra of the full algebra of observables on the boundary Hilbert space, as well as a family of unitarily related von Neumann factor subalgebras. We investigate in detail how various algebraic operations on these subalgebras (e.g. their intersections, joins, and commutants) are related to corresponding geometrical operations on the tensor network regions. We study to what extent the monotonicity and strong subadditivity properties of generalized entropy for generalized entanglement wedges follow from properties of our algebraic entropy. We also introduce an alternative entropic quantity $S(ω|| ω\circ E_{\mathcal{A}'})$ associated with a subalgebra $\mathcal{A}$ that also obeys monotonicity and strong subadditivity properties with suitable conditions. Finally, we explain how to define a type $II_1$ von Neumann algebra based on an infinite family of random tensor networks with increasing bond dimension such that the regions corresponding to generalized entanglement wedges can be associated with exact subalgebras of this full algebra.

Strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking (SW-SSB) is a distinctive phenomenon of mixed quantum states, characterized by nonlinear long-range order associated with strong symmetry. In realistic open quantum systems, however, strong symmetry is macroscopically fragile and can be explicitly reduced to weak symmetry through local charge exchange with the environment. In this paper, we investigate how the SW-SSB order decays under such strong-symmetry-breaking Liouvillian dynamics. For discrete $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, a local symmetry-breaking perturbation drives an exponential decay of the Rényi-1 long-range correlator, revealing the fragility of discrete SW-SSB order. By contrast, for continuous $U(1)$ symmetry, local charge exchange broadens the distribution over symmetry-charge sectors and leads to parametrically slower algebraic relaxation. We establish a rigorous algebraic lower bound on the connected Rényi-1 long-range correlation, demonstrating the robustness of this slow relaxation. In the thermodynamic limit, we further uncover a two-stage dynamical scaling: $\tilde{R}_1\sim t^{-1}$ at early times and $\tilde{R}_1\sim t^{-1/z}$ at long times, with $z$ set by the underlying hydrodynamic dynamics. As a numerical verification, we consider fermionic chains with $z=2$ and $z=4$, which are excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions.

Van der Waals heterostructures exhibit self-cavity resonances from sub-terahertz to terahertz frequencies and thus offer an attractive route toward realizing cavity-modified phases of matter. Spectroscopy of such systems calls for high frequency resolution at millikelvin temperatures, which is extremely challenging with existing methods. Here we demonstrate a new platform for realizing and probing such systems. Superconducting layers define self-cavity structures with electromagnetic volume compression of order $10^7$. With an integrated graphene layer, we observe underdamped cavity plasmon polaritons at frequencies as low as 0.04 THz and which exhibit avoided crossings with cavity modes. To measure such spectra, we deploy a millikelvin-compatible sub-THz spectrometer based on a superconducting circuit. This work paves the way for simultaneous spectroscopy and transport measurements of cavity-matter hybrid systems at millikelvin temperatures.

For a quantum code defined by an isometry $T:H_{\rm code} \to H_{\rm phys}$, an operator map is a *-homomorphism $\varphi: B(H_{\rm code}) \to B(H_{\rm phys})$ from the space of operators on the logical Hilbert space to the space of operators on the physical Hilbert space satisfying $\varphi({\cal O}) T = T {\cal O}$ for every operator ${\cal O}$ on $H_{\rm code}$. This can additionally be taken to be unital $\varphi(I_{code}) = I_{phys}$ if and only if $\dim H_{\rm code}$ divides $\dim H_{\rm phys}$. In this case, $\varphi(B(H_{\rm code})$ is a von Neumann factor subalgebra of $B(H_{\rm phys})$ and we call the pair $(T,\varphi)$ a {\it factor code}. A code network is a family of Hilbert spaces $\{{\cal H}_i\}$ indexed by a partially ordered set with isometries $T_{ji}:{\cal H}_i \to {\cal H}_j$ for $i < j$ satisfying $T_{kj} T_{ji} = T_{ki}$ for $i < j < k$. In this paper, we ask when this can be promoted to a {\it factor code network} by defining unital operator maps $\varphi_{ji}$ so that $(T_{ji}, \varphi_{ji})$ is a factor code and $\varphi_{kj} \varphi_{ji} = \varphi_{ki}$. We show that the divisibility conditions on Hilbert space dimensions are sufficient for any code network with a tree structure but not in general. For a diamond-shaped network, we show that promotion is possible if and only if the principle angles between $T_{42} H_2$ and $T_{43} H_3$ all have multiplicity divisible by $H_1$. For incomparable $i_1,i_2 < j$, we characterize when $\varphi_{j i_1} (B(H_{i_1}))$ and $\varphi_{j i_2} (B(H_{i_2}))$ commute, when they generate all of $B(H_j)$, and when they intersect only on multiples of the identity. For $i < j_1,j_2 < k$, we characterize when $\varphi_{k j_1} (B(H_{j_1})) \cap \varphi_{k j_2} (B(H_{j_2})) = \varphi_{k i} (B(H_{i}))$ and when these algebras together with $B(H_k)$ form a nondegenerate commuting square.

As a work selected for the Frontiers of Science Award, we present in the Proceedings of the ICBS an overview of how the techniques from the field of Quantum Information (QI) can be implemented in High-Energy Physics (HEP), including also some novel insights. We focus on the paradigmatic case of the top quark, a drosophila of a relativistic qubit. We study the presence of entanglement, perhaps the most genuine feature of Quantum Mechanics, in top-antitop quark production in high-energy colliders such as the LHC. We also analyze our experimental proposal of a quantum tomography protocol for the top-antitop quark pair, eventually leading to the entanglement observations by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, which constituted the highest-energy observations of entanglement ever. We discuss how the concepts and techniques developed in our work have effectively spawned an already vast and rich field of QI in HEP.

Recent work has shown that quantum double models can be used to circumvent the Bravyi-Koenig bound. In particular, this is achieved through code-switching protocols in which non-Pauli stabilizer phases appear as intermediate codes. We introduce the $X\mathcal C^{(k)}_d$ stabilizer formalism, which generalizes the Pauli stabilizer formalism by combining Pauli-$X$ operators with diagonal operators drawn from a fixed level $k$ of the Clifford hierarchy on prime-dimensional qudits. This yields a natural class of beyond-Pauli stabilizer models, including many twisted quantum double phases. We classify a large class of these $X\mathcal C^{(k)}_d$ stabilizer states, showing that they are uniform superpositions over affine-linear subspaces with diagonal phases. In particular, when the stabilizers of a state require operators from level $k$ of the Clifford hierarchy, we show that the diagonal gates required to produce the phases in the wavefunction sit one level higher. We further show that every 2D twisted quantum double ${\cal D}^ω(\mathbb{Z}_p^n)$ with $ω$ a product of type-III cocycles and $p$ an odd prime admits a realization using only Clifford ($k=2$) stabilizers, and we conjecture that phases where $ω$ contains a type-I or type-II cocycle require level-$p$ Clifford-hierarchy stabilizers for $p$-dimensional qudits. Finally, we demonstrate that a pair of qudit toric codes may be deterministically prepared in a logical magic state by measuring $X\mathcal C^{(k)}_d$ stabilizers. Together, these results provide a concrete stabilizer framework for topological codes beyond Pauli stabilizer models and their logical gates.

Parity superselection forbids direct measurement of odd Majorana observables. We learn time-independent, parity-covariant, $k$-mode-local Lindbladians on $m$ modes using even preparations and measurements with uninterrupted short-time evolution. Internal markers turn odd probes into even observables, and pair measurements among three separated markers calibrate their dynamical contributions. Signed Fierz inversion recovers canonical coefficients, while semidefinite fitting yields a valid generator. For finite-range models on known bounded-degree graphs with suitable marker access and a supplied weighted-strength bound $\barα$, entrywise error $\varepsilon$ is achieved using $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(\barα^2\varepsilon^{-2}\log(m/δ))$ samples, without external modes or known nonzero coefficient locations. Recovery to diamond-norm error $\varepsilon$ costs an additional factor $m^2$, matching lower bounds for short-time experiments on fresh systems up to logarithmic and fixed geometric factors. Without a supplied graph, one idle ancillary mode per system mode and potentially nonlocal pair operations give total absolute coefficient error at most $\varepsilon$ per mode using $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}_k(\barα^2\mathsf d^2m^{\lfloor k/2\rfloor}\varepsilon^{-2}\log(m/δ))$ samples, under a supplied approximate coefficient-degree bound $\mathsf d$ and controlled weak-coefficient tails. All guarantees hold with probability at least $1-δ$. For geometric models, fixed-support even observables can be predicted with logarithmic system-size sample complexity at fixed time and accuracy. We also give finite-volume and exponential-tail extensions.

We give a generic compiler for turning a wide class of device-dependent protocols with trusted state preparation into sequential device-independent protocols. In order for our compiler to apply, the trusted-preparation protocol needs to satisfy certain minimal conditions: having an entanglement-based realization in the first place, and the entanglement-based realization corresponding to the optimal strategy of any non-local game that satisfies a fairly weak rigidity condition. We apply our generic compiler to give sequential device-independent protocols for uncloneable encryption, copy-protection of point functions, and blind randomness expansion. Our technical contribution is a new class of rigidity theorems based on Rényi divergences, with flexible cryptographic applications. They allow our compiler to achieve a constant rate (i.e., the ratio of trusted states prepared to device uses), while tolerating a constant level of noise per device usage. This overcomes a fundamental scaling obstacle faced by previous rigidity theorems for trace distance or fidelity. For the generic sequential case, our proof is based on the sharp-divergence chain rule by Fawzi and Fawzi (2021), which suffices for a constant but fairly low rate. In the special case when the devices retain no memory, we improve the rates by deriving a novel subadditivity property for a modified channel sandwiched divergence, which may be of independent interest. Finally, as a prospect for future improvements, we also prove a chain rule for the iterated-mean divergences from Brown, Fawzi and Fawzi (2021).

The independent and identically distributed (iid) paradigm for asymptotic communication through quantum channels describes $n$ uses of a channel $Φ$ by $Φ^{\otimes n}$. Since exact tensor-power behaviour is an idealization, we ask whether the asymptotic capacities of $Φ$ remain achievable for channel sequences that are almost-iid along $Φ$. We consider sequences of Choi-almost-iid channels whose normalized Choi states are Mazzola-Sutter-Renner (MSR) almost-iid along the normalized Choi state of $Φ$, with defect parameters $r_n=o(n)$. In Renner's exponential de Finetti theorem for quantum states, almost-iid states appear in the approximating mixture and motivate the MSR almost-iid class. Choi-almost-iid channels play the corresponding role in an exponential de Finetti theorem for quantum channels established in a companion paper. In this paper, we prove that the universal unassisted classical and quantum capacities of the class of Choi-almost-iid channels along $Φ$ equal those of the channel $Φ$. Here universality is within this class: for each rate below the relevant capacity, a code sequence depending on $Φ$ and the rate, but not on the particular channel sequence, achieves vanishing error for every sequence in the class.

Secret sharing is ubiquitous throughout cryptography. All possible access structures are classically feasible, and in the case of threshold access structures, the protocols are even very efficient. However, when moving to the quantum setting, the no-cloning theorem shows that many access structures are impossible. In fact, no-cloning exactly characterizes feasibility: for thresholds, quantum secret sharing is possible if and only if the threshold $t$ is strictly more than $n/2$. In this work, we propose a variant of quantum secret sharing (QSS) where two or more identical copies of the input state are provided, but the output is only required to recover one copy. This notion circumvents the simple one-copy no-cloning obstruction, though the natural $k$-copy generalization still gives much milder obstructions. For thresholds using $k$ copies, no-cloning implies that QSS is impossible whenever $t\leq n/(k+1)$. It is tempting to hypothesize that no-cloning continues to exactly characterize the many-copy case. However, we show that this is not the case. We give positive results showing that multiple copies allow for going slightly beyond the single-copy obstruction: for thresholds, we construct QSS whenever $t>(n-k+1)/2$. On the other hand, we give a novel obstruction we call the Clique Path obstruction, which applies to arbitrary access structures. For thresholds, it shows that QSS is impossible whenever $t\leq (n-1)/k$. Our upper and lower bounds exactly match for $k=2$. Both our results leverage connections to the $k$-colorability of certain graphs derived from the access structure. We leave closing the gap for $k\geq 3$ copies as a fascinating direction for future work. Secret sharing is closely related to error correction, which can also be considered in the many-copy setting. Our results imply similar obstructions for quantum error correction for erasure channels.

We determine the optimal success probability for transmitting a fixed number of classical messages through a finite number of uses of the quantum erasure channel, assisted by noiseless classical feedback and without initial shared entanglement. For an input dimension $d$, an erasure probability $p$, a blocklength $n$, and $M$ equiprobable messages, the optimal success probability is equal to $E[\min\{1,d^K/M\}]$, where $K$ is binomial with parameters $n$ and $1-p$. The converse allows arbitrary adaptive quantum encoders, quantum memories, and receiver instruments. Its main ingredient is an elementary dimension bound for noiseless quantum communication with classical feedback, proved by fixing the classical controls without conditioning the sender's state on the observed transcript. A classical protocol that transmits the base-$d$ digits of an integer representing the message, repeating each digit until the receiver acknowledges its reception or the prescribed blocklength is reached, attains the bound for every integer $M$. We also establish a relative-majorization property of erasure-channel outputs and exactly evaluate a hypothesis-testing converse, recovering the same numerical bound without feedback. That converse need not be achievable without feedback: four uses of the qubit erasure channel and four messages give a strict gap. A product-state code employing tetrahedral qubit states nevertheless outperforms every classical binary erasure code with these parameters. We give an explicit message-size formula and show that the bounded-remainder normal approximation and the average-success strong-converse exponent are unchanged without feedback. We also determine the feedback-assisted error exponent below capacity, prove that it agrees with the no-feedback exponent above a critical rate, and give no-feedback bounds at lower rates.

Macrorealism is a fundamental concept in quantum foundations, capturing basic features of our everyday experience. Among the main tools introduced to test violations of macrorealism are the Leggett-Garg inequalities. These inequalities provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a certain data set including the correlators measured in a number of different experimental runs (weak version of macrorealism). Leggett-Garg inequalities have proved useful for detecting violations of macrorealism in neutrino oscillation experiments. However, it is interesting to investigate a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for strong macrorealism - no-signaling-in-time and arrow-of-time conditions - in order to obtain a more complete characterization of macrorealism in the context of neutrino oscillations. In particular, here we extend previous study of the no-signaling-in-time condition to the case of three-flavor neutrino oscillations, including the CP-violating phase of the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix.

A hidden-variable model can reproduce context-independent individual readouts while failing to preserve observable records when devices are connected or reused. We distinguish two composition requirements. For a finite family of nonnegative instrument matrices, an invariant space generated by normalization defects characterizes unit continuation mass under every finite adaptive policy. Its annihilator defines the maximal admissible positive cone closed under outcome-conditioned updates. A separate observation space characterizes indistinguishability of context-dependent hidden preparations under joint readout. A finite-state example passes every fixed sequence but fails under outcome-dependent stopping. For a wrapped-Cauchy spin source with an explicitly stipulated unchanged-source passive extension, two individually fair probes acquire a setting-dependent agreement probability with contrast $ε^2\operatorname{sech}(2g)/4$. More generally, protection under one and two identical uses forces a continuous binary passive response to be constant; measurable two-valued exceptions remain possible. Exact rational calculations, exhaustive finite-policy experiments, continuous source sampling, and quadrature test the stated examples. The criteria apply to specified instrument families and accessible records; they do not construct a microscopic detector or establish consistency under unrestricted network composition.

Given multiple uses of an unknown quantum channel, we determine whether it is a specified non-mixed-unitary channel or belongs to the set of mixed-unitary channels. Formulating this as a composite channel hypothesis testing problem, we characterize the Stein exponents achievable by parallel strategies under progressively weaker restrictions on probe states and auxiliary memory. In particular, we consider block-i.i.d. probes, which allow arbitrary correlations within blocks of fixed size while remaining i.i.d. across blocks, and derive finite-letter expressions of the corresponding Stein exponents. Varying the block size, which interpolates between fully i.i.d. and arbitrary probes, together with further restrictions on intra-block correlations and access to auxiliary memory, results in a multifaceted hierarchy. We establish several strict separations within this hierarchy. Without auxiliary memory, we prove that fully i.i.d. probes yield a vanishing Stein exponent for every unital non-mixed-unitary channel, while blocks of three product probes suffice to obtain a strictly positive exponent for the qutrit Werner-Holevo channel. For block size two, although product probes seem to be insufficient for O(3)-covariant channels, an entangled probe achieves a strictly positive exponent for the qutrit Werner-Holevo channel, even though every maximally entangled probe fails. In contrast, auxiliary memory makes fully i.i.d. probes sufficient by yielding a strictly positive exponent for every non-mixed-unitary channel, even without requiring input-reference entanglement, and this exponent admits a lower bound determined by the diamond-norm distance from the mixed-unitary set. Moreover, for odd-dimensional Werner-Holevo channels, we find that this exponent is infinite, with every full-Schmidt-rank pure state being optimal.

It is well-known that every $n$-qubit unitary can be implemented by a $2^{O(n)}$-depth quantum circuit using single- and two-qubit gates. It has been open whether exponential depth is \emph{necessary} for general unitaries, even when allowing for unlimited number of ancilla qubits. We show, perhaps surprisingly, that all unitaries can be approximated to operator norm $ε$ by a circuit of one- and two-qubit gates of depth $\poly(n,\log 1/ε)$ with $2^{O(n)}$ ancilla qubits. In other words, every $n$-qubit unitary can be parallelized to polynomial depth. Moreover, if we allow unbounded fan-out gates, these circuits can be reduced further to \emph{constant} depth. Our construction takes advantage of a novel relationship connecting the unitary synthesis problem of Aaronson and Kuperberg to locally-decodable codes and private information retrieval from complexity theory and cryptography.

Pseudorandom permutations are ubiquitous in theoretical and applied cryptography. PRPs that offer security even against adversaries making quantum queries are of increasing interest, and used in applications ranging from constructing pseudorandom unitaries to separating SZK from BQP. A successful framework for constructing classically-secure PRPs is the key-alternating Even-Mansour approach, which interleaves applications of public permutations with additions of round keys. The single-round construction is already classically secure in the ideal permutation model (IPM), with added rounds offering improved concrete security. However, in the quantum-query setting, the status of this framework is presently unclear. A simple quantum-query attack based on Simon's algorithm breaks the one-round cipher. For two or more rounds, security is only known against non-adaptive adversaries who must prepare all queries in advance. In this work, we show that the two-round Even-Mansour cipher is information theoretically secure in the IPM against adversaries making polynomially-many adaptive forward and inverse quantum queries to all available oracles. Our proof uses compressed permutation oracles and a specially crafted isometry relating the ideal and real experiments. We also show that this construction is minimal, in the sense that essentially any cipher constructed via a single call to a public permutation is quantumly insecure.

A majority of measurable dynamic quantities of a physical system is described as an equilibrium correlation function of the form $G_{AB}(t-t') = \left<A(t)B(t')\right>$, where $t'$ represents the impact time and $t$ represents the response time. Conventional quantum algorithms to compute such quantities via Hamiltonian simulation such as the Hadamard test, variational methods, or linear-response-based algorithms share one feature in common: each time point $t-t'$ is calculated by a different quantum circuit, leading to at least $O(N_t)$ total shots, and at least $O(N_t^2)$ total quantum gates. Here, we provide a different approach: utilizing $O(\log N_t)$ ancilla qubits to store time as a quantum variable, and effectively parallelize the computation of an equilibrium correlation function by requiring only a single quantum circuit for all time points. We show that this circuit needs to be run only $O(\log N_t)$ times, which in total requires $O(N_t \log N_t)$ quantum resources in the large system size limits. We prove that this scaling is optimal, and demonstrate our algorithm calculating the Green's function of a one-dimensional spinless Hubbard model.

Multiterminal Josephson junctions, in which one weak link couples three or more superconductors, are studied as hosts of topological Andreev bands, multi-pair supercurrents and tunable circuit elements. Their currents are modeled both as pairwise networks of two-terminal couplings and through genuinely multiterminal processes such as quartets. We ask how accurate the pairwise description is and what controls its error. In a microscopic scattering model of planar junctions, we compare exact currents with the best pairwise approximation, which allows arbitrary nonsinusoidal couplings. In ensembles of disordered three- and four-terminal junctions, the pairwise terms capture nearly all of the energy variation, yet the median current error ranges from 8.0 to 21.2 percent, about twice the energy error, because currents weigh the multiterminal harmonics more strongly. Designed devices extend the comparison to sixteen terminals. We identify a mechanism that controls this error. A normal-region mode near the Fermi level that couples to three or more terminals produces large nonpairwise currents, and detuning it with a gate suppresses them. Shifting only this mode, selected from normal-state properties, predicts the gate dependence of the error in eight three- and four-terminal devices without fitting currents. Finite-gap calculations in two clean devices confirm a drop from tens of percent near resonance to below one percent. An analytic single-level model gives a sufficient detuning for pairwise accuracy at any terminal count. Planar junctions thus inherit the resonant and cotunneling regimes known from quantum dots, and normal-state properties identify the mode that selects between them.

We apply Decoded Quantum Interferometry (DQI) to sample from the Gibbs measures of classical Ising spin Hamiltonians. We show that this Gibbs sampling problem reduces to a quantum decoding problem, and the temperature achievable by DQI is determined by the performance of decoding algorithms. We then focus on the task of Gibbs sampling for classical Ising $k$-spin glasses (or Max-$k$-XORSAT) on random Erdős-Rényi hypergraphs with average degree $D\ge k$. In a temperature range beginning asymptotically at the predicted dynamical phase transition, $β_{\rm dyn}(k,D) = \sqrt{(2\ln k)/D}\times [1+o_{k\to\infty}(1)]$, we show that shattering and disorder chaos form a topological barrier that obstructs many algorithms, including Glauber dynamics and any algorithm whose output distribution is "stable" under perturbations of the input. In contrast, we prove that this barrier can be broken both by a classical algorithm based on Prange's method, and by DQI equipped with a quantum decoder. For example, when $D=αk$ with fixed $α>1$, both Prange's algorithm and DQI can sample at any inverse temperature $β< \tanh^{-1}(1/α)$ for sufficiently large $k$, well beyond the dynamical threshold $β_{\rm dyn} \sim \sqrt{2\ln k / (αk)}$. Therefore, our results show that DQI can overcome topological barriers that obstruct stable algorithms.

Standard finite quantum de Finetti theorems approximate the $k$-system marginals of permutation-invariant states of $n$-systems by mixtures of independent and identically distributed (iid) states, usually in trace distance. We prove both standard and Renner's exponential de Finetti theorems in the stronger form of operator inequalities, implying bounds in every Schatten norm and for every quantum Rényi divergence satisfying data processing. In the standard case, for fixed local dimension, our $k/n$ error bound in max-relative entropy improves on the previously best known $k^2/n$ scaling, even in the classical setting. The operator-inequality approach is particularly suited to study channel de Finetti representations because operator order between Choi states is equivalent to completely positive (CP) order between the underlying channels. For permutation-covariant channels $N^{(n)}:A^{\otimes n}\to B^{\otimes n}$, where $d_A=\dim A$, we prove that the $k$-system reduced channel is CP-dominated by a mixture of tensor-power channels with error $O(k/\sqrt{n})$ and polynomial dependence on the local dimensions, addressing a question raised by Berta et al. [Math. Program. 194, 781-829 (2022)]. Under the no-signalling condition, we also prove an exponential channel de Finetti theorem where the approximating mixture consists of Choi-almost-iid channels, whose normalized Choi states are almost-iid in the sense of Mazzola-Sutter-Renner. In the case of $r$ defects, the representation error is at most $\mathrm{poly}(n)\bigl(2d_A^4k^3/(nr^2)\bigr)^{(r+1)/2}$ and decays exponentially in $n$ for a suitable choice of parameters $r$ and $k$.

We study multi-armed bandits whose arms supply unknown quantum states and whose mean rewards are defined by a known effect $F$. Each fresh copy may be measured by an arbitrary, adaptively chosen POVM. We prove an exact collapse: the measured relative entropy from an arm state to its confusing reward half-space equals the classical Burnetas-Katehakis functional of $F$'s spectral statistics, and the spectral measurement of $F$ together with an explicit least-favorable state, built from the derivative of the matrix logarithm, forms a saddle point of the underlying measurement game. Consequently, spectral measurement followed by classical KL-UCB is asymptotically instance-optimal among all consistent single-copy policies, in every finite dimension and for every reward effect under the stated nondegeneracy assumptions: adaptive and randomized measurement design cannot improve the leading logarithmic regret coefficient, and neither can storing copies for later single-copy measurement. A self-contained finite-time bound covers general effects and boundary distributions. Any further improvement must come from measurements outside the single-copy class. For consistent policies with arbitrary quantum memory, an amortized relative-entropy argument gives a converse with the Umegaki half-space divergence, and the two per-arm regret floors, $1/K_{\mathrm{inf}}$ and $1/D_{\mathrm{inf}}$, coincide if and only if the arm commutes with $F$. Whether the Umegaki floor is attainable involves a composite quantum Stein problem and a separate reduction to adaptive regret; we pose it as an open problem, with two-copy numerical evidence.

The integer quantum Hall effect remains the most paradigmatic and remarkable example of exact quantization in condensed matter physics. Its Hall conductivity $σ_{xy}$ is fixed to $e^2/h$ times an integer to a precision limited only by measurement and independent of disorder or interactions. This robustness has several explanations, each capturing a strikingly different piece of the physics. In Laughlin's gauge argument, flux insertion pumps an integer charge between edges, so quantization follows from gauge invariance alone. The edge-channel picture instead attributes transport to chiral, ballistic 1D channels at the sample boundary, one per filled Landau level. Bulk arguments tie $σ_{xy}$ to a topological invariant of the disordered system, with extended states compensating exactly for the current not carried by localized ones. Here we demonstrate an additional route to understanding quantization, rooted in the finite-frequency dissipative electrodynamics of the bulk. Using high-precision terahertz Faraday rotation and numerics, we show that the cyclotron resonance alone does not give quantized plateaus under Kramers-Kronig transformation. Quantization is recovered only once a faint, low-frequency, topologically enforced dissipative contribution from impurity states is included. This dynamical mechanism, hiding in plain sight within the dissipative response, ties the DC value to the finite-frequency optical response and offers a new route to quantization through the optical Hall effect.

Convex relaxation hierarchies provide lower bounds to the ground state energy of quantum many-body systems that can be computed in polynomial time on a classical computer, at any fixed hierarchy level. However, scaling these methods to large systems and accurate approximations remains challenging due to the computational cost of traditional solvers and the scarcity of efficiency guarantees. In this work, we develop local relaxation hierarchies and efficient, highly parallelisable message passing algorithms for estimating the relaxed ground state energies. We show that the first level of the hierarchy---based on local consistency of pairwise reduced density matrices---is exact for commuting Hamiltonians on trees. We further establish that another hierarchy, based on consistent intervals, converges exponentially fast in the interval size to the ground state energy for weak perturbations of separable Hamiltonians on a chain, thereby providing an efficient classical algorithm for these systems. Then, we introduce two variants of message passing algorithms that run in $\mathcal{O}(n/ε^2)$ and $\mathcal{O}(n/ε)$ time for any fixed level of the local hierarchy on bounded-degree graphs, where $ε$ is the precision for the relaxed ground state energy per site. This assumes that the optimal messages have $\mathcal{O}(1)$ norm---a condition we observe in practical settings in our experiments. These algorithms are based on the subgradient method and the Nesterov-type accelerated gradient descent method applied to an entropy-smoothed objective. Finally, we benchmark the message passing algorithms across different quantum Hamiltonians, lattice geometries, and relaxation levels, validating the theoretical predictions and their potential to surpass standard convex optimisation solvers for this problem. We release the resulting library at github.com/rick1924/gse-message-passing.

Time and space (memory) are two of the most important measures of cost in computation, even more so for quantum computation. In quantum computation our tools for proving unconditional tradeoffs between time and space are surprisingly limited. The first quantum time-space tradeoff lower bounds were proven for sorting by Klauck, Špalek and de Wolf. Unfortunately, their method is limited to proving output-oblivious lower bounds (i.e. the lower bounds only apply to algorithms with a non-adaptive output schedule) and other methods have yielded nothing beyond output-oblivious lower bounds for sorting.We prove the first fully general quantum time-space tradeoff lower bound for sorting. We do so by introducing a novel method based on the noise operator to add to the analysis toolkit for proving quantum query and time space tradeoff lower bounds. By combining our resulting quantum noise stability bound with quantum recording query methods, we prove an $Ω(n^{4/3} (\log \log n)/(S^{1/3} \log n))$ lower bound on the number of queries that a fully general quantum algorithm with at most $S$ qubits of memory requires to sort $n$ numbers from $[n^2]$. Applying our noise operator argument involves purely classical arguments, which makes it particularly simple to use. We also us it to prove that, for any strongly universal (pairwise independent) hash function family $H$ from $n$ bits to $m$ bits, almost all hash functions in $H$ require a quantum algorithm with at most $S$ qubits of memory to make $Ω(nm/S)$ queries to an input $x$ in order to compute $h(x)$, even with very small success probability. Previously, Mansour, Nisan, and Tiwari had shown a similar classical lower bound using their hash mixing lemma. Our noise operator method allows us to use a related but simpler property of hash functions to prove our lower bounds.

Quantum data hiding concerns pairs of states which are highly distinguishable with global measurements, yet nearly indistinguishable when restricted to local operations and classical communication. More than two decades after Eggeling and Werner introduced a multipartite hiding scheme based on Werner states, the optimal dependence of its uniform security guarantee on the number of parties and local dimension remained unknown. We resolve this problem by showing that the distinguishing bias of any pair of $n$-qudit Werner states is $O(n^2/d)$ under measurements whose effects remain positive under partial transposition (PPT) across every bipartition. An explicit pair attains this scaling using only nonadaptive local measurements, establishing worst-case optimality and showing that the PPT relaxation preserves the optimal dependence on both the number of parties and the local dimension. At fixed security, this extends the certified hiding regime from $n=O(d^{1/4})$ to $n=O(\sqrt d)$. Beyond data hiding, the same bound implies that testing any nontrivial unitarily invariant property with adaptive single-copy measurements requires $Ω(\sqrt d)$ copies, yielding separations for any property with dimension-independent sample complexity under collective measurements. Our proof reduces the distinguishing bias to trace norms of partially transposed operators and analyzes them using mixed Schur-Weyl duality, demonstrating the utility of representation theoretic methods developed for port-based teleportation to data hiding and quantum property testing.

Linear threshold functions are $f_{w,θ}(x)=\text{sign}(\langle x,w \rangle -θ)$, where the weight vector $w\in\mathbb{R}^n$ is a unit vector, $θ\in\mathbb R$ is a threshold, and typically $x\in\mathbb{R}^n$ or $x\in\{-1,1\}^n$. When $θ=0$, the LTF is called homogeneous, and we write $f_w:=f_{w,0}$. Such functions are among the most important objects in machine learning, since they serve to linearly discriminate positive and negative examples. We give three positive results about learning LTFs: 1. Suppose we can make real-domain queries, meaning we can compute $f_{w,θ}(x)$ at any $x\in\mathbb{R}^n$ of our choice. We give a quantum algorithm that learns $f_{w,θ}$ up to Euclidean error~$ε$ using $O(\log(n/ε))$ membership queries and $\widetilde{O}(n)$ other gates. Then we have also learned $f_{w,θ}$ up to error $O(ε)$ when $x$ is Gaussian. Classical algorithms need $Ω(n\log(1/ε))$ queries. 2. A homogeneous LTF $f_w$ on domain $\{-1,1\}^n$ where $w$ has only $k$ nonzero entries of the same value, is the Majority function on the support of $w$. Belovs gave a bounded-error quantum algorithm that identifies the hidden support exactly (and hence learns $f_w$) using $O(k^{1/4})$ queries. We give an exponential improvement, using $O(\log k)$ queries. 3. Suppose we have a unitary $U$ that can produce (discretized) \emph{quantum examples} under Gaussian measure, corresponding to $\int_x \sqrt{γ_n(x)}|x\rangle |f_w(x)\rangle dx$. This is a weaker access model than membership queries. We give a quantum algorithm based on the efficient \emph{Hermite transform} of Jain et al.\ to learn homogeneous LTFs~$f_w$ with error~$ε$ under the Gaussian distribution, using $O(n^{1/4}/\sqrtε)$ applications of $U$ and $U^\dagger$ and $\widetilde{O}(n^2/ε^4)$ other gates.

Cooling an arbitrary mixed state to a pure ground state requires transferring its entropy to an environment. Can a single coherent bath contact accomplish this without repeated bath resets? We develop a new cooling mechanism that transfers the input information into bath degrees of freedom that subsequently decouple, while the system and the remaining bath follow a ground-state path. The bath is discarded only at the end, and the system Hamiltonian remains on and unmodified throughout. We rigorously realize this mechanism for a class of weakly interacting, gapped fermionic systems with local interactions. Starting from any mixed state, our protocol prepares the interacting ground state in total physical time polylogarithmic in the system size and inverse global trace-norm error. It uses two initially empty bath modes per system mode and a single pulse shared across all onsite system--bath couplings. The same pulse prepares each admissible system's own ground state without knowledge of its microscopic parameters. The guarantees follow directly from a non-Markovian system--bath dynamics without an effective Lindbladian description.

Modern smart grids generate increasingly rich operational data and deploy greater numbers of remotely controlled switching assets than ever before, creating new opportunities for data-driven distribution network reconfiguration (DNR). DNR optimizes grid topology to improve efficiency, reduce power losses, and maintain operational constraints, but finding optimal switch configurations remains a computationally demanding combinatorial problem. In this paper, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework for static DNR to systematically investigate how the Q-network architecture affects both solution quality and learning performance. We evaluate multiple architectures within a controlled DRL framework, varying only the Q-network to isolate the contribution of each architectural choice. Our results show that quantum-enhanced Q-networks can achieve higher rewards with fewer parameters than their classical counterpart, suggesting that such architectures are a promising direction for combinatorial power systems optimization.

We prove maximal separations: $n$-qubit systems can have $Θ(n)$ ergotropy, while every efficient process extracts negligible work, even for Hamiltonians consisting of single-qubit terms. We establish an unconditional existential separation and give an explicit construction in the random oracle model. Assuming the existence of quantum-secure pseudorandom functions, this separation extends to the plain model. This work uncovers an important connection between ergotropy and the complexity of catalytic computation---computation where auxiliary qubits must be finally restored to their initial state. Relative to a random oracle, we establish relational and decision problems that: (i) can be solved efficiently with $λ$ catalysts; but (ii) cannot be solved by any algorithm with $cλ$ catalysts, for any $c<1$. We show this by proving query lower bounds for quantum-space bounded algorithms. As a consequence, for computational ergotropy, catalysts prove to be surprisingly powerful---there is a family of Hamiltonians and states for which catalysts enable efficient extraction of the full $Θ(n)$ ergotropy, while every efficient non-catalytic process extracts negligible work. Furthermore, catalysts also allow us to introduce and instantiate the notion of pseudoergotropy---analogous to pseudorandomness. On the other hand, we show catalysts do not change (information-theoretic) ergotropy. Finally, our work also sheds light on the classical aspect of the problem. First, most of our constructions rely on classical states and Hamiltonians and therefore imply analogous results for classical ergotropy. Second, we show that certain proof of quantumness protocols can be used to generically separate classical and quantum catalytic ergotropy.

We study vector subset sum over $\mathbb{F}_3^n$: given $m$ random vectors from $\mathbb{F}_3^n$, find a nonempty subset that sums to zero; the smaller $m$, the more difficult it is to find such a subset. Chen, Liu, and Zhandry (EUROCRYPT'22) introduced an efficient quantum algorithm that solves this problem when $m\approx n^2/2$, where a naive classical algorithm would require exponential time. Subsequently, Kothari, O'Donnell, and Wu (STOC'2026) gave an efficient classical algorithm that only requires $m \approx n^2/3$ vectors, thus removing the hope for an exponential quantum advantage in this parameter regime. Using the framework of Chen, Liu, and Zhandry, we give quantum algorithms that require much fewer input vectors, renewing the possibility of an exponential quantum speedup: for any fixed $ε>0$, our quantum algorithm solves $\mathbb{F}_3$-subset sum in polynomial time with $m=ε\cdot n^2$ vectors. More generally, we establish a full sample--time tradeoff that interpolates between exponential and polynomial runtime. The main ingredient is a deterministic classical algorithm for the binary-error Learning-with-Errors problem, which is of independent cryptographic interest. For this, we rigorously establish a sample--time tradeoff that was predicted by earlier algebraic heuristics. For vector subset sums over larger fields, we also significantly improve classical algorithms in Kothari, O'Donnell, and Wu (STOC'2026).

Low-depth syndrome extraction for Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) quantum low-density parity-check codes can be formulated as a proper ordered edge-coloring problem subject to quantum parity constraints. A proper edge-coloring of the CSS Tanner graph ensures that each data or ancilla qubit participates in at most one two-qubit gate per layer, but does not guarantee a valid interleaving of the X- and Z-check measurements as for every overlapping X/Z check pair, the number of shared data qubits on which the X interaction precedes the Z interaction must be even. The minimum number of colors in a proper ordered edge-coloring satisfying the quantum parity constraints equals the minimum two-qubit depth when each stabilizer check is measured with a single ancilla. We introduce local automorphism-aware syndrome compilation (LocalASC), which reduces the constraint system to edge-orbit variables under a subgroup of the Tanner graph automorphisms and lifts each feasible orbit assignment to the full graph. Although the $6$-layer degree lower bound is unattainable for the published weight-$6$ IBM bivariate bicycle codes, we show that this is not universal among two-block CSS codes. Among code instances for which the maximum check weight equals the maximum Tanner graph degree, LocalASC finds depth-optimal syndrome-extraction schedules for several two-block CSS codes with odd component weights, including instances with unequal odd weights. We also obtain lower-bound-saturating syndrome-extraction schedules for several quantum Tanner codes satisfying the same degree condition. To obtain the subgroups used by LocalASC without computing the full automorphism group of the Tanner graph, we construct translation subgroups for two-block group-algebra CSS codes over abelian groups. For quantum Tanner codes, we give conditions under which square-complex symmetries extend to Tanner graph automorphisms.

We present a quantum algorithm that generates a uniform superposition over the spanning trees of a graph -- also known as a q-sample -- using only a sub-linear number of queries to the graph. This goes beyond previous work that focuses on generating classical samples, including a recent quantum algorithm by Apers, Gao, Ji, and Liu [ICALP 2025]. For an $n$-vertex, $m$-edge graph, our algorithm admits a pre-processing step of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{mn} + m^{1-δ})$, after which each q-sample can be generated in $\tilde{O}(n^{1+2δ})$ for any $δ$. Alternatively, $k$ independent q-samples can be generated at a total cost of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{kmn})$. We also prove a matching lower bound up to logarithmic factors, showing that our algorithm is essentially optimal. Further tradeoffs are given in the paper. In comparison, the optimal classical algorithms (Anari, Liu and Vuong [FOCS 2022]) need an $\tilde{O}(m)$ pre-processing step, after which each sample costs $\tilde{O}(n)$ operations. These results yield faster quantum walk-based algorithms for counting spanning trees or finding a marked one. Our result is obtained via quantum walk sampling over a sequence of slowly-changing Markov chains. Each chain is an isotropized up-down walk that mixes rapidly to the spanning tree distribution of the input graph. A key ingredient is an amortized data structure supporting fast implementation of the associated quantum walk operators throughout the sequence. This data structure maintains access to a spectral sparsifier and a leverage score sampler that evolve with the underlying graph.

In classical coding theory, the quest for explicit codes achieving list decoding capacity has been an important driving force. While random codes are easily shown to achieve capacity, an explicit construction was only discovered decades later in the seminal work [Guruswami and Rudra, STOC 2006]. In quantum coding theory, it is highly desirable that a code family be LDPC. While good quantum codes were known for decades, obtaining the additional LDPC property was elusive. In fact, only very recently that good quantum LDPC codes were discovered in a breakthrough work [Panteleev and Kalachev, STOC 2022]. In this context, a natural question is to ask for an explicit family of quantum codes achieving list decoding capacity while also possessing the important LDPC property. In this work, we provide (to the best of our knowledge) the first explicit constructions of quantum LDPC codes achieving list decoding capacity, namely, with a list decoding radius approaching the quantum Singleton bound with constant list sizes. Furthermore, we provide near-linear time (in the block-length) list decoding algorithms approaching capacity. Our explicit code construction are based on expander graphs via the quantum analogue of Alon-Edmonds-Luby (AEL) amplification [Bergamaschi, Golowich and Gunn, STOC 2024], and this enables the important LDPC property. Our efficient list decoding algorithms are obtained by generalizing the classical expander-based weak-regularity list decoding algorithms [Srivastava and Tulsiani, FOCS 2025] [Jeronimo and Singh, 2025] to suitable instantiations of quantum AEL.

Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) describe quantum measurements for which certainty in one basis gives uniform outcomes in the others. Their maximum number remains unknown in dimensions that are not powers of a prime. We introduce an ansatz that, in many dimensions, allows us to construct more MUBs than have previously been found. Each basis in the ansatz consists of a diagonal phase matrix applied to a fixed unitary, which is a tensor product of Fourier matrices and, optionally, any real Hadamard matrix. This construction yields five MUBs in dimension 12, six in dimensions 48, 96, and 192, seven in dimensions 36 and 108, and ten in dimension 648. These bases can then be extended to exceed the tensor product bound, asymptotically, in every eighteenth dimension. Moreover, we show that Paley's real Hadamard matrix can be used to construct $q+1$ bases in dimension $d = q(q+1)$ for every prime power $q\equiv3\pmod4$. This count grows as $\sqrt d$ and cannot be exceeded by tensor products of smaller sets.

The planted clique problem is a promising candidate for quantum advantage with a wide computational-statistical gap and substantial evidence for classical hardness. We study two quantum encodings of classical samples, a natural binary phase state encoding and symmetry-adapted measurements, and determine if they preserve enough information for planted-clique detection, as well as discuss their potential towards algorithmic efficiency. For the binary phase state encoding, we show that constant-advantage detection requires $Ω(n^{1+2\varepsilon}\ln^2 n)$ copies, even under arbitrary joint measurements. Measurements on $\tilde{O}(n^2)$ copies suffice statistically above the logarithmic clique threshold. The symmetry-adapted measurements on the full graph register arise naturally from the Schur transform. We show that the outcome distribution of weak Schur sampling depends on the sampled graph only through its edge count and fails to distinguish the distributions; whereas retaining the representation label and Specht register after discarding multiplicity preserves distance $1-o(1)$. Near-perfect distinguishability survives even if the label is also discarded. We calculate the retained states, providing concrete targets for efficient measurement. Finally, we show that one supplied coherent quantum sample enables an efficient quantum distinguisher, which yields a conditional computational separation from one classical sample under quantum planted-clique hardness. Our results are structural and information-theoretic; efficient detection from one classical graph in the conjectured hard regime remains open.

The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) is regarded as a promising candidate for near-term quantum advantage in combinatorial optimization, yet our ability to study it at scale is limited. Exact recursive formulas have been introduced for predicting QAOA performance on large spin glasses, but the computational cost of evaluating them grows exponentially with the number of QAOA layers, preventing the study of QAOA in the promising high-depth regime. In this work, we show that for the task of computing QAOA energy on any mixed dense spin glass problem, spins approximately decouple into independent spin-boson systems. In the infinite-size limit, the decoupling becomes exact, establishing the spin-boson mapping as a natural framework for the many-body physics of QAOA. This generalized spin-boson mapping gives a recursive procedure for computing QAOA energies that can be executed at modest cost using tensor networks. As a numerical application, we optimize QAOA on pure and mixed spin glasses at depths intractable for prior techniques, observing that higher-degree problems require more layers for a comparable approximation ratio while angle optimization becomes more challenging. While decoupling enables the evaluations of QAOA energies at large size and depth, it does not enable strong simulation of QAOA; a quantum computer is required to sample the bitstring corresponding to the predicted energy.

A central yet mysterious problem in quantum information is the asymptotic distinguishability of quantum states under restricted measurements. Here we look at asymptotic asymmetric hypothesis testing for general multi-mode bosonic Gaussian states restricted to arbitrary collective Gaussian measurements. We establish a single-letter formula for the Stein exponent for many pairs of states, featuring two distinct contributions, corresponding to first and second moments, respectively. Remarkably, the Gaussian-measured relative entropy exhibits genuine non-additivity, but the only effect of additivity violations is to asymptotically decouple first and second moments. We prove this by establishing sufficient conditions for additivity of the second-moment term via novel log-determinant matrix inequalities. Our results not only identify a single-letter expression for the Gaussian Stein exponent in a wide range of practical situations, but also rule out any possible advantage from collective Gaussian measurements when considering centred Gaussian states.

We give the first sublinear-time classical solvers for sparse semidefinite programs in the bounded-radius regime, without low-rank assumptions or Frobenius norm dependence on the constraint matrices. For constant precision and bounded primal and dual radii, prior quantum algorithms of Brandão et al. (2019) and van Apeldoorn and Gilyén (2019) achieved $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{n}+\sqrt{m})$ dependence on matrix dimension $n$ and constraint number $m$. Compared with the $\widetilde{O}(mn)$ runtime of existing classical methods, this suggests a quartic quantum speedup when $m \approx n$. Beyond a usual Grover speedup, this separation relies on the Quantum OR lemma, whose sample-reuse mechanism decouples the cost of Gibbs-state preparation from constraint search. We show that this reuse mechanism is classically realizable for sparse SDPs. Our main technical contribution is a classical procedure for simultaneously estimating many expectation values with respect to a sparse Hamiltonian's Gibbs state. This combines randomized Lánczos filtering with an efficient sampling-based estimator. We also introduce a stochastic online-learning framework for SDP solving, substantially improving accuracy-dependence over standard oracle-based MMWU approaches. Let $s$ denote the the input matrix sparsity and $γ:=Rr/\varepsilon$ capture dependence on the primal $(R)$ and dual $(r)$ radii as well as target accuracy $(\varepsilon)$. When $γ^2\leq\min\{m,n/s\}$, our solver runs in time $\widetilde{O}\left(nsγ^{4.5}+msγ^2\right)$. For $γ=O(1)$, this is $\widetilde{O}\left((n+m)s\right)$ and sublinear in the $O(mns)$ input size. Similar to the quantum algorithms, this matches known lower bounds with respect to $m$ and $n$, up to logarithmic factors. This implies that, with respect to dimensions $m$ and $n$, there is no super-quadratic quantum advantage for generic sparse SDP solving.

We construct quantum oracles relative to which quantum-secure one-way functions (OWFs) exist but pseudorandom states (PRSs) with superlogarithmic output length do not. At first glance, this appears to contradict the known black-box constructions of PRS generators from quantum-secure OWFs. The distinction lies in the access model to the oracles; our oracle separation uses \emph{classical-accessible} random oracles that can be accessed only classically even by quantum algorithms. In fact, our impossibility of PRSs applies to \emph{any} classically accessible classical oracle in place of the random oracle, while keeping the other oracle component unchanged, showing the need for coherent access in constructing PRSs. We further show that logarithmic output length pseudorandom function-like states (PRFSs) exist relative to our oracles, giving an oracle separation between classically accessible logarithmic length PRFSs and superlogarithmic length PRSs. This shows that fully black-box PRS length extension from logarithmic to superlogarithmic output length must use coherent access to the underlying short PRS.

Classical circuits with unbounded fan-in can compute any Boolean function in constant depth when their size is unrestricted. We ask whether removing the restrictions on circuit size and ancillary qubits also allows quantum circuits built from arbitrary single-qubit gates and generalised Toffoli gates to implement every unitary in constant depth. We give exact constant-depth constructions for arbitrary permutations of computational basis states, diagonal unitaries and the preparation of arbitrary pure states. These connect quantum state preparation to reversible classical computation and the preparation of probability distributions. With fanout in the gate set, they use exponentially many gates and ancillary qubits and return all ancillary qubits to zero. Replacing fanout by an exact circuit over the original gate set preserves constant depth, although the size bounds can become doubly exponential. The implementation of arbitrary unitaries in constant depth remains open. We give equivalent formulations in terms of copying the vectors of a specified orthonormal basis, extracting their labels and implementing restricted families of unitaries. We also reduce arbitrary unitary implementation to that of traceless unitary involutions using one additional clean qubit. With adaptive measurements, gate teleportation gives depth proportional to the level of a gate in the Clifford hierarchy. Towards arbitrary unitary implementation in constant depth, we use port-based teleportation: for input dimension $d$ and $M\geq d^2-1$ ports, we construct a unitary circuit of depth $O(\sqrt d)$, independent of $M$ and including resource preparation and port selection, with entanglement fidelity at least $(1-(d^2-1)/(2M))^2$. Thus, at fixed $d$, the approximation can be made arbitrarily accurate without increasing depth. Whether the dependence on $d$ can also be removed remains open.

In classical fine-grained complexity, the 3SUM Conjecture is used to prove a variety of conditional lower bounds on data structure and graph problems via an initial reduction to the SetDisjointness problem. However, there is an $\tilde{O}(n)$-time quantum algorithm for 3SUM and a direct application of Grover's algorithm to SetDisjointness queries beats the state-of-the-art classical conditional bound by Kopelowitz, Pettie, and Porat (SODA 2016); this shows that these classical bounds do not apply in the quantum setting. Thus establishing analogous conditional lower bounds in the quantum setting requires applying the quantum 3SUM Conjecture to a \emph{quantum} fine-grained reduction from 3SUM to SetDisjointness. We give the first sub-linear time quantum reductions from 3SUM to online SetDisjointness. Via our reduction, the quantum 3SUM conjecture implies a $p + 2q \geqslant 1$ tradeoff bound for quantum SetDisjointness algorithms with $O(N^p)$ preprocessing time and $O(N^q)$ query time. We also give an analogous reduction from 3XOR. These results are derived from a general framework for fine-grained reductions to SetDisjointness which applies to any Abelian 3-Orthogonal Array (3OA) problem with suitable almost-linear hash functions.

We construct protocols for classically verifiable quantum advantage and classical verification of $\mathsf{BQP}$ computations using \emph{quantum indistinguishability obfuscation} (qiO). Specifically, given qiO and assuming a slightly stronger version of $\mathsf{BQP}\neq\mathsf{BPP}$, we construct a two-message quantum-advantage protocol that is efficiently and publicly verifiable. Our result can be viewed as a rigorous cryptographic foundation for the heuristic quantum advantage proposals based on \emph{peaked random circuit sampling} of Aaronson and Zhang (arXiv:2404.14493). We also construct two simple protocols for classically verifying arbitrary $\mathsf{BQP}$ computations. The first protocol is privately verifiable and assumes only the existence of qiO. This gives a rare example of a nontrivial cryptographic application of (quantum) iO that does not make additional computational hardness assumptions. The second protocol additionally assumes post-quantum one-way functions and is \emph{publicly verifiable}. To our knowledge, this is the first publicly verifiable protocol for classical verification of $\mathsf{BQP}$ computations under computational assumptions in the standard model. We show that all our results hold when qiO is assumed only for ancilla-free unitary circuits. As evidence supporting this assumption, we prove a worst-to-average-case reduction for obfuscating such circuits. This reduction extends the local-mixing framework of Canetti, Chamon, Mucciolo and Ruckenstein (TCC 2024) under quantum analogues of their assumptions.

Multi-tenant quantum processors expose a pulse-level attack surface in which coherent crosstalk can mimic benign calibration drift at matched average gate infidelity. We present a structural verification and detection framework based on the residual Pauli transfer matrix (PTM). We prove that products of local unital, trace-preserving channels cannot mix weight-1 and weight-2 Pauli operators, even under coherent drift of arbitrary strength or axis. Building on established PTM-to-Hamiltonian relations, we prove that, for any specified qubit pair in an arbitrarily large system, the first-order map from its nine interaction coefficients to the antisymmetric cross-weight feature is an isometry up to scale. Thus, every interaction direction is locally observable near the identity. We also exhibit cancellation of this feature under large local rotations and prove that the full cross-weight norm is invariant under local unitary composition, providing a structural countermeasure. For calibrated small local rotations, shared randomized-Pauli measurements support periodic verification using the evaluated antisymmetric detector. In simulation, $16{,}384$ randomized settings yield a detection threshold of $λ_{\min}\approx0.13$ at a $5\%$ calibrated false-positive target, with approximately $M^{-1/2}$ scaling in the number of settings $M$. Further experiments characterize detection under relaxation, depolarization, native ZZ fluctuations, and time-dependent pulse dynamics. Finally, an FRQI encoding with Pauli-graph quantum Hadamard edge detection reproduces the classical structural edge score to numerical precision.

Characterising open quantum dynamics requires identifying the environmental degrees of freedom that shape the system's evolution. The memory dimension, defined as the size of the smallest effective memory needed to reproduce this influence, quantifies the dynamically relevant environmental resources and provides a common basis for comparing different many-body environments. Here we introduce a pseudo-control protocol that encodes information about the memory dimension in an experimentally accessible interference matrix, whose rank certifies a lower bound on this dimension without direct access to the environment or full process-tensor tomography. Applied to quantum many-body environments, the protocol allows flexible adjustment of the interaction and interval times, revealing how these parameters, environmental dynamics, and system-environment interactions shape detectable memory. Our approach provides a new operational technique for characterising open quantum dynamics and probing the structure of system-environment interactions through their memory signatures.

We give a polynomial-time classical algorithm which samples from the syndrome distribution of a surface code state corrupted by coherent nearest-neighbor $ZZ$ crosstalk. Our algorithm complements the known efficient simulation algorithms for coherent single-qubit errors in the surface code. When both single-qubit coherent noise and coherent crosstalk are present, we find a complexity-theoretic obstruction to efficient simulation: unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses, there is no efficient classical algorithm for sampling from the syndrome distribution, even up to a constant multiplicative error. This is obtained by connecting the syndrome distribution under coherent noise to the output distribution of certain IQP circuits associated with a non-planar graph.

The $f$-routing protocol is a leading candidate for quantum position verification (Kent, Munro, and Spiller, 2011), but security guarantees for explicit functions remain limited. We prove unconditional resource lower bounds for uniform attackers; our new techniques bypass communication-complexity bounds central to previous works, which are inherently at most linear in the input length. We show that, for input length $n$ and sufficiently small constant $ε>0$, a uniformly generated strategy using $q$ qubits and having description length $\mathrm{poly}(q)$, with success probability at least $1-ε$ on every input, implies the following computational bounds on $f$: 1. If the strategies are arbitrary quantum channels, then $f\in\mathrm{QSZK}(\mathrm{poly}(nq))$, where $\mathrm{QSZK}(T)$ is the class of languages having quantum statistical zero knowledge proofs in which the verifier runs in time $T$ (and the simulator in time $\mathrm{poly}(T)$). 2. If the strategies are explicit Pauli-sparse unitaries on $q$ qubits that have at most $s$ nonzero Pauli coefficients, then $f\in\mathrm{DTIME}(\mathrm{poly}(nqs))$. 3. If the strategies are Clifford+T circuits using at most $t$ magic gates, then $f\in\mathrm{DTIME}(\mathrm{poly}(nq2^t))$. Time and space hierarchies then yield explicit functions secure against polynomial and even quasipolynomial qubits $q$ under our computational restrictions. These bounds exceed the $q\le\log n$ bound of Bluhm, Christandl, and Speelman (2022) for inner product function $f=\mathrm{IP}$, at the cost of restricting adversarial computation and increasing honest evaluation complexity.

We present an efficient quantum algorithm for the non-uniform Chebyshev transform. It is defined as the projection of a function onto Chebyshev polynomials sampled at given nodes that are uniform in $x\in[-1,1]$, and hence non-uniform in the angle $θ=\arccos x$, a setting that QFT-based quantum Chebyshev transforms cannot handle. Our construction is based on an improvement of an existing Non-uniform Quantum Fourier Transform (NUQFT) whereby we remove the conditioning from non-uniform node sampling. Hence, error bounds are independent of the geometry-dependent parameter $κ$ of prior work. We use the fact that Chebyshev transform matrix is the average of two Type-II non-uniform DFTs, which we implement with a single controlled NUQFT circuit. We provide explicit oracle constructions, including the row-access oracle previously left as an assumption. The resulting $\varepsilon$-accurate block encoding has $O(1)$ normalization and uses $O(L)$ qubits and $\widetilde O(L^2)$ gates, where $L=\log N+\log(1/\varepsilon)$. We give an end-to-end implementation with complexity analysis, including the success probability and output-state error.

We give the first exponential quantum advantage in the general interactive three-party Numbers-on-Forehead (NOF) model for a decision problem. Previous separations hold only for restricted protocols like one-way communication for a relation. We construct an explicit partial Boolean function, the Interleaved Unitary Product problem, that requires only $O(\log n)$ NOF quantum communication but $\widetildeΩ(n^{1/32})$ randomized communication. This function builds on the two-party unitary product problem of Arunachalam, Girish, and Lifshitz (TQC 2024). The main technical obstacle is that discrepancy, the standard lower-bound method for NOF, also lower-bounds quantum communication. We instead develop a regularity-based argument for randomized NOF lower bounds, building on the approach of Kelley, Lovett, and Meka and adapting the regularity decomposition of Abboud, Fischer, Kelley, Lovett, and Meka (STOC 2024) to cylinder intersections. Combined with matrix-product estimates of Arunachalam, Girish, and Lifshitz, this yields our randomized lower bound.

Protocols for quantum state tomography can be characterized either by their sample complexity or by the tomographic rate function that governs the large deviation behaviour of error estimates. We establish a framework for the analysis of covariant protocols which allows us to compare these measures. First, we derive the rate functions for several protocols, including random purification-based protocols and the sample-optimal protocol of Haah et al. These rate functions are expressed in terms of a new family of divergences which includes the reverse sandwiched Rényi divergence and Keyl's annealed quantum relative entropy as special cases. We show that these rate functions obey a strict ordering, even though the sample complexity of each protocol is order optimal. We consider a different version of sample complexity based on Wasserstein distance rather than trace distance, and show that the ordering of the rate functions implies analogous strict inequalities for the Wasserstein-type sample complexity. Thus the tomographic rate function is a more fine-grained indicator of the performance of a tomography protocol than the usual sample complexity.

Efficiently testing whether a quantum state possesses a given structure is both a fundamental and a practical task in quantum information. Among the most important structured families are Gaussian states, which underpin quantum optics and many-body physics while defining paradigmatic regimes of efficient classical simulation. Despite the central role of Gaussian states, optimal tests of Gaussianity have remained unknown. Here we give optimal and robust algorithms for testing fermionic and bosonic Gaussian states, with sample complexity independent of system size, particle number, and energy. Remarkably, the protocols implement experimentally feasible measurements associated with known exact symmetry characterizations of Gaussianity, using Bell sampling on two copies for fermions and passive interferometry with photon counting on three copies for bosons. We further obtain tolerant testers requiring joint measurements on a larger, but still constant, number of copies. At the heart of our analysis is a unified approach---which we call the gradient-flow method---that applies across all structured families considered here and underlies our optimal testers: representation theory turns approximate satisfaction of the defining symmetry into quantitative control of the gradient of the rejection probability, allowing a continuous descent from the input state to the target family whose length bounds their distance.

A fundamental problem in physics as well as engineering is equilibration. For example, the regulation of thermal and quantum fluctuations enables thermal and quantum annealing of complex systems. A key question is how different subsystems, such as electrons, nuclear spins and phonons equilibrate on their own as well as with each other. Level crossings play a special role in the dynamics of coupled degrees of freedom, for it is here that entanglement can be maximized to speed up relaxation. Here we use optical methods to establish the electronuclear level scheme, including avoided and unavoided crossings, and to examine equilibration of a rare earth ion (Ho$^{3+}$) in a salt (LiYF$_4$), a model system with quantum fluctuations which can be tuned via an external magnetic field transverse to the crystallographic long axis of the tetragonal host. We track the state of the system by monitoring the populations of the levels as a function of swept longitudinal fields, and discover that at low temperatures, depending on the experimental protocol, vastly different non-equilibrium states arise. We find evidence that nuclear spin excitations diffuse and equilibrate without the assistance of phonons, and tend to acquire higher effective temperatures than the electronic spins and the yet cooler lattice. A theory of thermally assisted tunneling rules out the standard scenario of phonon -assisted tunneling, and instead suggests that fast dynamics at level anti-crossings are facilitated entirely by nuclear spin diffusion. This provides a new understanding of thermalization and related slow relaxation phenomena in dense, multi-component interacting quantum systems.

Measurement compatibility asks whether a family of quantum measurements can be simulated by one parent measurement followed by classical post-processing. We extend this measurement compatibility to the notion of \emph{$d$-compatibility} for measurements, channels, and instruments whose parent passes a $d$-dimensional quantum system and unlimited classical information to the post-processing. We formulate $d$-compatibility as a common linear factorization of operator spaces and operator systems and show that $d$-compatible families form a closed set, even with infinitely many settings and a separable infinite-dimensional input. To certify $d$-incompatibility, we define the compatibility functional as the smallest product of completely bounded norms over common factorizations through a $d$-dimensional register. Using factorization theory of operator spaces, we show that measure-and-prepare channels defined in terms of mutually unbiased bases and pinching channels defined in terms of Heisenberg-Weyl operators are $d$-incompatible in certain regimes of $d$. We also link $d$-compatibility of multi-instruments to the preparability of Choi assemblages using channel-state duality, and use this connection to show that for bipartite states the (in)compatibility of instruments can be used to certify Schmidt numbers and the implementability of the instrument using one-way LOCC protocols. Finally, our compatibility functional also bounds the generalized robustness of compatibility, which we interpret through a memory-bounded nontransient preparation game.

Distribution network reconfiguration (DNR) is a combinatorial optimization problem that seeks a low-loss network topology subject to topological and electrical operating constraints. In this work, we propose a two-stage quantum-classical method for DNR. First, an iterative linear-ramp Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz (LR-QAOA) searches topologically feasible subspaces constructed using a novel cycle-edge encoding. The encoding guarantees that every represented configuration is a spanning tree while allowing the size and coverage of each subspace to be adjusted to the available qubit budget. Second, the resulting sample distribution is used to guide a mixed-integer second-order-cone programming (MISOCP) solver. The method is evaluated on six distribution networks ranging from 33 to 417 buses through simulation and execution on trapped-ion quantum hardware. Across all six test systems, the MISOCP solver guided by hardware-derived distributions reaches an incumbent within 1\% of the best-known solution in less median solver time than the corresponding unguided solver.

Subgraph detection asks whether an $n$-vertex graph, accessed through queries to its adjacency matrix, contains a copy of a fixed graph $H$. We prove the first unconditional superlinear lower bounds on the bounded-error quantum query complexity of this problem, answering a longstanding open question. A copy of $H$ is a certificate of constant size, so the adversary method with nonnegative weights cannot prove superlinear lower bounds. For every fixed $r\ge 4$, detecting the clique $K_r$ requires $n^{λ_r-o(1)}$ queries, where $λ_4=19/18$, the exponents $λ_r$ increase strictly with $r$, and $λ_r\ge 2-4\sqrt{2/r}+O(1/r)$. More generally, we prove superlinear lower bounds for detecting every fixed connected graph $H$ with chromatic number $c\ge 4$. These bounds approach quadratic as $c$ grows: for sufficiently large $c$, detection requires $n^{2-O(\sqrt{\log\log c/c})-o(1)}$ queries. Chromatic number alone does not characterize the quantum query complexity of subgraph detection: we show that detecting the complete bipartite graph $K_{r,r}$ requires $n^{β_r-o(1)}$ queries, where $β_{10}=181/180$ and $β_r\ge 2-O(1/\sqrt{r})$. Our main technical result is a lower bound for finding an all-ones certificate from a known family when the input bits are sampled independently. Its proof combines Zhandry's compressed oracle (CRYPTO 2019) with conditioning on a randomly planted certificate, adapting an argument of Belovs (FOCS 2026). Our hard instances are built from graphs containing many copies of the desired subgraph with limited overlap. For cliques, we use a construction of Gowers and Janzer (CPC 2021); for complete bipartite graphs, we use a random construction.

Quantum list recovery (QLR) and quantum list decoding (QLD) seek short lists of logically distinct Pauli corrections consistent with a syndrome and prescribed error constraints. For CSS codes, two issues arise: treating the \(X\)- and \(Z\)-sectors separately can multiply their output list sizes, while distinct classical candidates can collapse after stabilizer quotienting. We study combinatorial upper and lower bounds for balanced folded quantum Reed--Solomon (FQRS) codes and balanced random CSS codes, both studied by Bergamaschi, Golowich, and Gunn (STOC 24). Let \(R\in(0,1)\) be the quantum rate and \(R_1=(1+R)/2\) the common component rate. As the radius \(ρ=(1-R)/2-γ\) approaches the quantum Singleton bound, we have, deterministically for FQRS codes and w.h.p. for balanced random CSS codes, \[ L^\star_{\rm QLR} = \ell^{Θ(R_1/γ)}, \qquad L^\star_{\rm QLD} = Θ\!\left(\frac{1-R}γ\right) \qquad (γ\downarrow0). \] The asymptotically exact QLD radius tradeoff is \[ ρ_L^\star = \frac{L}{L+1}\frac{1-R}{2}. \] These conclusions extend to the average-radius setting. For achievability, building on the work of Brakensiek, Chen, Dhar, and Zhang (STOC 2026), we establish a pairing lemma for joint \(X/Z\) candidate lists that preserves the one-sector coefficient and avoids a product loss in list size. For the QLD converse, we prove a quantum generalized Singleton bound based on the classical projection-and-patching argument with stabilizer distinctness. For the QLR lower bounds, we adapt the folded Reed--Solomon construction of Chen and Zhang (STOC 2025) so that the candidates remain stabilizer distinct. For random CSS codes, we show classical bad lists survive the stabilizer quotient with high probability.

In this paper, we present a polynomial-time quantum algorithm for computing a minimum-sized generating set of solvable black-box groups. Next, we consider the class $Γ_d$ of black-box groups, where every non-abelian composition factor is isomorphic to a subgroup of the symmetric group $S_d$ for a fixed $d$. We design polynomial-time quantum algorithms to compute the direct product decomposition of abelian factor groups and solve the constructive membership problem for factor groups of groups from $Γ_d$. With the help of these algorithms, we design a quantum algorithm for computing a chief series of black-box groups from $Γ_d$. Using the chief series, we construct a polynomial-time quantum algorithm for computing minimum generating sets of black-box groups from $Γ_d$. Finally, we show that the minimum generating set problem for general black-box groups is in $\textrm{NP} \cap \textrm{coAM}$.

Device-independent self-testing certifies a multipartite quantum state from the correlations it produces alone, without assumptions on the inner workings of the devices. Most existing self-tests, however, break down as soon as the parties can exchange messages. We consider a relaxed setting in a quantum network, where in the honest version of the protocol, the parties never communicate, yet certification remains sound even in an untrusted case where the untrusted devices secretly exchange classical messages within a bounded distance in the network. We show that the code space of the toric code, distributed over a network with the geometry of a torus, can be self-tested in this setting in a noise-robust way, against communication up to distances proportional to the network diameter. We also develop an algorithmic method for constructing such protocols and extend our results to the surface code and cluster states, robust to one round of nearest-neighbor classical communication

Resource theories provide a universal framework for quantifying properties of quantum states, such as entanglement, magic, athermality, and asymmetry, as resources under various constraints encountered in quantum science. Since realistic settings typically impose several constraints at once, it is important to study multi-resource theories that combine them. Among these, combinations with asymmetry are especially natural, as symmetry is fundamental and ubiquitous in physics. Here we develop a general theory that treats combinations of finite-group asymmetry with a broad range of resource theories in a unified manner. Our key observation is that the effect of combining the two constraints is governed by the accessibility of symmetry information under the underlying resource theory: whether the information needed for the conversion can be extracted from the input and used to control free operations. If this can be done with asymptotically vanishing error, we show that the conversion rate of the combined theory equals the smaller of the rates of the two constituent theories, so combining them incurs no additional cost. This condition holds for LOCC on arbitrary mixed multipartite states, magic-state conversion of multiqubit systems under Clifford symmetries, and Gibbs-preserving operations. Thermal operations, being time-translation covariant, can access only limited symmetry information, giving an additional compatibility condition between the two symmetries. We also analyze symmetry imposed on elementary operations rather than only on the resulting channel. We establish analogous results for LOCC and thermal operations under suitable assumptions, and for magic when the symmetry is represented by Pauli operators. Finally, we show that finite-group symmetry does not reduce the asymptotic ergotropy per copy and hence introduces no new completely passive states.

Every square matrix decomposes its underlying Hilbert space into generalized, nonorthogonal eigensubspaces. We show that a quantum computer can perform such an oblique eigenprojection $Π$ given block encoding access to the input matrix. Our approach has a query complexity nearly linear in the inverse gap and a normalization factor close to $\lVertΠ\rVert$ under a spectral-set condition on the input. This covers common assumptions on the numerical range or diagonalizability and matches known results for orthogonal eigenprojections. We achieve this with a two-sided block preconditioning that uses a discrete Fourier transform of the matrix resolvent. We describe applications to: (i) preparing eigenstates of matrices with complex eigenvalues, extending the quantum eigenvalue transformation algorithm of Low and Su beyond real spectra; (ii) solving continuous-time algebraic Riccati equations, cubically speeding up a prior solver of Rodenas-Ruiz, Zhao, and Lee; and (iii) solving ordinary Sylvester equations, quadratically improving a direct augmented method of Wang and Liu. Our result suggests a promising route to applying nonanalytic matrix functions on quantum computers.

Constructing explicit codes matching the parameters of random codes has been a central and largely elusive question in coding theory. The quantum setting is even more challenging since it is highly desirable that the quantum code be an LDPC code. Local coordinate-wise linear (LCL) [Levi, Mosheiff, and Shagrithaya, FOCS 2025] witnesses provide a unifying language for many coding-theoretic properties, from distance to list decoding and list recovery. In particular, it provides a framework to study properties of random linear codes, which achieve optimal parameters for many properties of linear codes. For CSS quantum codes, however, a local witness has two distinct ranks: its physical rank before quotienting by stabilizers and its logical rank after quotienting. We develop a quantum version of the LCL framework for nested spaces $S \subseteq C$, in which local constraints are imposed on physical representatives while independence is measured in the logical quotient $C/S$. The resulting theory gives a threshold theorem for random CSS codes, and as a consequence shows that the per-sector rate threshold is equal to the classical rate threshold. We also define a quantum analogue of subspace design [Guruswami and Xing, STOC 2013] and show that they can be described in a natural manner within the quantum-LCL framework. Finally, we give explicit constructions for arbitrary folded quantum-LCL properties, in a manner similar to the LCL derandomization of [Jeronimo and Shagrithaya, STOC 2026]. As a consequence, we obtain the first explicit constructions of quantum list-decodable codes and list-recoverable codes that have optimal list sizes, in addition to explicit quantum subspace design codes. We note that all our explicit constructions are qLDPC codes, an important property for quantum error-correcting codes.

Gibbs state preparation has emerged as a potential avenue for quantum advantage in the study of physical systems. Although there is known advantage for computing local properties of worst-case Gibbs states, recent results suggest a different picture for average-case local systems: at temperatures where their Gibbs states can be efficiently prepared quantumly, quasi-polynomial time classical algorithms can also compute local expectation values. Yet this leaves open the possibility of an advantage under a stronger notion of simulation: sampling. Gibbs sampling underlies Boltzmann machine-based quantum learning algorithms and quantum supremacy proposals, but its classical average-case complexity for physically relevant models remains unresolved. Here, we give strong evidence against an exponential quantum advantage in Gibbs sampling for an ensemble of local systems known as the quantum $p$-spin model. We describe a classical algorithm for sampling from the Gibbs state to any polynomially small error in total variation distance. Our algorithm is based on a meta-algorithm known as algorithmic stochastic localization (ASL). Our main technical result is a generalized convergence theorem for ASL which reduces approximate sampling from any distribution on the hypercube to estimating the mean of a related "tilted distribution" to sufficiently low additive error. We then extend known quasi-polynomial time algorithms for computing local expectation values of a related disordered model to compute these "tilted means" for the quantum $p$-spin model. Finally, we give a non-rigorous physics argument that this mean-estimation algorithm works down to the spin glass transition temperature. As efficient quantum algorithms also fail at this transition, this suggests they cannot Gibbs sample the quantum $p$-spin model at temperatures below that for which classical algorithms are also (almost) efficient.

In this work, we consider the fundamental task of estimating the purity of an unknown state to within $\textit{multiplicative}$ error $\varepsilon$. When one can perform general collective measurements, $Θ\left(\frac{\sqrt{d}}{\varepsilon^2} + \frac{d}{\varepsilon}\right)$ copies are known to be necessary and sufficient for this problem [AISW20]. However, implementing collective measurements on such a large number of copies can be experimentally demanding, and we thus aim to characterize the copy complexity of this problem with incoherent measurements. In this setting, the only non-trivial result is a non-adaptive algorithm that uses $O\left( \frac{d}{\varepsilon^2} + \frac{d^2}{\varepsilon} \right)$ copies [PTTW26], which is polynomially larger than the best-known lower bound. Our first result is a new algorithm performing non-adaptive incoherent measurements that succeeds using $O\left( \frac{d}{\varepsilon^2} + \frac{d^{3/2}}{\varepsilon} \right)$ copies, improving on the latter term in the copy complexity. Moreover, we show that for any algorithm restricted to non-adaptive measurements, the above copy complexity is optimal. We also develop a new adaptive estimator for the purity of a state that improves on the above complexity in the high-precision regime, i.e., for $\varepsilon = o(1/d)$. We also show that the non-adaptive and adaptive estimators together yield the optimal complexity for incoherent purity estimation; in particular, we show that the copy complexity of this problem is $$ Θ\left(\min\left\{ \frac{d}{\varepsilon^2} + \frac{d^{3/2}}{\varepsilon}, \frac{d^2}{\varepsilon} + \frac{\sqrt{d}}{\varepsilon^2}\right\} \right). $$

We study a generalization of undirected $st$-connectivity to graphs whose edges carry quantum operations. Let $G=(V,E)$ be an undirected graph on $n$ vertices in which each edge $\{u,v\}$ is labeled by a unitary $U_{uv}\in\mathbb{C}^{k\times k}$, with $U_{vu}=U_{uv}^\dagger$. We assume the labels form a \emph{flat} connection: the ordered product of labels along any path between a pair of vertices $u$ and $v$ is independent of the path. Equivalently, the connection is pure gauge, i.e., gauge-equivalent to the trivial connection; such graphs are exactly the consistent connection graphs of spectral graph theory and the noiseless instances of group synchronization. Consequently, whenever $s$ and $t$ are connected, transporting a state from $s$ to $t$ defines a unique unitary $U_s(t)$. Given states $|ψ_s\rangle,|ψ_t\rangle\in\mathbb{C}^k$ and an oracle that returns the neighbours of a vertex while coherently applying the corresponding edge unitaries, the \emph{$st$-transport problem} is to decide whether $s$ and $t$ are connected and, if so, to estimate the squared overlap between $U_s(t)|ψ_s\rangle$ and $|ψ_t\rangle$ to additive error $\varepsilon$. When $k=1$ and all labels are trivial, this is exactly undirected $st$-connectivity. We give a bounded-error quantum algorithm for $st$-transport that runs in time $\widetilde{O}(n/\varepsilon)$ and uses $O(\log n+\log k+\log(1/\varepsilon))$ space. We do this by designing a transducer and applying a Metropolis-Hastings reweighting to the input graph. We also prove an $Ω(n)$ quantum query lower bound that holds even when $s$ and $t$ are promised to be connected, so for constant $\varepsilon$ our algorithm is optimal up to polylogarithmic factors.

Non-local quantum computation (NLQC) asks two parties to apply a joint operation to their quantum inputs using an entangled resource state and one round of simultaneous quantum communication. NLQC has applications across quantum information, including attacks on quantum position verification, communication complexity, and quantum gravity. Every bipartite unitary has an approximate NLQC protocol with finite entanglement, and exact protocols are known for several structured families. However, it has remained open whether every fixed unitary admits an exact protocol with finite-dimensional resources. We show that, even for two qubits, Haar-almost every unitary does not admit such a protocol, even when the resource state and local operations are tailored to the target. The proof first shows that smooth deformations of an exact protocol can only change its target by local unitaries. For a fixed architecture, semialgebraic geometry limits the exact protocols to finitely many connected families, so each architecture reaches only finitely many local-unitary orbits. Taking the union over all architectures, the exactly implementable unitaries form countably many local-unitary orbits. We also show that some natural targets do not admit a protocol: the controlled phase $\mathrm{diag}(1,1,1,e^{iθ})$ has no exact protocol with finite-dimensional resources whenever $e^{iθ}$ is transcendental, for instance for $θ= 1$. Our results also apply to localizable quantum measurements, whose outcome is obtained from local measurements on inputs and a shared entangled resource state without communication. A rank-one projective measurement in a Haar-random basis is almost surely not localizable with a finite-dimensional resource state and finitely many local outcomes.

We define the unitary design strength of a finite unitary ensemble to be the maximal integer $t$ for which its $t$-th statistical moment is identical to that of the unitary group. In the presence of physical symmetry, not all operators of an ensemble are symmetry-compatible. This motivates us to define the symmetric design strength of a finite unitary ensemble to be the maximal integer $t$ for which the $t$-th moments of its symmetry-compatible sub-ensemble match those of the group of symmetry-compatible unitaries. We show that in sufficiently high dimension and for a broad family of symmetries, which includes the global on-site $\mathrm{U}(1)$ and $\mathrm{SU}(d)$ symmetries, there exist finite unitary ensembles of arbitrarily high design strength whose symmetric design strength is strictly higher. Ensembles with this property may be more versatile under symmetry constraints for protocols that rely on unitary randomization than they are without symmetry. Our results extend the previous work [Mitsuhashi and Yoshioka, PRX Quantum 4.4 (Nov. 2023)] showing that the symmetric design strength of the Clifford group is strictly upper bounded by its unitary design strength for symmetries that do not trivialize the symmetry-compatible unitaries. Due to the special significance of unitary designs with a group structure, we also derive a variety of bounds on the unitary and symmetric design strengths of finite unitary ensembles whose operators form a group. In particular, we provide a simple proof that an arbitrary ensemble of operators forming a finite group must have a symmetric design strength of at most two under the global on-site $\mathrm{U}(1)$ and $\mathrm{SU}(d)$ symmetries. Along the way, we show that there exist uniformly weighted groups of arbitrarily high symmetric design strength in arbitrary dimension and analyze their structure.

Bosonic quantum systems are among the leading architectures for quantum information processing, offering continuous-variable degrees of freedom with strong error-correction capabilities. However, standard bosonic quantum computation models such as the Lloyd-Braunstein [Lloyd and Braunstein, 1999] and hybrid oscillator-qubit models [Brenner, Dias, and Koenig, 2025; Liu et al., 2026] permit dramatic energy growth, leading to unphysical computational power and the breakdown of fundamental algorithmic tools such as universal and efficient compilation [Brenner et al., 2026; Rudolph et al., 2025]. To address this, we introduce a new model of bosonic quantum computation, Bosonic Energy-Preserving Quantum Computation (BEQC), in which energy is treated as a computational resource. Namely, energy is supplied solely through input coherent states, and all gates are generated by energy-preserving Hamiltonians. Thus, by construction, dramatic energy growth is impossible, making the model physically grounded. We next show that BEQC is a computationally robust and universal model in many respects, including: (1. Computational power) BEQC efficiently simulates all polynomial-energy computations in existing models, and exactly recovers BQP in the polynomial energy setting. It further admits several complexity-theoretic upper bounds when varying the energy, precision, and space parameters of the model. (2. Universal gate sets and state synthesis) BEQC has natural universal gate sets based on linear optics and Kerr interactions. In particular, we obtain a Solovay-Kitaev theorem which circumvents previous no-go results. We give various applications, including (a) a protocol for engineering GKP states with rigorous preparation guarantees, (b) Fock state preparation to exponential precision, and (c) native Fock space simulation of any qubit-based unitary.

Stabilizer operations describe a fragment of quantum theory that is known to be efficiently classically simulable, thanks to the Gottesman-Knill theorem. For this reason, nonstabilizer resources such as magic states are necessary for universal quantum computation. Interestingly, the operational and axiomatic approaches to the resource theory of magic differ: the set of free operations in the former, namely, stabilizer operations (SO), is strictly smaller than that in the latter, namely, completely stabilizer preserving operations (CSPO). A simple example showing the separation is given by a three-qubit stabilizer product basis whose states cannot be perfectly discriminated using SO, but which do admit perfect discrimination using CSPO. Such an ensemble of states is said to exhibit nonstabilizerness without magic (NSWM). Here we obtain a principled understanding of this phenomenon, proving necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence. We first derive a simple criterion to decide whether, given a stabilizer basis, its states can be perfectly discriminated using stabilizer operations alone. We then consider the case where the stabilizer basis contains only product states and use its link with process functions---classical models of paradox-free causal loops---to prove the following: the states in a stabilizer product basis require nonstabilizerness for perfect discrimination if and only if the corresponding process function violates a causal inequality. This provides a new operational meaning to causal inequality violations as witnesses of nonstabilizerness, a form of computational nonclassicality.

Understanding the complexity of low-energy quantum states is a central problem in quantum complexity theory and many-body physics. Here we prove the no low-energy trivial magic (NLTM) conjecture, constructing a family of local Hamiltonians for which every state within a positive energy density window requires circuit depth $Ω(\log n)$ to prepare from arbitrary stabilizer state that may themselves be highly entangled. Notably, our result is intrinsic in the sense that the same Hamiltonian family and energy density threshold apply to arbitrary qudit stabilizer inputs with any bounded local dimensions. Our construction builds on non-Abelian gauged sheaf codes obtained using the cup product structure on good quantum locally testable codes. We establish constant operator soundness for the associated Hamiltonians, enabling their protected logical structure to constrain all states at sufficiently low energy density. By excluding shallow stabilizer-based classical witnesses, Our result substantially strengthens NLTS and advances our understanding of low-energy complexity relevant to quantum PCP.

Purifications are often used as a convenient mathematical representation of quantum states and channels when constructing protocols for quantum information processing tasks. Although powerful, this perspective can suggest that the purifying degrees of freedom and its correlations with an environment are just a useful change of representation. Here we show how they can instead be exploited as an operational resource in sequential quantum channel discrimination, even when the environmental reference frame is unknown or averaged. In contrast to state discrimination and parallel channel discrimination, for which bare and averaged-purification access are equivalent, sequential access to purified resources exhibits a strict advantage in probability of success. We prove this strict separation via two main results. In the first, we construct a pair of families of qubit-qubit channels with a strict separation in the two-query case, and in the second, we show an example of a pair of qubit-qubit channels whose purifications are perfectly distinguishable with three queries while no finite number of bare (non-purified) queries suffices for perfect discrimination. These separations imply an advantage of sequential over parallel strategies for channel discrimination and establish the impossibility of converting bare channel queries into averaged-purification queries via transformations that allow arbitrary interventions between queries, strengthening previous results.

The volume estimation problem is a classic task in computational geometry. The development of randomized algorithms for this problem spurred the development of many influential algorithmic techniques related to Markov Chain Monte Carlo and simulated annealing, and the problem connects to several important geometrical results, like the recently-resolved KLS conjecture. In this work, we quantize the state-of-the-art $\widetilde{O}(d^{3.5}+d^3/\varepsilon^2)$-query randomized algorithm developed by Cousins and Vempala, and obtain a $\widetilde{O}(d^{3.5} + d^{1.75}/\varepsilon)$-query quantum algorithm, improving over the $\widetilde{O}(d^{3.5} + d^{2.25}/\varepsilon)$ state-of-the-art bound. Our key technical contribution is a framework for amortizing the cost of a quantum walk. The framework is based on the recent transducer toolkit introduced by Belovs, Jeffery and Yolcu. It is this amortized quantum walk framework that allows us to exploit the amortized analysis of the ball walk by Cousins and Vempala, thus overcoming the key barrier that previously barred its quantum implementation.

Betti numbers are central to topological data analysis but fail to capture torsion in integral homology. Torsion can distinguish topological structures with identical Betti numbers, and examples from classical topological data analysis show that it can affect the topology inferred from data. Related torsion-sensitive quantities are also known to have practical applications in graph-based machine learning, including biomedical applications. We investigate how quantum spectral methods can access this additional information. Log pseudodeterminants, obtained by summing the logarithms of the nonzero boundary-Laplacian eigenvalues, summarize spectral information about a simplicial complex. Under explicit topological assumptions, an alternating combination of these quantities gives the size of a higher critical group, the higher-dimensional analogue of a graph sandpile group. With stronger certification, a related construction recovers the size of the torsion subgroup in homology itself. This is, to our knowledge, the first provably correct quantum estimator of integral-homology torsion order. We give a new quantum algorithm for estimating these quantities, with explicit dependence on how the input is queried, the required accuracy, and the spectral gaps. Exact spectra for balanced multipartite clique complexes provide favorable gaps, and a related construction gives an explicit torsion-bearing benchmark. With compact query access, the algorithm need not construct the exponentially large boundary matrices explicitly. For a restricted torsion-bearing family, a tailored amplitude-estimation routine uses quadratically fewer queries than any randomized classical algorithm given comparable access when estimating the log pseudodeterminant. Estimating the full, unnormalized quantity to fixed additive error still costs in proportion to the candidate-space dimension $D$.

Distillable entanglement---the maximum rate of Bell states extractable from the given noisy entangled states via local operations and classical communication (LOCC)---has been a central quantity to characterize the operational value of entangled states. However, this operational meaning had been known to be valid only under a crucial assumption: both parties know the description of the input state and can choose the protocol tailored to it, which does not necessarily reflect the natural operational setting. Here, we show that the distillable entanglement is the fundamental operational quantity even without this assumption. We present a universal LOCC protocol---whose description does not depend on the input state and thus works universally for any input---that achieves the distillable entanglement of an arbitrary unknown input state. Our result therefore lifts the distillable entanglement to a robust notion of an operationally meaningful quantity and clarifies that input-state knowledge is not necessary to achieve the optimal rate of entanglement distillation. Our protocol is based on state merging for compound states, together with the uniform convergence property of the finite-block quantity toward distillable entanglement.

Open quantum systems can rapidly lose most microscopic information, leaving only a few degrees of freedom to govern their long-time dynamics. Classical Markov state models (MSMs) describe such metastable dynamics as transitions between a few representative phases and are a well-established tool in condensed matter and chemical physics. However, phase labels alone cannot capture quantum coherence that may persist between metastable states. Even when the slow modes are known, their spectral projection need not produce valid quantum states. We construct quantum Markov state models (QMSMs) that describe the surviving information and its evolution on a small physical state space containing classical sectors and quantum matrix blocks. We assume that the evolution channel $\mathcal C$ changes little when applied a second time, with sufficiently small defect $η=\|\mathcal C^2-\mathcal C\|_\diamond$, and that the number of slow degrees of freedom is bounded independently of the full system size. Under these assumptions, we construct compression and reconstruction channels whose composition recovers every reduced state exactly, while the reverse composition gives an exactly idempotent channel approximating $\mathcal C$, answering Kitaev's exact-rounding question \cite{Kitaev2025}. Our constructions give an optimal diamond-norm bound of $\mathcal{O}(η^{1/3})$ on all input states, as well as an improved bound of $\mathcal{O}(η^{1/2})$ on metastable states prepared by $\mathcal C$, with constants depending only on the slow dimension. The reduced transition channel can be iterated to predict the microscopic dynamics with controlled error. We illustrate the QMSM through a weakly driven dissipative spin chain supporting either a metastable logical qubit or long-lived classical phases.

We develop a submodular framework for the von Neumann entropy of discrete quantum convolutions, providing a noncommutative counterpart to the direct side of entropic additive combinatorics. We first introduce globally weighted quantum convolutions, which form compatible families indexed by admissible subsets of a fixed collection of inputs. Our main theorem reveals a polymatroidal geometry underlying their entropy growth: relative to any fixed admissible input block, the entropy gains admit a normalized, monotone, submodular extension to all subsets of the remaining inputs. The theorem yields convolutional strong subadditivity, quantum Ruzsa triangle inequality, and quantum entropic Plünnecke--Ruzsa inequalities for arbitrary input states. For repeated inputs, it gives sharp comparisons of entropy growth across admissible scales; in particular, the quantum doubling constant controls all higher admissible convolution entropies with optimal exponents. Together, these results bring submodular methods from additive combinatorics into the quantum setting and provide a systematic route to broad families of convolutional entropy inequalities.

Quantum measurements and channels determine how information is extracted, encoded, and transmitted in quantum protocols. Optimizing their performance often requires numerical methods that remain practical as Hilbert space dimensions increase. The Reimpell-Werner iteration offers a practical approach to these tasks through repeated matrix updates that respect the constraints. Here, we generalize this iteration to linear objectives with arbitrary Hermitian cost matrices. We prove that the iterates converge to a global optimum whenever the initialization satisfies suitable support overlap conditions. For each fixed problem, choice of iteration parameters, and admissible initialization, $\mathcal{O}(1/\varepsilon)$ iterations suffice asymptotically to bring the objective value within $\varepsilon$ of the optimum. These results provide a rigorous foundation for the iteration and broaden the class of optimization problems to which its convergence guarantees apply.

Quantum one-time programs (Broadbent, Gutoski and Stebila, CRYPTO 2013) or OTPs for short, enable a functionality to be encoded into a quantum token that can be evaluated on a single chosen input and then becomes unusable. While powerful, this primitive is inherently stateless and tied to a setting in which a quantum token needs to be issued and distributed for every single evaluation of a circuit. This raises a natural question: can the one-time computation paradigm be extended to richer, stateful forms of controlled access, and would such an extension offer inherent advantages beyond standard OTPs? We introduce $\textit{query-limited RAM programs}$ (QLPs), a RAM-generalization of QOTPs that supports structured, stateful computation under bounded or policy-driven access. QLPs allow controlled sequences of evaluations while preventing adversarial forking or rollback of computational state. This enables new applications beyond stateless one-time programs, including quantum tokens for Turing Machines whose size depends only on $\textit{code length}$ (and not runtime), transferable $k$-time or budget-limited programs, and low-communication mechanisms for delegating computation in settings such as Software-as-a-Service. To construct QLPs, we introduce $\textit{one-shot programs}$, unifying one-shot signatures (Amos, Georgiou, Kiayias and Zhandry, STOC 2020) with the single effective query paradigm (Gupte, Liu, Raizes, Roberts and Vaikuntanathan, STOC 2025). We prove that one-shot programs generically imply query-limited programs, demonstrating that the strengthened unclonability guarantees of one-shot signatures translate into enhanced functionality. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between signature-token primitives and quantum one-time programs via generic constructions, essentially showing that one-time signing programs imply one-time general computation.

The classical cost of simulating free-fermion (matchgate) circuits depends on both the input state and the computational task. We develop classical algorithms for circuits with non-Gaussian inputs, addressing exact sampling and both additive-error and exact estimation of expectation values. For inputs consisting of $n$ copies of the four-mode magic state, we give exact sampling algorithms, generalizing the Clifford and Clifford algorithm for Boson sampling, for passive and active free-fermion dynamics with worst-case arithmetic cost $O(2^n)$ per sample, without any multiplicative polynomial prefactor. The passive algorithm enables an exact simulation of the non-interacting regime of a recent trapped-ion experiment. We also extend recently developed additive-error estimation of number correlators and related observables from passive to active dynamics with runtime polynomial in $n$ and the inverse additive-error, for input states formed by products of $n$ four-mode even parity states. Our estimator uses a Gaussian-state decomposition adapted to each sampled state to control its second moment. This includes estimation of individual output probabilities. Finally, we show that for even-parity product inputs composed of constant-size blocks, expectation values of Majorana monomials of logarithmic weight can be computed exactly in polynomial time, improving on prior Majorana propagation-style algorithms with quasi-polynomial runtime. The exact algorithm processes the input blocks by dynamic programming, sharing calculations across subsets of Majorana factors. Our suite of algorithms provide classical benchmarks for fermionic quantum simulations across a broad spectrum of computational tasks.

We develop a general framework for higher-order quantum resources that treats the resourcefulness of quantum states, channels, and supermaps (also called processes) in a unified manner. By generalizing well-established concepts from resource theories of states and channels, we introduce and study supermap resource monotones and supermap distillation and dilution. As free supermaps, we consider free networks (supermaps that can be implemented with free channels), compatible supermaps (sets of supermaps closed under arbitrary composition), and maximally free superchannels. Specializing to approximate channel-to-channel conversions, we show that under mild assumptions, the conversion error with respect to the diamond distance and the worst-case infidelity coincide. We then apply the general framework to resource theories of dynamical coherence, where we establish the existence of largest sets of compatible supermaps. By characterizing these sets with semidefinite constraints, we show that they are strictly larger than the corresponding free networks but do not contain all maximally free superchannels. We finish by investigating the operational differences of these sets in one-shot channel distillation and dilution, providing solutions for both tasks in the parallel setting and for dilution in the adaptive setting.

Quantum cryptography leverages unclonability to enable a wide range of cryptographic applications that are impossible classically, such as digital currency protected against counterfeiting by quantum mechanics. Security requires that no efficient user can produce even one additional valid banknote beyond those already in their possession. However, existing security bounds weaken as the number of banknotes available to a user increases. In this paper, we study a construction of quantum money whose asymptotic query security does not deteriorate as long as the number of banknotes available to a user remains below the scale required for state tomography. In particular, we show that the construction based on an $n$-qubit Haar-random state and a reflection oracle achieves optimal query security: unless a user holds $Ω(2^n)$ banknotes, their existing banknotes cannot asymptotically speed up counterfeiting --- their best possible attack is the same as if they do not have any banknotes. To establish this result, we develop a framework based on the compressed-oracle technique for defining and analyzing progress measures for quantum tasks such as Haar state cloning. Furthermore, we prove a tight lower bound for generating $r$ additional copies, give a matching attack, and apply our results to quantum copy-protection.

We develop a mixing time method for estimating the sample complexity of quantum state discrimination. We start with considering the minimum-error discrimination of geometrically uniform pure state ensembles, and prove that its sample complexity has a tight estimate given by a quantum homogeneous mixing time [George et al., 2026] and a quantum version of the generalized Dobrushin coefficient [Wolfer, 2020]. This quantum mixing time further reduces to a classical one when the generating group $G$ forms a Gelfand pair with the stabilizer subgroup $H$ of the generator state. In this case the generalized Dobrushin coefficient can be fully expressed by representation-theoretic quantities of the commutative Hecke algebra $\operatorname{End}_G(\mathbb C[G/H])$. In particular, this method reduces the sample complexity estimation of learning quantum coupon collector states [Arunachalam et al., 2020] and learning phase states to classical mixing time problems. We apply this framework to answer the open problems of learning degree-$d$ phase states over $\mathbb F_q$ in [Alrabiah et al., 2026] and generalized Boolean phase states over $\mathbb Z_q$ [Arunachalam et al., 2023]. The framework also applies to hypergraph state ensembles, giving estimates expressed fully in terms of hypergraph data and recovering estimates for graph state ensembles in [Montanaro and Shao, 2022]. Finally, we extend the discussion to arbitrary mixed state ensembles with uniform priors, prove a sandwiched bound for minimum-error discrimination sample complexity by a quantum weakly mixing time, and provide a tight estimate for the minimax discrimination sample complexity from [D'Ariano et al., 2005] by a Dobrushin-type coefficient. We also discuss the method of strengthened data processing inequality [Gao and Rouz{é}, 2022] and give an upper bound in terms of a strengthened data processing inequality constant.

We prove the first non-trivial upper bound for the quantum query complexity of Boolean Matrix Product Verification ($\mathsf{BMPV}$), answering a longstanding open question in quantum query complexity. For $n\times n$ matrices, our upper bound is $\widetilde O(n^{17/12})$, improving on the standard $O(n^{3/2})$ bound obtained using Grover search by Buhrman and Špalek (SODA 2006). We complement this result by showing an $Ω(n^{5/4})$ lower bound, which improves over the previous best known lower bound of $\widetildeΩ(n^{19/18})$ by Childs, Kimmel, and Kothari (ESA 2012). Our approach centers on a connection with Orthogonal Vectors ($\mathsf{OV}$), which asks whether an indexed list of $n$ Boolean vectors of dimension $n$ contains two vectors with disjoint supports. In particular, we prove equivalences between $\mathsf{OV}$ and $\mathsf{BMPV}$ and establish the above bounds for $\mathsf{OV}$. We also prove a tight $\widetilde Θ(n^{3/2})$ bound for a variant of $\mathsf{BMPV}$ that asks whether the product contains a given row vector. Together, these results imply a polynomial separation between the quantum query complexities of deciding whether a graph has radius at most two and whether it has diameter at most two.

The von Neumann, Tsallis, and Rényi entropies are fundamental measures of quantum information. A common estimation strategy multiplies the worst-case costs of spectral transformation and statistical readout, leaving gaps to query lower bounds. We reduce this overhead with multi-level algorithms that use local normalization and precision allocation, while variable-time estimation accounts for the probability of reaching expensive spectral tests. With controlled purified access and its inverse, we obtain bounds for additive error $\varepsilon$, rank upper bound $R$, and fixed order $α$. Tsallis entropy estimation has near-optimal rank-independent query complexity $\widetilde O(\varepsilon^{-1/(α-1)})$ for $1<α<2$, when the allowed dimension and rank accommodate the lower-bound instances, and $\widetilde O(1/\varepsilon)$ for $α\ge2$, where $\widetilde O$ suppresses logarithmic factors. The first saves a factor $1/\varepsilon$; the second extends known integer-order scaling to noninteger orders. We also improve the von Neumann entropy bound from $\widetilde O(R/\varepsilon^2)$ to $\widetilde O(R/\varepsilon)$ and obtain $\widetilde O(R/\varepsilon)$ for noninteger Rényi orders $1<α<3$, with further bounds at other orders. Our functional-estimation theorem replaces the global product by a sum of local costs weighted by function magnitudes and spectral masses. We further estimate fixed logarithmic moments and entropy variance using $\widetilde O(R/\varepsilon)$ queries, providing efficient access to fluctuation parameters that enter finite-blocklength quantum compression and pure-state entanglement conversion. More broadly, our framework extends beyond entropy to a broad class of density-matrix functionals, offering a systematic approach toward optimal query complexity in quantum spectral estimation.

Simulating open quantum systems reveals how environmental coupling shapes relaxation, excitation transport, and the dynamics of quantum correlations. On quantum hardware, dissipative channels add operations and might seem to increase cost. However, we show that a broad class of Pauli noise, including depolarization, can ease quantum and classical simulation by exponentially suppressing high-weight components of Heisenberg-evolved observables. For bounded-degree Lindblad dynamics, this permits system-size-independent Trotter steps when estimating local observables. Combining this compression with Richardson extrapolation, we provide classical and quantum error bounds with respect to the 2-norm of the propagated observable. These give high-probability expectation-value guarantees for random input states or random Hamiltonians acting on a fixed state and control (out-of-time-order) correlators. Concretely, we show that expectation values of local observables at time $t$ can be estimated to accuracy $\varepsilon$ using circuits of maximum depth $O\!\left(\left[1+\left(t/γ\right)^{3/2}\right]\log^2(1/\varepsilon)\right)$, independent of the system size $n$. Classically, we show that sparse Pauli propagation runs in time polynomial in $n$, $t$ and $1/\varepsilon$ for every fixed $γ>0$, with polynomial degree $O(1/γ)$ in the weak dissipation limit. The gap between our quantum and classical upper bounds leaves room for a substantial polynomial quantum advantage as dissipation weakens, an observation further supported by our numerical results.

Classical shadow tomography is widely touted as supplying a family of methods for extracting information from quantum systems with polynomially scaling sample-complexities. In the current era of quantum computers possessing on the order of hundreds of qubits, however, polynomial scaling can nonetheless be prohibitive. Thus, there is a strong practical need for obtaining sample-complexity bounds which are as tight as possible. Here we address this in the case of fermionic (matchgate) shadows. For an arbitrary observable $O$ of Majorana degree $2k$, we improve the previously known sample-complexity bound of $\mathcal{O}(n^{2k}\|O\|_\infty^2)$ to $\mathcal{O}(n^{k}\|O\|_\infty^2)$, which is asymptotically tight. For example, for the estimation of the energy per mode of an open fermionic 50-site Hubbard chain with hopping and on site strenghts respectively given by $t=1$, $V=4$, and for a target additive precision of 0.1, this reduces the number of required shots from $\sim 10^9$ to $\sim 10^5$. That is, the new bound reduces the required number of shots by approximately $99.98\%$.

The control of open-system dynamics provides a powerful mechanism for using quantum information to process sequential tasks. While quantum reservoir computing typically relies on Markovian dissipation to process sequential data, the computational role of non-Markovian memory effects remains largely unexplored. We introduce a framework for quantum reservoir computing where non-Markovianity is explicitly modeled and regulated using fractional derivatives. By employing fractional time subordination, we generate tunable, heavy-tailed relaxation dynamics that govern the information backflow between the system and its environment. Non-Markovian information backflow regulates the overall temporal retention of the system, maximizing short-term linear memory capacity. Within an optimal operating regime, fractional non-Markovianity redistributes the reservoir memory towards recent inputs, improving both linear memory capacity and nonlinear prediction accuracy at short delays, at the expense of long-range temporal retention. System-environment interaction proves being not merely a requirement for quantum reservoir computing, but an active resource that embeds memory retention directly into the quantum evolution.

We introduce shadow quantum singular value transformation (Shadow QSVT): given an initial state $|ψ\rangle$, a Hermitian matrix $H$, a polynomial $f$, and a set of observables $\{O_1,\dots,O_m\}$, the goal is to estimate $\langleψ|f(H)^{\dagger}O_j f(H)|ψ\rangle$ for all $j\in\{1,\dots,m\}$. Shadow QSVT provides a systematic route to reduce the quantum resources required by standard QSVT, which constructs a unitary block-encoding of $f(H)$. It uses structure in the input state and observables, together with the fact that many applications require only observable estimates rather than synthesizing the full unitary. We present three algorithms that exploit structure in the initial state and observables to reduce quantum circuit depth. First, we develop a state-aware QSVT algorithm that prepares the target state with low circuit depth when the Krylov subspace associated with $H$ and $|ψ\rangle$ is low-dimensional or admits an accurate low-dimensional approximation. Second, we introduce an observable-aware Shadow QSVT algorithm that combines a new observable-aware Krylov subspace with history states to further reduce circuit depth and gate complexity. Finally, we develop Classical Shadow QSVT, which constructs a classical representation from $H$, $f$, and $|ψ\rangle$ without prior knowledge of the observables or explicit preparation of the target state proportional to $f(H)|ψ\rangle$. This representation enables estimation of the target quantities for observables specified after the quantum computation. Together, these three algorithms provide tools for reducing the circuit depth of QSVT-based computations across a range of settings.

We resolve the spectral-gap problem posed by Baer and Haah for random Pauli rotations. In this walk, a nonidentity $n$-qubit Pauli operator $P$ and an angle $θ$ modulo $2π$ are chosen independently and uniformly, and the step is $e^{\mathrm{i}θP}$. Writing $d=2^n$, we prove that the gap on $\mathsf{SU}(d)$ is $(d-8)/(8(d-1))$ for $n\ge4$. This disproves their conjectured formula on the full special unitary group. We also prove that the conjectured value, $d(d-3)/(8(d^2-1))$, is exactly the gap on $\mathsf{PU}(d)$ for $n\ge3$. The special-unitary gap is attained by an explicit vector in $\bigwedge^8\mathbb C^d$, constructed from affine three-dimensional subspaces of $\mathbb F_2^n$. Its nontrivial central action explains why balanced tensor representations do not detect this smaller gap. On the projective group, the gap is attained in $U\mapsto U^{\otimes4}\otimes\bar U^{\otimes4}$. The matching lower bounds hold uniformly over all finite-dimensional unitary representations. They combine the spectrum of the graph of anticommuting Pauli operators, a minimum-weight bound for binary polynomials, and a local inequality on a single-qubit Clifford-fixed subspace. The proof is analytic and requires no computational verification.

We study both the classical and the quantum complexity of the problem of estimating disorder-averaged quench dynamics for all-to-all spin Hamiltonians such as quantum Hopfield, Sherrington--Kirkpatrick (SK) or Dicke-type models. Disorder averaging restores permutation invariance in this setting, so states of $N$ spins can be stored in $\mathcal O(\log N)$ qubits. While logarithmic-space quantum computations are known to be simulatable classically in polynomial time or in polylogarithmic space, whether a single algorithm can achieve both is open, raising the possibility of simultaneous quantum advantage. To this end, we give a quantum algorithm for permutation-invariant $k$-local dynamics without disorder using polynomial time and $\mathcal O(\log N)$ quantum and classical space. We show that any classical algorithm matching these resources would imply $\mathsf{BQL}\subseteq \mathsf{SC}$. For short times, however, we provide such algorithms, including for SK models. For Hopfield models, we discuss how dilating the disorder to ancilla qubits reduces the problem to the disorder-free case on an enlarged system, thus extending both classical and quantum results to them. We give some evidence that their long-time dynamics are non-trivial. They thus emerge as a candidate for a simultaneous time--space advantage in quantum simulation.

We introduce the quantum Černý complexity $\mathrm{qc}(w)$ of a binary word $w$: the least dimension $d$ for which there exist quantum channels $A_0,A_1$ on $d\times d$ density matrices and a start state $ρ_0$ such that $w$ is the unique shortest word whose associated channel is constant on the reachable set. We show that $2\le\mathrm{qc}(w)\le\lceil\sqrt{|w|+1}\,\rceil$ for every nonempty $w$, a quadratic saving over the classical analogue, and that constant words are extremal: $\mathrm{qc}(0^m)=\lceil\sqrt{m+1}\,\rceil$. In contrast, $\mathrm{qc}(01^n0)=2$ for every $n\ge 1$, realized by a single qubit whose rotation angle acts as a counter; consequently there is no quantum analogue of the Černý function, and $\mathrm{qc}$ is strongly anti-correlated with intuitive notions of descriptive complexity. We further study the variant $\mathrm{qcp}$ in which the synchronization target is required to be a pure state. We prove that in dimension $2$ no word of length at least $2$ can be a unique shortest synchronizing word with pure target, and we exhibit an explicit qutrit instance, combining a coherent rotation with a measure-and-funnel channel, achieving $\mathrm{qcp}(01^n0)=3$ with target a computational basis state and with synchronization holding universally over all input states. Thus purity of the reset state costs exactly one dimension on this family. We also observe that $\mathrm{qc}$ is computable, by reduction to the first-order theory of the reals.

As LLMs grow in size, compression becomes increasingly important for efficient deployment. SVD-based low-rank compression reduces parameter counts but can degrade downstream performance. To improve performance after compression, we introduce QuLoC, a photonic quantum-assisted LLM compression algorithm that uses quantum circuit outputs to gate the retained low-rank components during training. Model performance is recovered through local functional reconstruction followed by end-to-end knowledge distillation. After training, the gating coefficients are absorbed into the low-rank factors, allowing the compressed model to run on classical hardware without executing quantum circuits during inference. Experiments on Qwen3.5-4B show that QuLoC achieves a 9.73\% relative improvement in average accuracy over state-of-the-art baselines across multiple downstream tasks, demonstrating its effectiveness. We further evaluate QuLoC on LLaMA-7B at different parameter compression ratios. It consistently achieves higher average downstream accuracy than state-of-the-art baselines, supporting its applicability to a larger model across different compression settings. Notably, experiments using the photonic quantum hardware retain these benefits with a small accuracy loss relative to simulation, suggesting robustness to hardware noise. These results motivate further exploration of photonic quantum-assisted compression for larger models and more complex agentic tasks.

Additional qubits can reduce the depth of a quantum circuit by providing workspace for parallel computation, but standard constructions assume that this workspace is initialized in a known state. In this work we study catalytic implementations, i.e. asking whether dirty qubits can instead be used provided that their joint state including any entanglement with other registers is restored exactly at the end of the computation. We show that every $n$-qubit Clifford circuit has a catalytic implementation of depth $O(\log n)$ using $O(n^2/\log^2 n)$ catalytic qubits and no clean qubits, matching the asymptotic depth achievable when clean workspace is available. We extend this approach to diagonal elements of any fixed level $C_k$ of the Clifford hierarchy, which admit catalytic implementations of depth $O(\log(n+1))$ with $O(n^k/\log(n))$ gates and $O(n^k/\log^2(n))$ catalytic qubits, as well as to semi-Clifford Gates.

We present Smite, a Python toolkit for quasiclassical trajectory (QCT) simulations of reactive and inelastic bimolecular collisions, unimolecular dynamics, and molecular collisions with finite surface models. A central feature is the explicit control of reactant preparation: harmonic normal modes admit fixed quantum numbers, prescribed energies, thermal quantum populations, or ground-state Wigner sampling; rotation is prepared at fixed angular-momentum magnitude or from thermal distributions appropriate to diatomic and polyatomic rotors. Rotating-Morse sampling provides a coupled anharmonic treatment of diatomic vibration and rotation, while saved molecular-dynamics phase points provide an alternative source of initial conditions. The same nuclear propagators operate with on-the-fly electronic-structure calculations or user-supplied analytical and machine-learned potential energy surfaces. Additional modules provide constrained rigid-fragment dynamics, thermostat-based preparation, photoionization initial conditions with energy and recoil constraints, and fewest-switches surface hopping (FSSH) on multiple PESs with approximate curvature-derived couplings. Geometry optimization, transition-state searches, crossing-point optimization, intrinsic-reaction-coordinate following, and thermochemistry use the same energy and derivative interfaces. Analysis tools connect trajectories to product energy partitioning, stereodynamical correlations, time-resolved vibrational signatures, and independent-atom x-ray scattering.

The iterative quantum phase estimation algorithm (IPEA) is better suited for NISQ and early fault-tolerant hardware compared to the original algorithm, which requires the inverse quantum Fourier transform. However, current error mitigation and correction implementations lead to imperfect unitaries, causing erroneous phase feedback in IPEA. To improve the reliability of phase bits is to repeat the k^th iteration for the 2^k-th power of the unitary $N_k^*$ times, followed by a majority decision. However, due to variations in their circuit complexities, different iterations incur varying resource costs ($w_k$) and different per-shot error probabilities ($q_k$). Given tight resource constraints, we ask what the optimal number $\{N_k^*: 1\le k \le L\}$ of shots per bit is: $$\arg \max_{\{N_k\}} \mathbb{P}(\text{all } L \text{ bits correct}) \text{ s.t.} \sum_{k=1}^L w_k N_k \le W$$ We obtain closed-form expressions for $N^*_k$ under the conditions: $W \gg \sum_k w_k $(enough for at least one shot per iteration), $w_k$ increases with $k$, $q_k$ are small enough and $L$ is large. We do so by analyzing tractable upper and lower surrogate problems derived via tight concentration and anti-concentration bounds and showing that their solutions converge when $q_k\ll 1$. We observe that when $W\gg \sum_k w_k \ln\! \left(\sum_k w_k\right)$, the optimal $N_k^*$ is proportional to $\frac{\ln\! \left(\sum_k w_k\right)}{c_k}$ and does not depend on individual $w_k$, where $c_k=-\ln\left(2\sqrt{\left(1-\frac{q_k}{2} \right) \frac{q_k}{2}}\right) \propto \ln\frac{1}{q_k}$. However, when $\sum_k w_k \ll W\ll\sum_k w_k \ln\! \left(\sum_k w_k\right)$, the allocation is also (additively) influenced by $\frac{1}{c_k}\ln\frac{1}{w_k}$ for larger values of $k$, i.e., higher powers of unitary. These results lead to simple rules of thumb for resource allocation that may benefit the design of practical systems.

We study how symmetry constrains quantum advantage in two-party communication complexity. For partial functions over any fixed alphabet of size $q$ that are invariant under simultaneous coordinate permutations, we prove that public-coin randomized and entanglement-assisted quantum communication complexities satisfy $R^{\mathrm{pub}}(f)=O_q(Q^{\ast}(f)^2\log n)$, where $n$ is the input length. We also characterize quantum communication complexity by a combinatorial parameter up to a logarithmic factor. These results extend the binary-alphabet result of Guan et al. and improve its logarithmic overhead. Input-length dependence is necessary: for every fixed $\varepsilon\in(0,1)$, binary permutation-invariant partial functions can have quantum complexity $O_\varepsilon(\log\log n)$ and randomized complexity $Ω_\varepsilon((\log n)^{1-\varepsilon})$. Growing alphabets and graph symmetries permit exponential separations. For every fixed $\varepsilon\in(0,1)$, we construct permutation-invariant partial functions on length-$n$ strings over an $n$-symbol alphabet with quantum complexity $O_\varepsilon(\log n)$ and randomized complexity $Ω_\varepsilon(n^{1-\varepsilon})$. We also construct graph-invariant partial functions on $v$-vertex graphs with quantum complexity $O_\varepsilon(\log v)$ and randomized complexity $Ω_\varepsilon(v^{2-\varepsilon})$. All separation protocols use neither prior entanglement nor shared randomness.

Directly solving the full electron-nuclear Schrödinger equation remains one of the grand challenges in quantum mechanics. Here, we propose a quantum-chemically motivated orbital-based neural network wavefunction ansatz with explicit many-body electron-electron correlation terms, with parameters depending on the entire electron-nuclear configuration, enabling an accurate description of strongly correlated and/or multi-reference electronic structures by a single Slater-determinant across a broad nuclear configuration space. To train this wavefunction, we further develop an efficient hybrid optimization strategy that combines the variational Monte Carlo technique with local-energy constraints, mitigating the intrinsic sampling bias of the former and considerably reducing the statistical error. These advances are embedded in a unified neural network framework, Schrödinger, enabling the determination of globally accurate potential energy surfaces with a single training for systems ranging from strongly correlated diatomic molecules, triatomic reactions containing conical intersections, to polyatomic multi-reference molecules. This work offers a practical machine-learning tool for solving the electron-nuclear Schrödinger equation and capturing full quantum effects beyond the Born-Oppenheimer approximation.

Classical shadows are an influential framework for compressing copies of a given quantum state $ρ$ into classical data $S$, enabling many properties of $ρ$ to be predicted from relatively few copies. In this work, we study two natural questions involving shadows: (1) Given $S$, when can one efficiently verify that $S$ came from a genuine $n$-qubit state? This is called the Classical Shadow Validity (CSV) problem, introduced by Karaiskos, Rudolph, Meyer, Eisert, and Gharibian [ICALP 2026]. (2) Given $S$ that allows one to capture 2-local properties of $ρ$, can one fake or spoof a shadow $S'$ which predicts 3-local properties of some state? For (1), we show CSV is efficiently solvable for permutation-invariant shadows, QMA-hard for real, fermionic, and bosonic shadows, and both coNP-hard and QMA-hard when the observable family consists of all $n$-qubit Pauli strings. A result of independent interest along the way is a new upper bound qc-$Σ_2$ $\subseteq$ $\mathrm{P}^{\mathrm{PP}}$, where qc-$Σ_2$ is a quantum analogue of the second level of the polynomial hierarchy in which the first proof is quantum. For (2), we show intractability: Given the 2-local marginals $S$ of a quantum state $ρ$, estimating the 3-local marginals of $ρ$ is intractable unless QCMA $\subseteq$ BPP, even if the state $ρ$ is the unique state consistent with $S$.

We present a complete set of $16$ rewrite rules for multi-qudit Clifford circuits in all odd prime dimensions. Completeness means that any two Clifford circuits representing the same linear map can be rewritten into each other using these rules. Each rule involves at most three qudits and admits an intuitive interpretation. To establish completeness, we first work at the symplectic level, using the isomorphism between the symplectic group $\mathrm{Sp}(2n,\mathbb{Z}_d)$ and the quotient of the Clifford group by the Pauli group. We construct a circuit normal form that captures the stabiliser tableau of a Clifford operator and is unique up to Pauli correction. Using this normal form, we derive a complete set of symplectic relations, which we then lift to Clifford relations by incorporating Pauli corrections. We also formally verify completeness up to global phase in the Agda proof assistant.

Quantum algorithms can offer substantial computational speed-ups, yet these advantages may disappear once the cost of structure-agnostic classical data encoding is taken into account. Real-world problem instances, however, often possess rich internal structure. This raises a fundamental question: can such structure be harnessed to make quantum speed-ups survive end-to-end cost accounting? Here we show that it can. We introduce a general framework for structure-aware quantum data encoding that compiles compact recursive descriptions of problem structure into efficient state-preparation circuits, translating structural information directly into reduced encoding complexity. For the uncapacitated facility-location problem, structure-agnostic encoding admits a classical dequantization that eliminates the quadratic quantum speed-up, whereas exploiting the underlying problem structure restores this advantage even when state-preparation costs are included. More broadly, the same framework prepares structured quantum states for combinatorial optimization that capture non-trivial relations among constraints, including group balance, conflicts and synergistic rewards, extending previously reported super-polynomial quantum advantages to broader classes of objectives. These results establish exploitable problem structure as a computational resource for quantum algorithms and provide a systematic route towards realizing quantum advantage in data-intensive problems.

Sampling problems give some of the clearest conditional separations between quantum and classical computation. In Fermion Sampling, passive linear optics acts on a non-Gaussian magic input. Globally Haar-random transformations give anticoncentration and high-precision average-case hardness, but require linear depth and quadratically many gates. A natural open question is whether linear depth is necessary? We show that logarithmic depth suffices for both guarantees in the same ensemble. For fresh uniform matchings with independent Haar two-mode gates, the collision reaches the passive-Haar scale at a sharp threshold of $\log n/\log(9/4)\approx0.855\log_2 n$ layers, with an explicit limiting transition profile and a matching lower bound from two-particle correlations. The mechanism is input-dependent: the magic input suppresses the extensive weight of the slowest relaxation mode, leaving the next to set the scale. An occupation-basis input retains large collision even under full Haar randomness. At a larger logarithmic depth, we prove, in the real-RAM model, average-case $\#\mathsf{P}$-hardness of estimating output probabilities to additive error $2^{-O(n\log^2 n)}$ on any fixed fraction of instances above $3/4$. We construct hard instances in four native layers, embed them in typical schedules, and interpolate along Cayley paths using a rational linear-program decoder. A finite $192$-gate alphabet preserves the collision law exactly. Both guarantees use logarithmic native fermionic depth between arbitrary mode pairs and $O(n\log n)$ gates, replacing the global-Haar construction's quadratic budget. The accuracy proved is finer than the $1/N$ scale, where $N=\binom{n}{n/2}$, required by sampling-to-counting; hardness of sampling within constant total-variation distance remains open.

The one-way model of measurement-based quantum computing implements computations via successive adaptive single-qubit measurements on a resource graph state. This model has practical applications, particularly in photonics, and it is also useful as a theoretical tool e.g. for optimisation. Gflow is a necessary and sufficient condition for implementing certain one-way computations deterministically (in a suitable sense); it is also used in efficient translations from the one-way model to quantum circuits. For a computation on $n$ qubits, a gflow can be found in $\mathcal{O}(n^3)$ time. Here, we consider an incompletely specified computation given by an unlabelled open graph: the graph state as well as the input and output qubits are known, but the measurements have not yet been fixed. We give an algorithm that identifies a measurement labelling and a compatible gflow, and runs in $\mathcal{O}(n^3)$, strictly generalising the previous approach. The new algorithm can also handle restrictions on the order of the measurements and returns only solutions compatible with these constraints. We additionally prove that if an open graph has equal numbers of inputs and outputs, it has at most one labelling compatible with gflow; and show how to identify additional inputs for an open graph that does not yet have the maximal number, without breaking an existing gflow. Finally, we demonstrate a relationship between inputs or potential inputs and the information flow in the computation.

We study discrete-time quantum trajectories of a finite-dimensional system in a disordered environment, where the instrument applied at each step is determined by an invertible measure-preserving dynamical system. For general quantum instruments on a standard Borel outcome space, we construct the quenched probability law on sequences of measurement outcomes for a fixed realization of the disorder and a given initial state. Under a quenched Doeblin condition with a uniform deterministic minorization constant and an environment-dependent minorizing probability measure, we establish the existence and uniqueness of an equivariant family of random posterior laws and identify its barycenter as the unique dynamically stationary state for the associated non-selective channel cocycle. If the environment is ergodic, we prove a pathwise ergodic theorem valid for every measurable choice of initial state: for almost every realization of the disorder, time averages of posterior states converge almost surely under the corresponding quenched law to the disorder average of the unique dynamically stationary state. For an ergodic environment, we establish quenched variance asymptotics and, when the asymptotic variance is positive, a central limit theorem and standardized Berry--Esseen bounds for additive functionals generated by bounded measurable real-valued functions of the environment and posterior state. These results hold for every measurable initial state and almost every disorder realization. We then show that the stationary annealed joint process of instruments and posterior states inherits the $α$-mixing of the instrument process, up to an exponentially decaying term. Finally, we provide classes of examples involving perfect and imperfect measurements, including models with continuous or finite outcome spaces, that satisfy the standing Doeblin condition.

Classical shadows allow the prediction of many quantum-state properties from measurement data, but their efficiency strongly depends on the underlying measurement ensemble. We introduce selective GHZ measurement (SGM) shadows, which perform Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ)-basis measurements on randomly selected subsets of qubits and computational-basis measurements on their complement. The corresponding quantum circuits are practically feasible, with their number of CNOT gates scaling linearly with the number of qubits. This is in stark contrast to global Clifford circuits, which are generally difficult to implement. Varying the subset distribution allows tuning the SGM shadow protocol for different classes of observables with prescribed X/Y support, allowing us to outperform local Pauli as well as global Clifford shadows in certain scenarios. We determine the exact shadow channel and its inverse for arbitrary subset distributions and prove an explicit bound on the shadow norm using methods from discrete Fourier analysis and Markov semigroup theory. For natural choices of subset distributions, this gives a polynomial scaling for observables with fixed X/Y-locality. Numerical simulations of up to 50 qubits support the predicted improvements for nonlocal observables and long-range systems, and demonstrate the practical benefits of our protocol's generality by showing how the subset distributions can be tailored to settings such as fermionic modes under the Jordan-Wigner transformation.

Estimating time-accumulated observables, or dense outputs, is central to extracting classical information from quantum simulations. Whereas most quantum-simulation algorithms aim to reproduce a final state or a single-time expectation value, many applications require the integrated signal $J_H(O)=\int_0^T \langle ψ(t)|O(t)|ψ(t)\rangle\,dt$. Previous Hamiltonian-simulation-based dense-output algorithms have query costs that depend on the norm of the full Hamiltonian, which can grow with system size. However, one can naturally optimize the simulation algorithm when the system structure is known. Consequently, we develop a locality-based truncation framework for the dense-output problem on lattice Hamiltonians. By truncating the Hamiltonian and tightening the resulting error with Lieb-Robinson bounds, we show that a local simulation can recover the dense output. We bound the quantum simulation error from spatial truncation and translate it into local-simulation query bounds. Our analysis includes free and interacting systems for both fermions and bosons, as well as open quantum systems governed by Lindbladians. The improvement from our truncation algorithm varies from constant to unbounded as the system size grows. We also give example applications and conduct relevant numerical experiments to support our findings.

We introduce quantum tilted walks, a quantum algorithmic framework for solving exact combinatorial optimization problems. The framework applies an average of powers of a tilted Hamiltonian that biases the discriminant matrix of a base Markov chain (mixer) with the objective function. Our starting point is quantum short-path algorithms, which prepare the ground state of such a Hamiltonian and obtain super-quadratic speedups over exhaustive search for certain combinatorial optimization problems. Recently, Le Gall and Tamaki~(arXiv:2604.12131) developed a classical conditioning-and-search algorithm for weighted MAX-E$k$-LIN2 and weighted MAX-$k$-CSP. Under the same assumptions, their algorithm is only sub-quadratically slower than quantum short-path algorithms. Consequently, existing short-path algorithms do not establish a super-quadratic speedup over this stronger classical baseline. For maximization problems, we give conditions under which tilted walks increase the amplitude on the target state with high objective value when initialized from a starting state with lower objective value. This framework captures conditioning-and-search and yields super-quadratic speedups over it for the same problems. While our framework recovers quantum short-path algorithms as a special case, it neither requires ground-state preparation nor initialization in the ground state of the base mixer. We demonstrate these advantages on a synthetic optimization problem for which tilted walks achieve a super-quadratic speedup whereas the short-path algorithms do not.

We present a universal entanglement distillation protocol that asymptotically achieves the distillable entanglement of any unknown bipartite state in a fixed finite dimension. That is, its ebit yield attains every rate below the optimum that would be available if the state were known, with vanishing trace-distance error. Our approach combines tomography by local operations and classical communication with an adaptive distillation routine, using a local robustness lemma to control finite-sample estimation errors. We also characterize worst-case distillation from a family of states: the optimal uniform rate is the minimum distillable entanglement on the family's closure. These results show that ignorance of the state need not incur an asymptotic rate penalty.

Molecular quantum dynamics simulations that treat both electrons and nuclei quantum mechanically are crucial for predicting chemical reactions. With classical computation, a full wave-function representation of both types of particles requires resources that grow exponentially with their number. Oscillator-qubit processors, including trapped-ion and circuit QED devices, represent electronic states with qubits and nuclear vibrations with oscillators. Their native operations produce linear vibronic interactions, from which programmable anharmonic interactions can be built. Product-formula approaches build the corresponding phase gates by repeating small noncommuting phase steps, and quantum signal processing (QSP) approaches approximate each gate directly with a Fourier series. Simulations apply many such gates in sequence, so accumulated cost and error limit how long the dynamics can be followed. We propose near-optimal quantum primitives for molecular quantum dynamics simulation, covering the representations of both types of particles and their interactions. We synthesize nonlinear and multimode bosonic phase gates using generalized Jacobi-Anger (GJA) expansions within QSP, with a cost that grows near-optimally in both interaction strength and precision. Our interaction model and gate synthesis each have their own accuracy setting. Chosen together, these settings make our multimode benchmark circuits about one-third shorter than those of the previous direct QSP approach. We then simulate energy exchange between the stretching and bending vibrations of a simplified carbon dioxide model. With circuit-QED noise, a short simulation narrowly misses our accuracy criteria at qubit and oscillator lifetimes near 2 ms and 5 ms. These lifetimes mark a concrete checkpoint on the way to simulating anharmonic multimode molecular quantum dynamics on near-term oscillator-qubit processors.

Linear combination of unitaries (LCU) is a fundamental primitive in quantum algorithms, whose cost is typically governed by the most expensive unitary appearing in the combination. We develop a transducer-based LCU framework that reduces this worst-case dependence to a weighted average query complexity, when the constituent unitaries share access to a common set of primitive oracles. Consider $A=\sum_j c_j U_j$, where $c_j>0$ and each unitary $U_j$ can be implemented using $C_j$ primitive queries. Given an upper bound $a\geq \|A\|$, our algorithm implements a block-encoding of $A/α$ with rescaling factor $α=\mathcal{O}(a)$, using $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}} (C_{\max}+\overline{C} λ/{a} )$ primitive queries, where $λ=\sum_j c_j$, $C_{\max}=\max_j C_j$, and $\overline{C}= {\sum_j c_j C_j}/λ$. By comparison, the standard LCU construction requires $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}} (C_{\max} λ/{a} )$ primitive queries. The improvement can therefore be substantial when costly unitaries have small weights and $λ/a$ is large. As applications, we obtain improved block-encodings of sparse matrices, leading to quantum algorithms for sparse Hamiltonian simulation and quantum linear systems with near-optimal query complexity up to polylogarithmic factors in all relevant parameters. Our main technique is the transducer framework developed by Belovs, Jeffery, and Yolcu [Quantum, 8:1444 (2024)]. Here we develop a complementary operator-level theory tailored to block-encodings. We identify the resolvent norm $K$ as a key complexity measure for transducer implementation besides the existing catalyst complexity. We show that the transducer action can be converted into an $ε$-approximate block-encoding using only $\mathcal{O}\left(K \log(1/ε)\right)$ queries to the transducer, improving the precision dependence from polynomial to logarithmic.

We establish a no-go theorem for a broad class of quantum algorithms for the dihedral coset problem (DCP). We consider the Fourier-sampling and subset-sum-measurement template proposed by Regev (SIAM Journal on Computing, 2004), which is one of the main approaches to solving DCP. Suppose that, after measuring the lower $n-1$ bits of the subset sum, the algorithm discards any $ω(\log n)$ bits from each of the Fourier labels. Then we prove that the algorithm cannot succeed in solving DCP. This shows that any algorithm following this template must make extensive use of the Fourier labels, and thus serves as a useful guide for developing algorithms for DCP. As a main application, we show that the recent algorithm by Simon (IACR ePrint:2026/1591, August 11 2026) does not solve DCP. We show that after the subset-sum measurement, this algorithm can be implemented (up to exponentially-small error) using only the most-significant third of the Fourier labels, and is therefore subject to our general no-go theorem. To help with verifiability, we release Lean 4 code for our results.

The bosonic quantum entropy power inequality bounds the entropy of a beam-splitter output in terms of the input entropies. We determine its complete equality class among independent inputs of finite mean photon number: for any number of modes and any transmissivity strictly between zero and one, equality in either the linear or the exponential form holds if and only if the inputs are Gaussian with the same covariance matrix, allowing arbitrary displacements. The main step shows that equality for one output forces the two outputs to be independent: a thermal auxiliary converts equality into preservation of mutual information by a fixed noisy channel, and a two-outcome instrument shows that preservation of mutual information requires a product state with the reference. The quantum Darmois--Skitovich theorem then gives Gaussianity, while a central-limit argument reduces exponential equality to linear equality.

Superconductor and two-dimensional hole gas heterostructures are promising platforms for quantum devices, but their intrinsic properties, e.g., unconventional pairings, are hard to access experimentally. Here, we show that the in-plane-field dependence of the superfluid stiffness and spin susceptibility exhibits nonanalyticities encoding the induced gap structure in the hole gas. Additionally, Fourier harmonics of the stiffness tensor's field-angle dependence, accessible via kinetic-inductance measurements, provide fingerprints of unconventional pairing and cubic Rashba coupling.

We develop a theory of exact transmission of finite-dimensional $C^*$-algebras through quantum channels. These algebras describe hybrid classical-quantum information, allowing the dimension of the quantum system to depend on the classical message. Allowing arbitrary encodings and decodings yields a transmission set of algebra types, ordered by embedding, that unifies zero-error information theory with operator-algebraic error correction. We ask if this set admits a dominating algebra into which every transmittable algebra embeds. Our central finding is that domination can fail even in small dimensions. In its absence, several incomparable maximal algebras can describe different optimal uses of the same channel, forcing the user to select one depending on the operational task and the type of information to be preserved. We introduce hybrid capacities that reconstruct the only possible dominating algebra type and present a complete finite characterization of domination using minimal forbidden algebra types. We identify dominating algebras for channels whose operator systems are graph-isomorphic to $*$-algebras, including highly divisible channels, and for channels with zero one-shot zero-error quantum capacity. Under tensor products, we prove that joint coding can produce new algebra types, giving an algebraic analogue of superadditivity from Shannon theory. Domination can fail for the joint use of two channels, even when both channels separately admit dominating algebras. Finally, we construct a channel whose $n$-fold tensor powers have doubly exponentially many maximal algebra types, attaining the largest possible growth scaling for finite-dimensional channels. Consequently, new transmittable algebra types appear at arbitrarily large block-lengths for this channel, so its full transmission structure cannot be generated from any finite collection of bounded-block-length codes.

We consider quantum devices restricted to local operations in 2D and subject to local stochastic noise below a constant threshold. We show that such circuits are computationally more powerful than AC0-circuits, i.e., noise-free, geometrically-unconstrained constant-depth classical circuits with unbounded fan-in AND, OR and NOT gates. To this end, we exhibit a computational problem with the following properties: (i) Any instance of the problem is correctly solved with high probability by a certain geometrically 2D-local quantum circuit even if the latter is imperfectly implemented, but (ii) any polynomial-size AC0-circuit fails to solve certain instances of the problem with constant probability. To our knowledge, this isthe first complexity-theoretic separation which applies to planar quantum devices, incorporates noise-resilience and is unconditional, i.e., does not rely on complexity-theoretic assumptions. This brings the experimental demonstration of an unconditional quantum advantage closer to experimental realities.

Finite-bandwidth reservoir engineering can suppress unwanted transitions in a quantum thermal machine, but a physical filter also introduces a finite response time. We study this competition in a continuous three-level heat engine whose hot environment couples parasitically to the cold transition. The corresponding three-state rate network is solved exactly, showing that the parasitic transition produces a hot-to-cold thermodynamic short circuit and yielding a closed threshold for the loss of positive-power operation. We then retain a damped auxiliary mode explicitly as a physical spectral filter. Its Lorentzian response suppresses the detuned parasitic transition, whereas excessive narrowing limits the useful energy throughput. Independent local-GKSL and nonsecular Bloch--Redfield calculations both recover the no-leak Markovian engine in the weak-coupling limit and predict a finite maximum-power bandwidth, although its precise location is model dependent. A frequency-resolved Lorentzian-rate reduction, by contrast, has no interior optimum. The resulting design principle is that spectral selectivity can protect the useful thermodynamic cycle, but a real filter cannot be narrowed without a dynamical throughput cost.

Decoded Quantum Interferometry (DQI) reduces optimization problems with two-variable constraints to decoding cycle codes. For one such problem, namely MaxCut, prior work showed that DQI achieves a nontrivial satisfaction fraction guarantee only on linear-girth graphs, for which MaxCut is classically easy. However, these no-go results rely on minimum distance assumptions that do not represent true decodability thresholds for common noise channels, thus underestimating actual DQI performance. To estimate the true performance, we derive DQI satisfaction guarantees in the presence of imperfect decoding for fixed instances and generalize prior results for random instances. We then study homological cycle codes over arbitrary finite fields, and show that minimum-weight decoding is NP-hard for every field of size $q>2$, in contrast with known results for binary cycle codes. On the Linial--Simkin ensemble of regular graphs with logarithmic girth, we prove maximum-likelihood recovery bounds and a strong converse for a family of non-uniform additive noise channels. Moreover, LP decoders provide polynomial-time recovery of a positive fraction of randomly located errors with arbitrary values. These results allow us to prove upper and lower bounds on the approximate optima achievable by DQI when restricted to classical decoders. These bounds rule out quantum advantage in the regimes we analyze but also identify a family of regular Max-$k$-Cut instances on which DQI efficiently achieves a nontrivial satisfaction fraction guarantee.

The interconversion among different quantum resources has attracted considerable attention, exemplified by the tradeoff between coherence and entanglement. However, the relationship between local and global quantum resources remains largely unexplored. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a local global tradeoff in quantum resources, quantified respectively by the local maximum coherence and the quantum mutual information. Our experiments show that the sum of the local maximum coherence and the quantum mutual information is bounded by a definitive upper limit. These results not only establish a fundamental tradeoff inequality, but also provide direct experimental evidence of the complementarity between local and global quantum resources. Moreover, our findings reveal an important constraint in quantum networks: the local quantum resources available at individual nodes and the global quantum resources of the network are mutually exclusive, implying that enhancing one necessarily limits the other.

Measures of non-stabilizerness (``magic'') of a quantum evolution quantify how hard it is to simulate on a classical computer. A natural question is how to extract information about magic from physical correlators, for example at finite temperature or in the ground state. In this paper we show how to measure magic using out-of-time-order correlators evaluated in an arbitrary state. For every full-rank state, and in particular for every Gibbs state, the resulting quantity vanishes if and only if the evolution is Clifford. We establish its basic properties, relate it to the stabilizer entropy of the Choi state, and prove that, even with a single fixed probe operator, it gives a lower bound on the number of $T$ gates needed to implement the dynamics in any circuit architecture.

Continuous measurements simultaneously reveal and modify the dynamics of a quantum system. In this work we consider the tunneling motion of particles between the sites of a one-dimensional lattice. We investigate how weak continuous probing of the occupation of a single lattice site induces entanglement and selects definite values for system properties such as wave function parity and permutation symmetry. Our simulations show how continuous measurement can steer systems of two and three particles, with no prior permutation symmetry, into stable bosonic, fermionic and parastatistical symmetry sectors.

The goal of quantum metrology is to estimate an unknown parameter with better-than-classical precision and, ideally, to attain Heisenberg scaling. In realistic settings, however, noise can substantially reduce this advantage and, in many cases, restore standard-quantum-limit-like performance. Preserving the quantum enhancement therefore requires noise-robust strategies, which can be implemented using quantum error correction. In this work, we develop and analyze a quantum-metrology protocol based on Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) codes. The main result is that, for noise perpendicular to the sensing Hamiltonian, discrete-time error correction preserves Heisenberg-like temporal scaling over a finite interrogation-time window whose duration depends on the correction frequency. It is further shown that recovery applied only after the sensing evolution provides no metrological advantage over the corresponding uncorrected noisy protocol in the setup considered here. An analytical framework is developed for arbitrary CSS codes and applied to the Steane and Shor codes, for which the discrete-time corrected dynamics, the Heisenberg-like-to-SQL-like crossover, and the optimal interrogation time are determined and numerically analysed.

Quantum Random Access Memory (qRAM) is a critical component for achieving quantum advantage in algorithms ranging from database search to quantum machine learning. In a recently introduced model [arXiv:2508.02855], we proposed a resource-efficient qRAM architecture based on discrete-time quantum walkers. This article serves as a comprehensive technical follow-up, providing the full mathematical derivations, detailed protocol specifications, and in-depth resource analysis. Moreover, we extend the original proposal with novel techniques for the purpose of making the qRAM implementation more realistic. Our model resolves the primary drawbacks of leading qRAM proposals: it avoids the exponential number of active nodes $\mathcal{O}(2^n)$ required by the "Bucket Brigade" architecture by employing a number of quantum walkers that scales linearly with the address and message sizes, $n$ and $m$, respectively. Simultaneously, it overcomes the spatial bottlenecks of previous quantum-walker schemes by eliminating the need for multiple parallel trees. We propose two algorithmic paradigms: the long- and the short-range approaches, which differ by the length of interaction of the main routing gates employed in the qRAM. We formalize the routing, message-copy, and walker retrieval phases for both variants and we show how, while the long-range scheme employs controlled gates having a multitude of target systems, the short-range approach decomposes these interactions into sequences of 2- and 3-body local gates, which improves the architecture's feasibility for near-term experimental implementation. Finally, our comprehensive resource analysis confirms that the short-range approach achieves the optimal $\mathcal{O}(n+m)$ circuit depth. Within these two paradigms, we explore the potential of different types of quantum walkers, namely bosons, dual-rail qubits and four-level qudits.

Planar parity-preserving tensor networks (ppTNs) admit a fermionic formulation in which the Gaussian, efficiently contractible limit is deformed by local interactions. We investigate how many-body methods can be used to analyze such contractions in a minimal two-parameter ppTN. Its contraction is simultaneously an interacting fermionic partition function, a loop gas, a deformed toric-code norm, and a quartic Ising model, allowing the same phase diagram to be approached with complementary tools. At its center lies a `topological island', characterized beyond the Gaussian limit by a boundary-twist $\mathbb Z_2$ indicator that reduces to Chern-number parity and admits a loop-winding interpretation under duality. Fermionic perturbation theory predicts the interacting phase boundaries, tensor-network numerics establish their critical behavior, and the loop and spin descriptions reveal a self-dual line with a $c=1$ four-state-Potts multicritical fixed point.

We present a learning task for quantum channels that exhibits an exponential separation in query complexity (in terms of the number of qubits) between two access models: i) black-box channel access and ii) access to a Stinespring dilation unitary of the channel along with its inverse. We consider the task of learning how close the unknown channel is to the set of unitary channels. This is characterized by the \textit{optimal average gate fidelity (OAGF)}, defined as the average gate fidelity maximized over all unitary channels. For constant Kraus rank and a dilation environment of dimension $\operatorname{polylog}(d)$, we provide an algorithm that estimates the OAGF to fixed additive accuracy using $\operatorname{polylog}(d)$ queries to the Stinespring dilation unitary and its inverse. In contradistinction, under the black-box access model, this estimation requires at least $Ω(\sqrt{d})$ queries, even for channels of constant Kraus rank and constant additive accuracy. As a corollary, we rule out a universal simulator that uses only $\operatorname{poly}(\log d,q)$ queries to the unknown channel to approximate the output of arbitrary $q$-query algorithms with access to a randomly-sampled Stinespring dilation unitary and its inverse, even to sufficiently small constant error. These results demonstrate that access to the system-environment joint evolution and its inverse can provide an exponential advantage in estimating an intrinsic property of a quantum channel.

Approximate unitary designs reproduce the statistics of Haar-random unitaries to a given order and accuracy. Recent constructions realize such designs with logarithmic-depth circuits, enabling shallow measurement protocols for various quantum state-learning tasks while preserving performance. These results raise the question of whether approximate designs can replace exact designs more generally. We show that even exponentially small design error need not preserve the learning guarantees of exact designs. This motivates deriving learning guarantees directly from the measurement circuit structure. For observable estimation with classical shadows, we prove that logarithmic-depth two-layer Clifford circuits yield an unbiased estimator matching the global Clifford variance scaling for every state and Hermitian observable. Beyond observable estimation, this bound allows shallow measurements to retain global Clifford guarantees for other tasks, including setting-efficient tomography, mixed-state metrology, and stabilizer structure learning. We complement these statistical guarantees with a compact, exact tensor-network representation of the inverse shadow channel. When measurement bases are reused, approximate unitary designs of arbitrarily high order need not uniformly match the Haar variance in the many-shot limit. For the all-to-all random two-local circuits considered, doing so requires nearly linear depth. Together, our results reveal the capabilities and limitations of shallow quantum state learning, highlighting the distinction between approximating Haar randomness and reproducing its learning guarantees.

The Scrooge ensemble associated with a density matrix $ρ$ is the maximally random ensemble whose average density matrix is $ρ$. It has attracted growing interest for its applications to quantum many-body dynamics and quantum information. The intrinsic statistical properties of the Scrooge ensembles are encoded in their higher-order moments, yet they are nontrivial to analyze and prepare for they feature a non-polynomial Haar integrand, blocking direct use of Haar integration machinery. Existing physical mechanisms to sample multiple copies of states from the Scrooge ensembles, meanwhile, typically require costly postselection, rendering them inefficient for large system size. In this work, we develop efficient and accurate methods for analyzing and implementing Scrooge moments. We first introduce a polynomial approximation to the Scrooge $k$-th moments whose error is tunable down to a threshold that improves from inverse polynomial to exponential in $1/||ρ||_\infty$ over previous results. Building on our approximation, we then give the first efficient quantum algorithm that estimates observable expectation values using $\widetilde{\mathcal{O}}(k^3/ε^5)$ copies of $ρ$ for any target error $ε$ above this threshold. We further provide a construction of a block encoding of the Scrooge $k$-th moment when the preparation circuit of $ρ$ is known. Of independent interest could be a key subroutine in our algorithms, which efficiently implements projection onto the $k$-fold symmetric subspace for $ρ^{\otimes k}$ using $\mathcal{O}(k^3/ε^2)$ samples of $ρ$, avoiding the naive $k!$ postselection cost of such a projection. These results provide new tools for both the theoretical analysis and practical prediction of properties of Scrooge ensembles, with potential applications to quantum many-body dynamics and quantum information processing.

Helical trilayer graphene (HTG) has emerged as a highly tunable moire quantum material that hosts strong electronic correlations and nontrivial band topology. However, the atomic-scale lattice structure and local electronic properties have remained largely unexplored. Here we present a comprehensive real-space study of HTG using a combination of scanning near-field optical microscopy and low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. We directly image supermoire lattice relaxation, revealing large triangular domains separated by sharp domain walls, as well as stripe domains connected by smoothly varying boundaries. Atomic-scale spectroscopy uncovers flat bands with a honeycomb electronic texture and one-dimensional boundary states confined to domain walls. By systematically varying the twist angle, we identify a magic angle of approximately 1.9°, substantially larger than the 1.6 degree predicted by theory. Our results establish a direct microscopic link between lattice relaxation and flat bands in HTG.

Stabiliser path finding (SPF) has previously been introduced as a method to localise logical information in a stabiliser code undergoing loss onto a single pre-specified target qubit, using only one round of single-qubit measurements. When working with limited resources and flying qubits, this fast read-out of logical information is a helpful tool for fault-tolerant communication. In this work, we provide a broad analytical and computational study of localisation via SPF. We introduce $g$-SPF, where the task is to localise the logical information onto a set of at most $g$ unspecified target qubits. Through analytical arguments based on percolation theory and the disjointness of stabiliser codes, we prove that for i.i.d. qubit loss with probability $p<1/2$ and sufficiently large planar surface codes, localisation via $g$-SPF for constant $g$ succeeds with a probability converging to one, which establishes a localisation threshold. Furthermore, we propose and implement two algorithms to solve SPF. The first is exact and formulates SPF as an integer linear program, whereas the second is heuristic and formulates SPF as a decoding problem. We validate both algorithms by numerically reproducing the localisation threshold for the surface code and demonstrate that the heuristic algorithm is considerably faster. Our work significantly reduces the time required to solve SPF compared to current state-of-the-art algorithms, allowing us to study localisation in substantially larger stabiliser codes than previously considered in the literature. Together, these theoretical and computational results open the door to various applications, such as fault-tolerant teleportation and efficient logical fusion.

We study the quantum query complexity of computing a semigroup product $x_1\cdots x_n$, when one query reveals one input element and the multiplication table is given. For a finite aperiodic semigroup of size $N-1$, the argument of Aaronson, Grier, and Schaeffer gives an upper bound of $\sqrt n\,(N\log(nN+2))^{O(N)}$ queries. To obtain query bounds that reflect algebraic structure, we study the product breadth $β$: the smallest bound such that every input word has a subsequence of at most $β$ letters with the same product. For nontrivial finite commutative aperiodic monoids, the bounded-error quantum query complexity is $Θ(\min\{n,\sqrt{nβ}\})$, and is thus characterized by product breadth. We further show that if such a monoid $M$ has aperiodicity index $k$ (the least positive integer satisfying $x^k=x^{k+1}$ for every $x\in M$), then $β=O(k\log(|M|+1)\log\log(|M|+2))$. For monoids with a stable partial order in which the identity is the minimum element, we prove that the bounded-error quantum query complexity is at most $\sqrt{n+1}((β+2)\log(n+2))^{O(\log(β+2))}$. For arbitrary finite aperiodic semigroups of order $N-1$, we improve the bound of Aaronson, Grier, and Schaeffer, obtaining a bounded-error quantum query complexity of at most \[ \min\left\{n,\sqrt n\, \log^{O((N\log(N+2))^{1/3})}(n+2)\right\}. \] The dependence on semigroup size is nearly tight: the bounded-depth Dyck lower bound of Ambainis et al. yields aperiodic monoids requiring $\sqrt n\,2^{Ω(N^{1/3})}$ quantum queries in the relevant parameter range.

Preparing logical codewords with a single round of noisy syndrome measurements can reduce the time overhead of fault-tolerant quantum computation. It remains unclear which structural properties of the code suffice to guarantee a threshold for single-shot state preparation. Here we prove that linear confinement suffices for a nonzero single-shot state-preparation threshold for CSS quantum low-density parity-check codes, in contrast to the common belief that soundness is necessary. When the distance is at least logarithmic, we prove that below nonzero local stochastic readout and data error thresholds, the logical error probability after a formal ideal final recovery is exponentially small and approaches zero when the code size approaches infinity. Under the stronger assumption of linear soundness, we show that the residual data error of the preparation protocol is local stochastic, directly allowing composition with other fault-tolerant gadgets. To investigate single-shot state-preparation threshold beyond the above assumptions, we further develop a statistical mechanical mapping that expresses the final logical error rate in terms of a classical partition function. We perform Monte Carlo simulations of this model for the three-dimensional toric code. The numerical results suggest that sublinear soundness can also support a single-shot state-preparation threshold.

We present a comprehensive review of quantum approaches for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) arising in computational fluid dynamics (CFD). We examine fully quantum approaches, including quantum linear system algorithms (QLSAs), ranging from the Harrow--Hassidim--Lloyd (HHL) algorithm to quantum singular value transformation (QSVT), Hamiltonian simulation, and quantum lattice Boltzmann methods (QLBMs), while emphasizing hybrid quantum--classical approaches, including quantum physics-informed neural networks (QPINNs) and amplitude-encoded variational PDE solvers. We focus on hardware-agnostic algorithms compatible with present noisy processors and emerging fault-tolerant architectures. For each framework, we analyze the mathematical formulation, algorithmic structure, and principal limitations. We also examine tensor-network (TN) representations, since CFD fields, differential operators, and geometrical information can often be encoded efficiently in low-rank form. The TN formalism bridges CFD discretizations and quantum states, operators, and circuits, enabling compact representations to be translated into tensor-programmable variational quantum algorithms (TP-VQAs). We further review benchmark problems, including Poisson, reaction, diffusion, and nonlinear model equations, and assess how well quantum algorithms capture key features of fluid dynamics. Our analysis highlights that potential quantum advantage is highly problem dependent and governed by condition number, representational complexity, state preparation, and measurement constraints. We outline capabilities, limitations, and challenges toward scalable quantum algorithms for CFD.

Haah's 3D cubic code was introduced as a candidate for a self-correcting quantum memory in three dimensions, using the absence of string logical operators to obstruct thermal errors. It has been a long-standing open question whether it is a self-correcting quantum memory. Even though the memory time was explored numerically, no analytical upper bound was known. Here, we settle this question rigorously and show that the cubic code thermalizes rapidly at every positive temperature. Our proof relies on the framework of [Commun. Math. Phys. 407, 195 (2026)] to turn a decay-of-correlations condition into a modified logarithmic Sobolev inequality for the Davies generator. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first analytic proof of rapid mixing for all positive temperatures for any fracton code.

Confocal microscopy provides optical sectioning for three-dimensional imaging but conventionally relies on point-by-point scanning and physical pinholes, limiting imaging speed. Here, we demonstrate that confocal sectioning can instead arise directly from quantum measurement, using spatial correlations in entangled biphoton states. Spatially resolved coincidence measurements in a widefield imaging system suppress contributions from out-of-focus planes, producing optical sectioning in parallel across the whole field of view without physical pinholes or mechanical scanning. In addition, this quantum approach obtains an axial response that, as a result of position-momentum entanglement, is $\sqrt{2}$-times narrower than that of classical confocal imaging. Our work establishes biphoton correlations as a mechanism for improved confocal imaging and enables parallel, pinhole-free optical sectioning without mechanical scanning.

We study scaling law of variational quantum algorithms by large-scale numerical experiments on combinatorial optimizations. On experiments up to n = 5000 qubits with O( log(n)) circuit depth with a classically simulable ansatz, the converged energies consistently differ by no more than 0.5% from the optimal or reference energies reported in the benchmarks.

Quantum process tomography (QPT) protocols are often designed by lifting quantum state tomography (QST) protocols through the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism, at the cost of an extra step enforcing the trace-preserving (TP) constraint. Existing approaches fall into two classes. The folklore partial normalization, which sandwiches the density estimate between inverse square roots of its input marginal, has a closed form but is used as a heuristic, its only analyses being asymptotic and losing a factor polynomial in the dimension. Projection-based methods are principled but have no closed forms and scale poorly with dimension. We resolve this dichotomy by showing that the partial normalization is the exact projection onto the Choi states of quantum channels in fidelity (equivalently in Bures or purified distance). Consequently, any QST algorithm with guarantees in fidelity lifts to a QPT algorithm that inherits its sample complexity, through a single closed-form congruence that preserves the Choi rank and is computed in Kraus form without any eigendecomposition of Choi dimension. We lift two single-copy protocols and prove that the non-adaptive one (Fidelity Projected Least Squares) recovers the Choi rank and reaches infidelity $\varepsilon$ from a number of channel uses proportional to $1/\varepsilon$. Numerically, for channels of low Choi rank, it improves on the state-of-the-art projected least squares in accuracy, and by orders of magnitude in the time and memory of the TP-regularization step and of the returned estimate.

Discovering properties of many-body quantum systems is challenging because of the large number of parameters to determine. Here, we show that correlations among quantum observables help reduce the complexity of quantum learning. A polynomial number of selected measurements can bound the values of exponentially many dependent yet unmeasured quantities, enabling efficient estimation of general functions of quantum states. We leverage this result to design correlation-informed learning algorithms that estimate key quantum resources, such as entanglement and magic, in systems of 100 qubits. They achieve a lower relative error than shadow tomography and neural-state methods by using information about a polynomial number of measured Pauli strings. These protocols are readily testable with today's quantum computers, as they do not require premeasurement entangling gates. Quantum constraints themselves are therefore a resource for exploring large quantum systems.

Montanaro and Zhou proved that depth-one Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) finds the planted solution of certain near-symmetric constraint satisfaction problems with probability $Ω(1)$, and observed exponential runtimes for general-purpose classical solvers on explicit realizations, providing strong evidence of an empirical exponential speedup of low-depth QAOA. We ask what such a circuit costs fault-tolerantly. Although the cost Hamiltonian carries $Θ(n^\ell)$ clauses, the rotation angle at which QAOA succeeds shrinks as $n^{1-\ell}$, and we show that small-angle Clifford$+T$ rotation synthesis reduces the non-Clifford cost per circuit to $\widetilde O(n^2)$ for every clause locality $\ell$. Compiling the circuit, however, requires the explicit clause list. We find that the mechanism underlying constant QAOA success fixes the degree-one Fourier coefficients of the cost, whose signs reveal the planted solution. However, this leakage need not reveal the solution: we design families in which the quadratic non-Clifford scaling and hard exact optimization coexist.

A central question in the theory of quantum advantage is whether there are quantum advantage protocols with similar resource requirements as random circuit sampling that are also verifiable just from the classical outputs of the quantum computation. Here, we develop the idea of simulation secrets for verifiable advantage. A verifier can use a simulation secret to evaluate a cross-entropy test faster than it would take a classical adversary to pass the test. We instantiate this idea using IQP circuits described by cubic polynomials with planted independent spaces. These correspond to the largest independent set in the orbit of a polynomial under the general linear group and yield a low-rank stabilizer decomposition of the corresponding state. We conjecture that large independent spaces are invisible to a computationally bounded adversary, and therefore they cannot exploit them to pass the protocol. A second conjecture regards the fine-grained complexity of producing samples that pass the cross-entropy test for uniformly random polynomials. Under these conjectures, our scheme results in a polynomial gap between the verification time and the time a classical adversary would need to pass the protocol---both are exponential. It has a potential application to generating classically certifiable randomness, since the output distributions have high min-entropy. We estimate that the planted polynomial scheme is implementable using 100 logical qubits at logical error rates around $10^{-6}$.

We introduce an entanglement distillation protocol that utilizes an arbitrary $[[n,k,d]]$ stabilizer code to convert $n$ raw copies of an $N$-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state into $k$ logical copies in the presence of Pauli noise. Our explicit formulation of the scheme on a star network topology is efficiently scalable to arbitrary $N$, requires only local operations, and minimizes the impact of errors on idle physical qubits, enabling the distribution of high-fidelity entangled logical states between any number of quantum processors. We report the results of numerical experiments using the 5-qubit code, toric code, and $[[144,12,12]]$ bivariate bicyle code to protect against independent single-qubit depolarizing noise on all qubits. Our encoding scheme improves the final GHZ state fidelity relative to a single bare GHZ state sent over the same noisy channel for depolarizing rates up to or above $6 \%$ for all codes tested. Additionally, we use the stabilizer formalism to prove that our protocol can be applied to any $N$-qubit Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) stabilizer state, from which the GHZ state emerges as a special case. This result explicitly establishes the working principle of previous stabilizer-based Bell pair and GHZ state distillation schemes, and generalizes such protocols beyond the traditionally considered states. We also show that some stabilizer codes can distill any stabilizer state with our protocol.

We introduce the notion of stochastically evolving Hamiltonians (SEHs), which are local Hamiltonians whose coefficients are governed by stochastic differential equations (SDEs). After developing some theoretical aspects of these objects, we consider the task of Hamiltonian learning for SEHs. We reanalyse and make necessary extensions to the Huang-Tong-Fang-Su protocol, which first achieved the Heisenberg limit for Hamiltonian coefficient learning, under these circumstances. We delineate theoretically the regimes where the Heisenberg limit can and cannot be retained. Along the way we develop a few tools in quantum sensing and Hamiltonian simulation that may be of independent interest under similar settings in quantum information processing. The broad aim is to encourage the exploration of various settings in quantum information processing in which the control parameters are governed by SDEs.

Routing unknown quantum information across distributed communication networks requires autonomous, measurement-free mechanisms to prevent wave-function collapse. Szegedy quantum walks provide a mechanism for spatial state transport. The conventional walks on unweighted graphs suffer from severe back-reflection, spatial dispersion, and channel crosstalk. In this paper, we introduce a deterministic topological quantum routing architecture based on coined Szegedy quantum walks on edge-duplicated signed graphs. By treating edge signs as localized phase shifts within a balanced coin reflection, we enforce an exact zero back-scattering condition across routing nodes. We demonstrate deterministic Perfect State Transfer (PST) with unit fidelity at exact arrival times across fundamental archetypes, including the signed dumbbell switch $D_{2m,0,2n}$ and scalable glued binary trees. Furthermore, we analyse routing performance under realistic open-system amplitude and phase damping noise channels.

We introduce a classification of quantum phases of mixed states based on the ability to preserve and fault tolerantly transfer information. We formulate phase equivalence between sets of states that encode logical quantum information and are connected by shallow local channel circuits assisted by local measurements and global classical communication of measurement outcomes, where all quantum operations, including measurements, must be robust to noise. We show that the existence of a recovery threshold for local noise is a property of an entire phase. We prove that any two sets of states with nonzero thresholds that are related by finite-depth local channel circuits belong to the same fault tolerant phase. Our approach leads to a classification of subsystem codes without favoring any state of the gauge subsystem, and we demonstrate phase equivalence between 2D and 3D color codes using dimensional jumps within the 3D gauge color code. Lastly, we study how syndrome structure affects fault tolerance in circuits with measurements. We show that qudit stabilizer codes with extended syndromes permit single-shot state preparation, whereas a broad class of shallow circuits measuring point-like syndromes, including state preparation for 2D topological codes and non-Abelian topological orders with solvable anyon theories, is not fault tolerant.

Reconfigurable atom arrays provide a promising platform for high-rate quantum low-density parity-check codes, but their computational advantage depends on whether logical operations can be implemented without incurring prohibitive shuttling and space overheads. We introduce algebraic surgery for lifted product codes, co-designing the logical measurements, auxiliary codes, and atom shuttling to enable hardware-efficient Pauli-product measurements. These protocols provide flexible logical addressability subject to the cyclic-symmetry constraint, enabling a broad class of parallel logical measurements, including canonical logical operators with heavily overlapping physical supports and joint measurements within or between code blocks even with different lift sizes, while achieving constant shuttling depth on neutral-atom processors under explicit layout assumptions. In a representative hardware-model benchmark, a cycle supporting 33 parallel canonical logical measurements is about $2\times$ faster than the compared single-observable graph-based surgery schedules, with competitive qubit overhead. These shuttling and circuit-level simulations confirm that the algebraic structure of quantum low-density parity-check codes can be used not only to reduce space overhead, but also to simplify physical implementation and expand the set of efficiently accessible logical operations on neutral-atom processors.

Distributed quantum computation connects multiple quantum processing units (QPUs) through quantum communication to jointly perform large-scale quantum computations. Since the number of qubits available at each QPU is limited, it is important to reduce quantum communication while keeping the qubit overhead small. To this end, we study an entanglement-assisted model, in which entanglement consumption serves as a measure of quantum communication cost. For exact deterministic implementations in this model, the operator Schmidt rank of the target bipartite unitary provides a general lower bound on entanglement cost when qubit overhead is unrestricted. However, it has remained unclear how closely this bound can be approached with constant qubit overhead. In this work, we show that this lower bound is attainable for every bipartite Clifford unitary using at most two auxiliary qubits per QPU. In addition, for non-Clifford unitaries specified by exact Clifford+$T$ decompositions with $T$-count $t$, we construct implementations with the same qubit overhead whose entanglement cost is at most $2t$ Bell pairs above this lower bound.

Quantum state diffusion unravels a Lindblad master equation into stochastic trajectories of pure states. The ensemble of trajectories is described by a probability density on the manifold of pure states, which contains much more information than the density matrix, its first moment. We derive the time reversal of this diffusion. Writing the reversal of a general diffusion on a manifold in Stratonovich form, and passing through the manifold of pure states, we obtain a backward stochastic differential equation for the state vector, valid for any Hilbert space dimension and any Lindbladian. The backward stochastic equation provides a physical, nonlinear unravelling of the inverse Lindbladian that holds only for the ensemble from which it was constructed. Following score-based generative models, we then use the backward equation to generate a new ensemble close to the original. For the depolarizing channel the unravelling is a Brownian motion on complex projective space, so the uniform distribution of pure states is its stationary law in any dimension. Starting the backward equation from that prior, we bound the error of the resulting distribution compared to the original one in different settings: exact and learned scores, continuous and discrete time.

Inspired by results in quantum information, we report the development of a formalism for optical sensing which abstracts the details of specific optical systems and allows us to form general bounds on measurement based only on the quantity to be measured. We find a universal bound that controls the performance of any passive optical system regardless of the technology used to construct it and that this bound is attained by a unique measurement scheme for each quantity of interest. Shockingly, our optical formalism is nearly identical to the quantum formalism, with essentially the same notions of the state to be measured and the operation of the measurement, along with an accompanying uncertainty principle.

EPR-pair consumption is commonly used as a communication-cost objective in distributed quantum computing, but minimizing EPR cost does not necessarily minimize distributed execution time. Despite its widespread use, the reliability of EPR count as a runtime surrogate has received limited direct characterization across different workloads and communication conditions. This work addresses this gap by systematically evaluating the relationship between EPR cost and runtime over all balanced two-QPU mappings of QFT, QAOA, and CDKM circuits. The results show that mappings with identical EPR cost can have substantially different execution times, lower-EPR mappings can be slower, and minimum-EPR mappings can be runtime-suboptimal. The reliability of EPR count is strongly workload dependent and also changes with the communication operating regime: increasing EPR-generation latency amplifies runtime differences hidden by equal EPR cost, while increased communication concurrency can reduce the ability of EPR count to preserve runtime ordering. These results show that EPR count and execution time are related but distinct optimization objectives, and identify regimes in which explicit communication-aware runtime modeling is necessary.

Encrypted key exchange (EKE), introduced by Bellovin and Merritt (IEEE S\&P 1992), and Masny-Rindal OT, introduced by Masny and Rindal (ACM CCS 2019), are highly-efficient methods for compiling essentially any KEM into advanced cryptographic protocols, namely password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) and oblivious transfer (OT), by relying only on idealized symmetric-key primitives. They have become leading candidates for practically-implementable PAKE and OT due to (1) their simplicity, (2) their plug-and-play nature, allowing for flexibility in the choice of KEM, and (3) existing proofs of UC-security (in the classical adversarial model). Due to point (2) above, these compilers yield attractive candidates for efficient \emph{post-quantum} PAKE and OT, especially given the recent post-quantum KEM standardization efforts. This motivates the question of whether the (UC-)security of these compilers translates to the quantum adversarial model. In this work, we show that it does not. In particular, we prove that a general family of (O)EKE protocols, as well as Masny-Rindal OT, are \emph{not} UC-secure against quantum polynomial-time adversaries, even when instantiated with a post-quantum KEM. To establish UC-insecurity, we devise an adversarial strategy that provably thwarts any attempt by the simulator to extract its input (the password in the case of PAKE, and the receiver's choice bit in the case of OT). To complement these negative results, we establish that both compilers yield certain notions of \emph{game-based} security. Along the way, we establish a novel ``advantage-tight'' one-way to hiding lemma that may be of independent interest.

Self-tallying quantum anonymous voting (SQAV) has drawn considerable attention since it was proposed. However, constrained by design challenges, all existing protocols only accommodate single-selection voting and cannot support multi-selection voting. In this paper, we propose a SQAV protocol with multi-selection voting functionality. In our protocol, $nm$ $n$-particle entangled states are equally divided into $n$ groups, and the $n$ particles in each entangled state are delivered to $n$ voters, one particle per voter. Each voter obtains $n$ voting vectors by sequentially measuring all his (or her) particles that belong to $n$ different group, and then encodes his or her voting information into the vector corresponding to the secret index. Due to entanglement correlation, each voter can verify whether his or her ballot is correct through computation, while any participant can obtain the vote count for each candidate through computation. Our protocol satisfies self-tallying, nonreusability, verifiability, and fairness.

Implementing high-fidelity multiqubit gates is critical for reducing circuit depth in near-term quantum processors and fault-tolerant architectures. However, realizing multiqubit interactions and entanglement remains a critical challenge that limits the implementation of multiqubit gates. Here we propose an all-microwave scheme to realize single-step multiqubit gates incorporating n control and m target qubits, tailored for frequency-tunable superconducting transmon networks. By leveraging cross-resonance (CR) drives, this approach induces effective two-body ZX interactions that are significantly stronger than those achieved in conventional resonant regimes, circumventing the need for tunable couplers. The system's effective Hamiltonian is analytically derived using both quad frame rotation and rigorous block diagonalization. These combined theoretical methods facilitate the identification of optimal parameter regimes that simultaneously enhance desired target couplings and suppress parasitic higher-order terms, such as ZXX interactions. Through numerical simulations and gradient-based pulse-shape optimization, we demonstrate three-qubit gates achieving fidelities exceeding 99.9% within a 60 ns gate duration. Furthermore, we evaluate the fundamental scalability of this framework by extending the optimization to a five-qubit CXXXX architecture, confirming the physical viability of the multi-target driving scheme. Because these multiqubit operations naturally emulate stabilizer measurements, this architecture provides a hardware-efficient strategy for reducing the circuit depth of stabilizer-type operations by replacing sequential two-qubit gate decompositions with single-step multiqubit gates.

We propose a novel framework for discrete-variable (DV) distributed quantum sensing, wherein traditional polarization-based probes are replaced with time-bin entangled qubits. We show that the intrinsic temporal structure of time-bin Bell states can be utilized as a tunable, built-in two-time differential sampling reference for sensing radio-frequency (RF) fields. Unlike existing protocols based on polarization Bell states, which are limited to static measurements, our proposed architecture enables the coherent mapping of dynamic RF phase signals onto static quantum optical phases. By matching the time-bin separation to the RF or intermediate frequency (IF) half-period (antipodal sampling), we theoretically demonstrate that our protocol provides a 6 dB sensitivity enhancement over one-sample static polarization encodings while preserving the 3 dB per-pair entanglement advantage over the separable standard quantum limit benchmark. The performance enhancement is validated with Monte Carlo simulations. This approach provides a solution for RF sensing in DV photonic quantum networks, offering a clear path toward quantum-enhanced and frequency-agile distributed sensor arrays and broader utilization of time-domain quantum probe encodings.

We study quantum random self-reductions for linear problems over finite fields. Let $M\in\mathbb{F}^{n\times n}$ be an arbitrary matrix, and let $\mathcal{O}$ be an oracle that agrees with the linear map $x\mapsto Mx$ on an $\varepsilon$-fraction of inputs $x\sim\mathbb{F}^n$. Given coherent access to $\mathcal{O}$ and coherent entry access to $M$, we give a uniform quantum reduction that computes $Mx$ on any prescribed input $x$ with probability at least $2/3$ in time $\widetilde{O}(nT^{1/3})$, for $n\le T\le n^{3/2}$ and constant field size and $\varepsilon$, where $T$ is the cost of one coherent query to $\mathcal{O}$. In particular, when $T=\widetilde{O}(n)$, the reduction runs in time $\widetilde{O}(n^{4/3})$, improving the $\widetilde{O}(n^{3/2}+T)$ reduction of Asadi, Golovnev, Gur, Shinkar, and Subramanian (SODA 2024). Our reduction uses the Bogolyubov--Ruzsa subspace guaranteed by additive combinatorics, but it avoids learning this subspace explicitly, which was computationally expensive for the previous reduction; in particular, it does not recover a basis for its orthogonal complement. The main technical step is to decompose the inputs into sparse pieces and find a vector that lies outside the Bogolyubov--Ruzsa subspace via a quantum search based on amplitude amplification. This yields a tunable tradeoff between the cost of querying the average-case oracle and the cost of verifying matrix-vector products.

We give an efficient algorithm for learning $k$-dimensional brickwork random quantum circuits using only copies of the output state obtained by applying $U$ to the all-zero input. For a depth-$d$ circuit on $n$ sites with random $2\ell$-qubit gates, the algorithm learns the original circuit $U$ with high probability in $\text{poly}(n,2^{\ell d})$ time for every constant dimensional lattice. In particular, the algorithm is polynomial time as long as $\ell d = O(\log n)$. In one dimension, this reaches the natural boundary suggested by pseudorandomness: pseudorandom states require $\ell d=ω(\log n)$, and structured cryptographic constructions suggest that this scale may be achievable from above. In higher dimensions, it remains plausible that the same $\ell d=ω(\log n)$ scale remains the threshold for ancilla-free pseudorandomness, and our results help clarify the conditions under which pseudorandomness can arise in this setting. The main idea behind our algorithm is a local correlation criterion that identifies gates in the final layer without learning their entire backward light cones, avoiding a bottleneck in the previous approaches. A key technical ingredient is a Carbery-Wright type anticoncentration inequality for low-degree polynomials of Haar random unitaries whose small-ball exponent is independent of the matrix dimension. The dimension-independent exponent is crucial for handling gates of growing locality. This anticoncentration result may also be of independent interest.

At what rate does the von Neumann entropy of an ensemble of quantum states change under Hamiltonian evolution of its constituents? Bravyi proposed the small incremental mixing conjecture controlling the mixing rate of a binary ensemble $\{(1\!-\!p,ρ_1),(p,ρ_2)\}$ by $c\,\|{H}\|h_{2}(p)$ (with the binary entropy $h_{2}$). The proof of Bravyi's conjecture was subsequently reduced to the matrix inequality $\|[A,\log B]\|_{1}\!\leq\! c\,h_{2}(p)$ for positive trace-class operators $A\!\leq\! B$ with $\text{Tr} A\!=\!p$ and $\text{Tr} B\!=\!1$ on separable Hilbert spaces by Mariën, Audenaert, Van Acoleyen, and Verstraete, and they conjectured the optimal constant to be $c\!=\!1$. Here, I prove the latter conjecture using an exact integral representation of the commutator $[A,\log B]$ obtained from the operator layer cake theorem, due to Cheng and Liu. The result gives a sharp dimension-independent limit on how rapidly unitary evolution of one component can change the entropy of a binary quantum ensemble. It follows that mixing rates satisfy small incremental mixing with the optimal constant, and entangling rates of bipartite Hamiltonians are bounded by $(2\log d\!+\!1)\|H\|$. Moreover, the result corrects a conjecture by Lieb and Vershynina for mixing rates of general ensembles.

We introduce double localization, a framework for proving spectral gaps of quantum Gibbs samplers through two complementary operations: geometric localization, which selects updates supported in small spatial regions, and interface localization, which focuses on a model-defined subspace of observables while remaining geometrically global. Our abstract gap theorem combines a global bound on this subspace, called the interface, with local quantum gap estimates under quantitative coupling and geometric assembly conditions. The resulting explicit lower bound controls the gap of the full dynamics without requiring the interface to be invariant under the generator. This separation allows global estimates, including classical comparison, to be combined with local control of the remaining quantum directions. We apply the framework to Hamiltonians built from the vertex terms of Kitaev's finite-group quantum double construction, without plaquette terms, on finite simple three-regular graphs of girth at least six. For the specified local Davies dynamics, we prove an unconditional spectral-gap lower bound by a positive constant independent of graph size for every fixed nontrivial finite group and each fixed inverse temperature $β$ with $0\leβJ<\log(5/3)$, where $J>0$ is the coupling strength. For the smallest non-Abelian group $S_3$, double localization yields a positive lower bound uniform in both graph size and the entire interval $0\leβJ\le\log 3$, providing a guarantee that does not follow directly from existing results. This demonstrates how model-specific finite calculations can extend spectral-gap guarantees for the full quantum dynamics.

Hamiltonian simulations of lattice gauge theories promise new insights into the inner workings of QCD. The rapid development of quantum computing hardware suggests that large scale simulations may soon become feasible. However, no efficient formulation suitable for simulations near the continuum limit is currently known for the non-Abelian case, and existing candidates typically feature long range interactions in the electric part of the Hamiltonian. We prove that such non- localities are unavoidable when the gauge configuration is reparametrised while preserving both the number of degrees of freedom and the fundamental commutation relations. We then attempt to mitigate this by introducing additional gauge links alongside additional constraints. Although this approach is successful in U(1), we prove that the corresponding construction is inconsistent for non-Abelian lattice gauge theories.

Measurements and feedforward enhance the power of shallow quantum circuits, enabling the deterministic implementation of global unitary operations and the preparation of long-range entangled states. We establish a general correspondence between all such protocols and quantum error-correcting codes: the circuit preceding the measurements acts as an encoder, and unitary feedforward can eliminate post-selection if and only if the measurement projectors are detectable errors on the codespace. This correspondence provides a common framework for state preparation and implementation of global unitaries with measurements and feedforward, turning both into a code-design problem. For stabilizer codes with Pauli measurements, although the resulting operation can be non-Clifford, we show that its nonstabilizerness originates entirely from the encoder. We overcome this restriction using non-Pauli measurements or non-additive codes, constructing protocols that generate long-range nonstabilizerness while requiring only single-qubit unitary corrections.

We present a unified algebraic theory of Clifford spacetime quantum fault tolerance, which underpins universal fault-tolerant quantum computation. We construct a spacetime chain complex from a tensor network representation of a circuit that encodes fault propagation, detector syndromes, and logical actions through the associated gauge and stabilizer structure. We show that this theory (1) unifies various formulations of quantum fault tolerance including spacetime codes, Gottesman's gadget framework, fault complexes, and ZX calculus; (2) connects spacetime distances to the gadget-level correctness properties in Gottesman's formalism; (3) naturally accommodates a range of fault models, in particular phenomenological and circuit-level models, bringing these often separately formulated descriptions into a common algebraic framework through different tensor decompositions and fault assignments; and (4) recovers many known fault tolerance constructions and results as special cases, including repeated syndrome extraction, correlated detectors for transversal and fold-transversal gates, Steane- and Knill-type syndrome extraction gadgets, and single-shot error correction.

We study the noise threshold for positive quantum capacity for the qubit depolarizing channel. We explore analytically the action of the qubit depolarizing channel on the symmetric subspaces of the input qubits, in the limit of asymptotically many uses of the channel. We observe the emergence of a bosonic Gaussian channel. Furthermore, the codes previously developed for the depolarizing channel can be translated to codes for the emergent Gaussian channel, and it is easier to further optimize these codes for the simpler emergent Gaussian channel. Translating these codes back to the depolarizing channel leads to extremely good input states for the coherent information of the depolarizing channel producing new lower bounds on the noise threshold for positive capacity. In addition to improved lower bounds on the threshold, this newly found link between depolarizing noise and Gaussian channels offers a novel perspective contributing to our understanding of these symmetric codes.

Causal loops escape paradoxes if they generate valid probabilities under arbitrary independent local interventions. We show that a deterministic classical process is logically consistent if and only if it contains no signaling loops: cyclic signaling is forbidden but cyclic causation is not, allowing indefinite causal order. Logical consistency is then found to hold exactly when the list of events of a process is pairwise exclusive and complete, providing the first event-based, intervention-free, non-recursive characterization of consistent causal loops. Our results repair a previously introduced intervention-free criterion that misses global loops and reveal that what makes deterministic classical communications without causal order consistent is a multipartite form of Specker's principle: if any two of several questions can be answered jointly, so can all of them.

Claims of quantum advantage rest on the classical hardness of simulating quantum circuits. Magic, operator scrambling, anticoncentration, and non-Gaussianity for fermionic circuits are standard diagnostics of complex quantum dynamics. For pure states, some of these have been rigorously connected to classical simulability. Whether these diagnostics reliably track the limits of efficient classical simulation under noise remains unclear. Here, we show that in noisy Clifford+$T$ and nearest-neighbour matchgate+SWAP circuits, dynamical diagnostics and classical simulability can separate in both directions. In particular, the diagnostics can remain nontrivial after classical simulation becomes efficient, or become trivial before known efficient classical algorithms apply. We trace this mismatch to the different statistical properties they probe: magic and scrambling depend on fourth-order statistics of the Pauli spectrum, whereas the simulation algorithms depend primarily on second-order moments, which local noise suppresses at different rates. Thus, dynamical diagnostics measured on a noisy quantum device do not by themselves constitute evidence for classical hardness.

How much time is fundamentally required to extract the syndrome of a stabilizer code on hardware with a given connectivity graph? Previous work by Delfosse--Beverland--Tremblay (2021) and Baspin--Fawzi--Shayeghi (2023) established bounds connecting syndrome extraction to locality constraints on quantum hardware. Here, we address this question by first formulating an intrinsic measure of the interaction required for syndrome extraction directly from the stabilizer group, independent of the generating set used to describe the code. We then show that this measure yields hardware-dependent lower bounds on exact syndrome-extraction depth for arbitrary stabilizer codes. Guided by this measure, we also construct annular surface-code examples with constant-depth local syndrome extraction that provide a counterexample to Corollary 1 of DBT21. Furthermore, for a fixed quantum Tanner family, this measure strengthens the depth bound explicitly stated in BFS23 and, together with our matching construction, establishes an asymptotically tight space--depth tradeoff. In theory, our results connect the information required by syndrome extraction to the communication capacity of a device; while in practice, they provide a way to assess unavoidable circuit costs before committing to a hardware layout.

Here we demonstrate quantum--classical break-even for chemical dynamics applications, reaching useful accuracy with a quantum-hardware wall-clock time comparable to that estimated for practical classical computing resources. Specifically, we construct a quantum workflow for electronic dynamics based on tensor-network circuit compression leveraging spatial locality, extending circuit compression beyond one-dimensional open-boundary systems. This enables application of the workflow to problems that are hardware-native but classically hard. The workflow targets one-dimensional periodic Hamiltonians: circuits classically optimized only for short-time evolution within a small spatial region can be replicated in both space and time to construct long-time dynamics of the full system without classically simulating the corresponding large-scale evolution. We apply the workflow to cyclic conjugated macrocycles with rotational periodicity, 12-qubit benzene and 120-qubit [60]annulene, by embedding their electronic structure onto loops of IBM quantum processors. For the annulene, the quantum-processing-unit (QPU) wall-clock times for hole-doped nonequilibrium dynamics became comparable to the estimated wall-clock time of two classical methods, Majorana propagation and matrix-product-state time evolution based on the time-dependent variational principle; this corresponds to tens to hundreds of compute nodes depending on the task (36 CPU cores per node), assuming near-ideal parallel scaling, bringing the quantum calculation into a wall-clock-time regime comparable to conventional parallel high-performance-computing resources. We also show a situation in which a hybrid quantum--classical calculation is a reasonable choice in terms of both accuracy and computational time. These results show that quantum hardware can become a realistic computational option for chemically relevant electronic dynamics.

As quantum networks move toward multi-user architectures, a central question is how the performance of entanglement distribution scales with the numbers of network nodes $N$ and active users $M$, yet existing studies use different objectives, resource assumptions, and normalizations. To account for delivery distance under multi-user demand, we define entanglement transport, which weights each delivered Bell pair meeting a fixed fidelity threshold by its endpoint separation. In a two-layer framework, (i) a resource layer measures capacity per activation slot under different aggregation regimes, and (ii) a physical layer measures service per second under implementation constraints. For matched implementations with a bounded number of activation slots per second, asymptotic-aggregation capacity sets a service ceiling, whereas achievable service must be established separately. On expanding honeycomb lattices with one random session, fixed-window entanglement-percolation constructions achieve $Θ(N^{-1})$ entanglement transport per activation slot below their thresholds and $Θ(\sqrt N)$ above them. For homogeneous chains, asymptotic aggregation exceeds fixed-window capacity by a factor $Θ(N^2/M)$, and in spatial expansion a noisy physical implementation achieves $Θ(M/N)$ service per second. These examples show that entanglement-transport scaling depends not only on connectivity but also on resource aggregation and physical implementation. The framework provides a common basis on which quantum-network scaling laws can be established.

We establish sufficient conditions for preparing quantum thermal states of noncommuting local Hamiltonians with polylogarithmic circuit depth in arbitrary fixed spatial dimension. Our conditions combine locality and stability bounds on the effective interactions of reduced density matrices of a Gibbs state with a quantitative high-temperature condition and access to coarse classical reference Hamiltonians. When these references can be generated locally, the classical preprocessing cost is $N^{1+o(1)}$ for $N$ sites at inverse-polynomial global accuracy. We construct the preparation circuit from spatially localized Petz recovery maps. Quantum corrections derived from the microscopic Hamiltonian enable accurate recovery while the classical references remain coarse. After preprocessing, the resulting circuit prepares the canonical purification using $N\operatorname{polylog}(N/\varepsilon)$ gates and qubits, where $\varepsilon$ is the preparation error. These results link two fundamental questions: how correlations are organized in thermal equilibrium, and how efficiently the corresponding states can be realized through operations allowed by quantum mechanics. By translating static equilibrium structure into explicit preparation circuits, they give equilibrium locality a constructive computational interpretation and a physically grounded role in quantum algorithm design.

We prove that every bipartite state $ρ$ of a qubit coupled to an $n$-level system whose operator Schmidt rank equals three can be written as a mixture of $\text{rank}(ρ)$ pure product states, and as a mixture of at most $n+1$ mixed product states in general. The second result is tight in the sense that there exist states that cannot be decomposed with a smaller number of terms. Our proof gives constructive methods to obtain the decompositions. It involves eigendecompositions of suitable unitary dilations of an operator explicitly determined by the state. Our framework recovers previously known results for the length of decompositions into pure product states and is also able to deal with decompositions into mixed states. For pure product states, our decomposition is different from existing ones.

A $\mathsf{QMA}(2)$ protocol involves two provers submitting unentangled witnesses to a polynomial-time quantum verifier. In The Power of Unentanglement (ToC, 2009), Aaronson et al. proposed $\mathsf{QMA}(2;h)$, a variant of $\mathsf{QMA}(2)$ in which the two provers may share $h$ EPR pairs. Our main result shows that the power of $\mathsf{QMA}(2)$ remains unchanged for up to logarithmically many shared EPR pairs: $\mathsf{QMA}(2;h)=\mathsf{QMA}(2)$ for $h=O(\log n)$, where $n$ is the input length. The result follows from a simulation using four unentangled witnesses, combined with the Harrow-Montanaro equality $\mathsf{QMA}(4)=\mathsf{QMA}(2)$ (FOCS, 2010). We also prove monotonicity in the EPR budget: $\mathsf{QMA}(2;h)\subseteq\mathsf{QMA}(2;H)$ for $h\le H$, preserving completeness and soundness. Combined with input padding, this shows that establishing $\mathsf{QMA}(2;n^\varepsilon)=\mathsf{QMA}(2)$ for any fixed $\varepsilon>0$ would imply equality for every polynomially bounded budget, resolving the open problem raised by Aaronson et al. Finally, we extend these results to a variant of the model in which the provers may use local operations and classical communication (LOCC) during witness preparation. For logarithmic-size witnesses and inverse-polynomial gaps, both models remain equivalent to their unentangled counterpart when $h=O(\log n)$. We show that extending this equivalence to any superlogarithmic EPR budget in the LOCC model would imply $\mathsf{NP}\subseteq\mathsf{BQP}$.

Avalanche-based detection of small perturbations is commonplace in precision measurement devices from Geiger counters to single-photon avalanche detectors. Here, we expand this principle to sensing of light waves below the quantum shot noise limit, demonstrating numerically how atomic clouds trapped in photonic cavities can exhibit non-perturbative sensitivity to changes in the cavity field when the cavity mode is tuned to a parity-prohibited transition. We find that, when pumped by a continuous-wave laser, the atomic cloud creates emissions which amplify the initially sub-shot-noise fluctuation by two orders of magnitude. Crucially, this amplification is broadly tunable with respect to frequency and independent of atomic energy structure. Even more strikingly, our amplification mechanism preserves the phase imparted on the atoms by the original ultra-weak light wave, marking a qualitative improvement over conventional protocols. Our finding has implications for both quantum state characterization and detection of weak classical signals.

We present a family of quantum amplitude amplification algorithms that interleave ordinary Grover rotations with tunable weak measurements in loops. A successful measurement yields the target state and stops the algorithm, while after a failure, the loop resumes from the post-measurement state without restarting. We express the leading costs in expected Grover iterations as $p \to 0$. For a known target probability $p$, an exact weak measurement-conditioned loop for states near the angle $π/4$ uses $(π/8+1/4+o(1))/\sqrt{p}$ iterations, improving on the standard Grover constant $π/4$ and on optimised restart Grover, and matching the corresponding infimum in our continuous-angle analysis. When only a lower bound $0 < p_0 \leq p < 1/2$ is available, a discrete Lyapunov equation gives the exact expected oracle cost for every fixed measurement strength and a closed-form optimal strength. Using the strength selected from $p_0$, the expected number of Grover iterations is at most $\frac{1}{2\sqrt{2}}(\frac{1}{\sqrt{p}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{p_0}})$, where the expected cost decreases as the actual $p$ increases, and gives the leading constant $1/\sqrt{2}$ at the promise boundary $p = p_0$. For completely unknown $p$, we identify measurement strength $κ(t)=Θ(1/t)$ as the critical scale within the regular schedules considered here and analyse $κ_b(t)=\min\{1/2,b/t\}$. For each fixed $b > 2$, we rigorously derive a closed-form Gamma-function expression $C(b)$ giving $(C(b)/2+o(1))/\sqrt{p}$ expected iterations. Numerical minimisation of this explicit expression gives $b \approx 5.2$ and $C(b)/2 \approx 1.01$. The results show that weak measurements preserve the $Θ(1/\sqrt{p})$ search scale while adding an explicit fixed-point control mechanism and provable oracle savings.

We present a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for distribution network reconfiguration, a combinatorial optimization problem on power distribution networks, that combines a radiality preserving branch-exchange encoding with iterative warm-start quantum imaginary-time evolution to minimize active line losses. The encoding uses a fixed-width binary representation of sequential branch-exchange actions, ensuring that every register outcome decodes to a radial configuration. The quantum subroutine is informed by a surrogate model fit to classically-solved alternating current power flow (ACPF) labels. After a set budget of ACPF solves and circuit samples is exhausted, the algorithm returns the lowest-loss configuration seen. We employ our algorithm on ten test cases, including seven commonly-used benchmark cases and three cases we modified from these and similar standard systems. We include two methods to reduce problem size, which enable extensions of the algorithm to larger networks. We successfully reach minimal-loss configurations for six cases and find configurations with losses from 0.2 percent to 2.18 percent above the reported reference minimal loss for the other four.

Continuous quantum error correction (CQEC) replaces discrete syndrome measurements and recovery operations with continuous syndrome extraction and real-time Hamiltonian feedback. Here we investigate the thermodynamic resources required by this process by formulating measurement-based continuous quantum error correction as an information engine. We distinguish the system-side power associated with energy transfer between the feedback field and the protected system from the controller-side power associated with the feedback Hamiltonian. The framework is first developed for the one-qubit Ahn-Doherty-Landahl (ADL) protocol and subsequently extended to the three-qubit repetition code under continuous stabilizer monitoring. Numerical simulations show that increasing the feedback strength improves the steady-state fidelity and reduces the conditional-state entropy, while both energetic contributions continue to increase in magnitude after the fidelity begins to saturate. These results expose a direct tradeoff between logical stabilization and the energetic resources required for continuous feedback, closely related to previously established energy--precision tradeoffs in quantum measurement and quantum-Zeno stabilization.

We study the complexity of Local Hamiltonian problems under the restriction that every local term is an unweighted occurrence of the same fixed interaction. In the resulting Single-Interaction Hamiltonian (SIH) model, once the interaction is fixed, the Hamiltonian is specified entirely by its ordered interaction hypergraph. Our main technical tool is an exact compiler that converts any fixed finite alphabet of local interactions into a single interaction. On a designated auxiliary subspace, the compiled Hamiltonian reproduces the source Hamiltonian exactly, while the complete spectrum below a chosen separation scale is preserved with multiplicity. Combined with a finite-alphabet normalization, this gives a universal polynomial-time reduction from $k$-Local Hamiltonian to SIH$_{3k+3}$ up to a known global energy scale and inverse-polynomial approximation. Sharper constructions give QMA-completeness of SIH$_3$ and of geometrically local SIH$_8$ with bounded degree and interaction range. In the stoquastic setting, we obtain StoqMA-completeness of Stoq-SIH$_3$ and QMA-completeness of 1-Pinned Stoq-SIH$_4$. We also establish hardness results for uniformly system-size-dependent interactions and derive single-interaction formulations of the Hamiltonian quantum PCP conjecture, frustration-free, exponentially precise, and guided Local Hamiltonian problems. These results show that independently chosen local matrices and independently tunable coupling strengths are not necessary for a broad range of Hamiltonian-complexity phenomena.

We construct efficient information-theoretic non-malleable codes for classical messages that are secure against two noncommunicating local quantum tampering operations with arbitrary pre-shared entanglement. For every sufficiently small fixed $ξ>0$ and all sufficiently large first-share lengths $n$, the codes have rate at least $1/5-ξ$, perfect correctness, and error $2^{-n^{Ω(1)}}$. Security holds for every message, with a single message-independent simulator for each attack. This resolves the constant-rate question for worst-case classical messages in the entangled two-split-state model. Our construction builds on the permutation-based two-split construction of Batra, Boddu, and Jain, which achieves rate approaching $1/5$ for uniformly random messages. We retain their architecture but replace the uniform message input to the permutation with a prescribed message concatenated with fresh uniform padding. Our main contribution is a worst-case security reduction for this modification.

Maximum-likelihood decoding provides an optimal decoding strategy for quantum error correction under stochastic Pauli noise. However, computing logical-class probabilities is challenging, and the leading exact tensor-network contraction requires time exponential in treewidth. In this work, we introduce a new decoding algorithm based on rank-decomposition dynamic programming (Rank DP). We express decoding partition functions with independent local fault factors as quadratic sums of powers and apply Rank DP. The resulting exact evaluator has arithmetic complexity polynomial in the input size and exponential in the Tanner graph's rank-width with respect to the fault partition, including decomposition construction. After Gaussian elimination, it gives polynomial-time decoding for punctured quantum Reed-Muller codes and a Steane-concatenated family with growing distance under independent single-qubit Pauli noise. Standard contraction of the corresponding tensor networks requires superpolynomial time. A nonnegative realization gives relative floating-point error bounds under explicit arithmetic assumptions. Numerical experiments demonstrate runtime advantages over the tested tensor-network implementations on selected code-capacity and circuit-level instances, with full likelihood evaluation for Reed-Muller codes up to $1{,}023$ qubits. We further use these likelihoods to learn circuit noise parameters from syndromes, evaluate rare postselection probabilities, and quantify decoder optimality gaps. Our work opens new avenues for exploiting algebraic structure in quantum decoding and noise characterization.

While color centers in diamond and other three-dimensional crystals are nowadays key elements of several types of sensors, color centers in two-dimensional materials are rapidly developing and promise high-tech applications. One of the interesting centers in 2D materials is the negatively charged boron vacancy in hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), which has already shown some potential for magnetometry, but the reliable creation of boron vacancies remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of negatively charged boron vacancy color centers in bulk h-BN via implantation of helium ions at ~1 MeV, as confirmed by characteristic photoluminescence and optically detected magnetic resonance. The resonance has a width of 180 MHz and exhibits the expected Zeeman shift of the resonance lines. The depth of the color center along the c-axis of the h-BN crystal was measured and compared with predictions from Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter modeling. The experimental value and the modeled prediction are consistent within the reported uncertainties, as their 1σ intervals overlap, although the experiment shows a greater depth and a wider distribution.

We prove a local amplitude-ratio bound for positive ground states and an explicit reverse comparison for fidelity under finite-region erasure. An exact lattice calculation for a connected critical Ising chain gives amplitude exponent $1/8$, preserved by arbitrary optimal control on any fixed spin set and, at the level of logarithmic exponents, on $o(\log N)$ spins. We derive the finite Cauchy product and its uniform strip asymptotics, and document exact two-spin optimization and an interferometric protocol for measuring the recovery. A separate finite-mediator theorem quantifies local compression and a decoder while retaining the rest of the environment exactly. We also give a ground-preparation Ramsey bound, counterexamples to stronger projected-state inferences, and independent full-Hamiltonian calculations.

Layer codes are three-dimensional local CSS codes of check weight at most six, obtained by quasi-concatenating a CSS input code with unrotated surface code patches. What is established about them describes the code, not the circuit that measures it. In this work, we evaluate them as active memories under circuit-level noise. Doing so first requires a syndrome extraction circuit, and the junction stabilizers that couple the patches rule out borrowing a surface code patch's CNOT schedule. We present a decoder-free scheduler that constrains hook propagation first and compresses depth afterwards, generate circuits for eighteen layer codes across four input codes, and compare them with surface codes of the same distance, simulated and decoded in the same way. The circuits lose no distance to hook errors on [[4,2,2]]-input codes wherever a circuit-distance proof is affordable, and reach a lower logical error rate than those of a general-purpose scheduler for CSS codes at roughly half its CNOT depth per round. Our primary family built from a [[4,2,2]] input code reaches a circuit-level threshold of $5.06(7)\times 10^{-3}$. The layer code outperforms the surface code in terms of idle robustness: at the same distance it tolerates an interval between syndrome extraction rounds 1.7-3.0 times longer than the rotated surface code. This comes at the cost of 1.7-5.0 times more operations per unit time and approximately five times more physical qubits, both per logical qubit. Finally, we model the cost of the beyond-2D cross-plane CNOTs that the construction demands, and find that their speed matters far more than their fidelity.

In graphene and other two-dimensional materials, periodic modulations of the electron density can significantly alter the energy spectrum and transport properties. Here, we report magnetotransport measurements in encapsulated monolayer graphene with ultra-high-quality patterned periodic antidot lattices that preserve the intrinsic electronic properties of the material. This lithographically defined platform enables controlled access to commensurability and superlattice phenomena at length scales otherwise difficult to achieve. By systematically tuning the lattice dimensions, we reveal a hierarchy of classical commensurability features arising from cyclotron orbits with comparable radii that follow multiple classical trajectories, resulting in broadened resistance peaks beyond the conventional single-orbit picture. Superimposed on these features, we observe pronounced Brown-Zak oscillations arising from the quantum commensurability between the magnetic flux quantum and the unit cell of the engineered Bravais lattices. We demonstrate that the intrinsic geometric phase of our system is directly measurable and show a precise matching of the magnetic field periodicity to the lithographic periodic patterning, where moiré-like electronic spectra can be geometrically generated in single-layer graphene without the need for twist, lattice mismatch, or multilayer stacking. Our results establish nanopatterned graphene as a clean, tunable, and scalable platform for realizing and exploring moiré physics through on-demand real-space design

High-precision measurement of oscillating signal is a ubiquitous issue in fundamental science and a critical task in practical technologies. In quantum metrology, quantum lock-in detection provide an efficient method for measuring such signal. In general, when the initial phase of the oscillating signal is unknown,quantum double lock-in detection can effectively extract complete information about the signal's amplitude, frequency, and initial phase. Conventional quantum double lock-in detection requires two individual quantum interferometry, each of which must undergo state preparation and readout. However, the time for state preparation and readout need not be negligible in practical experiments. In particular, the time for state preparation is longer than the time for sensing. To save experimental resources, it is challenging to achieve quantum double lock-in detection just via a single quantum interferometry while still extracting complete information about the signal's amplitude, frequency, and initial phase. Here, we present a general protocol for achieving a quantum double lock-in detection just via a single quantum interferometry under a sequential orthogonal periodic multipulse sequences. In particular, if the input state is a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state and two interaction-based operations are applied during interferometry, the measurement precisions for frequency, amplitude, and initial phase can both approach the Heisenberg limit. Our study paves a new way for measuring oscillating signals with a single quantum interferometry, and provides a feasible method for achieving Heisenberg-limited detection of alternating signals.

Interactive proof systems with a laconic prover, studied by Goldreich, Vadhan, and Wigderson (CC, 2002), capture problems verifiable with logarithmic prover communication in the classical setting. For two-message quantum analogs, even a single-bit prover response contains quantum statistical zero-knowledge ($\sf QSZK$), introduced by Watrous (FOCS 2002). However, restricting the verifier's question to classical public coins collapses the corresponding class to $\sf BQP$, as shown by Beigi, Shor, and Watrous (ToC, 2011). We further study two-message quantum interactive proof systems with a laconic prover. To this end, we introduce the class ${\sf QIP}_{\ell\text{-}{\rm bit}}(2)$, where $\ell$ is the length of the prover's response, and establish: 1. A natural complete characterization of ${\sf QIP}_{\ell\text{-}{\rm bit}}(2)$ by Multi-State Distinguishability. In particular, Quantum State Distinguishability (QSD) is ${\sf QIP}_{\rm bit}$-complete. Since QSD is $\sf QSZK$-hard, our result places ${\sf QIP}_{\ell\text{-}{\rm bit}}(2)$, for $\ell\geq 2$, in a landscape "just above" $\sf QSZK$. 2. Easy regimes for ${\sf QIP}_{\ell\text{-}{\rm bit}}(2)$ collapsing to $\sf QSZK$. We prove that QSD$[a,b]$ (and thus ${\sf QIP}_{\rm bit}[a,b]$) is in $\sf QSZK$ when $a(n)-b(n)\geq 1/O(\log n)$, and combine this with an answer compression from ${\sf QIP}_{\ell\text{-}{\rm bit}}[2,c,s]$ to ${\sf QIP}_{\rm bit}$ to obtain another easy regime when $2c>(1+2^{\ell/2})s$. Remarkably, our improved polarization applies to SD and $\sf SZK$, resolving an open problem in Sahai and Vadhan (JACM, 2003). 3. Quantum public coins also make the interaction useless: ${\sf qc}\text{-}{\sf QAM}[O(\sqrt{\log{n}})]$ with constant gap is in $\sf BQP$, where ${\sf qc}\text{-}{\sf QAM}[\ell]$ is a subclass of ${\sf QIP}_{\ell\text{-}{\rm bit}}(2)$ in which the verifier's question is exactly halves of EPR pairs.

The Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill encoding has emerged as a leading candidate for fault-tolerant quantum computation with continuous variables. For photonic architectures, the major challenge is preparing high-quality resource states, which can be deterministically synthesised from many large-amplitude cat states. Thus far, only modest-sized optical cat states have been prepared experimentally, and the implemented methods are highly probabilistic. We propose an all-optical scheme utilising quantum non-demolition interactions and photon-number measurements to prepare large-amplitude cat states with near-unity probability. Importantly, no particular photon-number outcome is postselected: all outcomes contribute to the accumulated photon number, with the protocol repeated until a required threshold is reached. We demonstrate that the scheme is robust to realistic levels of photon-loss, the dominant source of error in optical systems. Our results highlight the power of active Gaussian operations for state preparation and pave the way for efficient quantum error correction using bosonic codes.

Mathematically rigorous statements on the spectral gap of quantum many-body systems in the thermodynamic limit are notoriously difficult to prove -- yet they are of fundamental importance for classifying quantum phases of matter. Here we prove the existence of a finite excitation gap for a particular Hamiltonian which was proposed in [T. F. Maier et al., PRX Quantum 6, 030340 (2025)] and is motivated by the Rydberg platform. The Hamiltonian exhibits only two-body blockade interactions between two-level systems and has a topologically ordered ground state in the toric code phase. We show that our result also applies to a broader class of blockade Hamiltonians which realize non-Abelian quantum double phases and were proposed in [H. P. Büchler et al., Phys. Rev. B 114, 065113 (2026)]. The proof builds on known gap stability results and exploits the local symmetry of the studied models.

Understanding randomness formation under conservation laws is important both for characterizing chaotic phenomena in isolated quantum systems and for symmetry-constrained quantum information processing. $U(1)$-symmetric random circuits on an $N$-qubit system provide a minimal tractable setting for this problem, in which the formation rate of unitary designs was conjectured to be governed by charge transport in the underlying circuit geometry. However, whether charge transport indeed sets the slowest relaxation mode has remained an open problem, due to the difficulty in deriving a tight lower bound on the symmetric design formation rate. In this work, we resolve this problem by determining the optimal scaling of the unitary $k$-design formation rate for $k\leq O(\sqrt{\log N})$ across a wide range of circuit geometries, including lattices, expander graphs, and all-to-all interactions. In particular, for $k\geq 2$, we find that the formation rate is governed by a two-particle encounter rate---the rate at which two random walkers encounter each other in a given circuit geometry. This encounter rate is parametrically smaller than the single-particle transport rate in many geometries, thereby disproving the previous conjecture. We further establish that this encounter mechanism indeed sets the design formation rate by deriving its matching lower bound with a novel proof technique based on an auxiliary subgroup ensemble. Although this encounter mode imposes a robust bottleneck on design formation in $U(1)$-symmetric random circuits, we also show that this bottleneck can be circumvented by using symmetry-breaking local gates and provide an explicit protocol that achieves faster design formation. These results establish a new picture of randomness formation under conservation laws and provide guiding principles for characterizing and efficiently generating symmetry-constrained randomness.

Quantum speed-ups have been obtained for many fundamental graph problems, including most variants of matching. A notable exception, however, is the maximum-weight perfect matching (MWPM) problem in general graphs with integer edge weights, which is arguably the most challenging variant of matching. We present a quantum algorithm for MWPM in general graphs that runs in \( \widetilde{O}(n m^{2/3}\log W) \) time, where $W$ is an upper bound on the magnitude of the edge weights. This is an improvement over the best known classical combinatorial bound of \( \widetilde{O}(m\sqrt n \log W) \) in the dense regime, where $m\ge n^{3/2}$. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quantum algorithm to obtain an asymptotic improvement over the best classical combinatorial algorithm for the MWPM problem in general graphs. The running time of our method accounts for QRAM initialization and access overheads up to polylogarithmic factors, as well as all classical updates to the data structures. At a high level, our algorithm is based on a classical framework due to Duan, Pettie, and Su, but our algorithm requires replacing certain classical tasks with quantum methods, alternative analysis of classical procedures, and the use of alternative data structures that can be implemented effectively in the QRAM model.

The electron--electron Coulomb singularity forces cusp structure in electronic wavefunctions. This cusp structure limits wavefunction regularity and slows the convergence of expansions in smooth bases, requiring large basis sets to reach a target accuracy. The transcorrelated (TC) method incorporates this short-range behavior into the Hamiltonian, thereby improving the regularity of the transformed wavefunction and accelerating convergence toward the complete-basis-set limit. The resulting Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian and non-normal, which limits the direct applicability of standard quantum algorithms. For such non-normal operators, the complexity of several recent quantum algorithms depends explicitly on quantities related to eigenvector conditioning and eigenvalue sensitivity. Understanding these quantities is essential for assessing both algorithmic complexity and quantum resource requirements. In this work, we address these issues in two stages. We first study a solvable model, which provides a controlled setting for isolating how transcorrelation affects basis convergence and eigenvector conditioning. Within this setting, we investigate two distinct one-parameter Jastrow correlators. We derive the asymptotic energy-error scaling: $N^{-1/2}$ for the bare projection and $N^{-3/2}$ for both TC correlators at generic fixed parameters, with $N$denoting the basis size. Furthermore, we show that this faster convergence can yield a polynomial improvement in the asymptotic query-complexity upper bound. We then extend the analysis to second-quantized electronic-structure Hamiltonians and use particle-number-sector diagnostics to distinguish target-sector from auxiliary-sector conditioning. Our work provides a framework for understanding the central accuracy--cost trade-off in TC Hamiltonians.

We consider quantum circuits consisting of $d$ layers of nearest-neighbor two-qubit gates acting on $n$ qubits arranged on a line, where every qubit is independently depolarized with a constant probability before each layer. We describe a randomized parallel algorithm which samples from the output distribution of any such circuit to within total variation error $δ$, with parallel runtime $2^{O(d)}\log\log(n/δ)$ and $n 2^{O(d)}$ elementary real-arithmetic operations. Without noise, the same approach gives an exact sampler with parallel runtime $O(\log n)$. For constant depth, we further show that the input/output behavior of the noisy quantum circuit is reproduced up to a constant error by a randomized $\mathsf{AC}^0$-circuit, that is, a Boolean circuit of polynomial size and constant depth with unbounded fan-in AND and OR gates and NOT gates. Consequently, every relation problem solved by a noisy constant-depth quantum circuit in one dimension is also solved, with essentially the same success probability, by a randomized $\mathsf{AC}^0$-circuit. This rules out, for noisy circuits in one dimension, the unconditional quantum advantage established for noisy shallow circuits in two and three dimensions, where polynomial-size classical circuits over the same gate set require depth $Ω(\log n/\log\log n)$. Our algorithm exploits the fact that depolarizing noise cuts a one-dimensional circuit into independent pieces of logarithmic width, each of which can be sampled exactly in parallel.

Moiré superlattices formed in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) offer a versatile platform for exploring emergent quantum phases arising from strong electronic correlations. In this work, we develop a new experimental platform, the quantum well resonant tunneling diode (QWRTD), to probe the electronic landscape of $\approx 57^\circ$ twisted bilayer MoS$_2$ (tMoS$_2$). By measuring the differential conductance ($dI/dV_{\text{Probe}}$) as a function of filling factor $ν$ and displacement field $D$, we observe a robust integer correlated insulating state at $ν= 1$ that persists across the measured displacement field range. Furthermore, we identify a displacement-field-induced fractional insulating state at $ν= 3/4$ for $D < -75$~mV/nm. Temperature- and magnetic-field-dependent measurements characterize this $ν= 3/4$ state as a potential generalized Wigner crystal. These correlated states are also observed in another device with a similar twist angle ($\approx 56.5^\circ$). Our results provide direct evidence of correlated states in near-AB-stacked tMoS$_2$ and establish QWRTD as a powerful experimental tool for investigating strong correlations and topology in van der Waals heterostructures.

Scalable quantum processors require repeated qubit initialization throughout large arrays. In semiconductor spin qubits, fast initialization commonly relies on local reservoir access or measurement-based feedback, requiring dedicated infrastructure that becomes increasingly difficult to distribute as processors scale. Here, we demonstrate reservoir- and measurement-free initialization of a silicon spin-qubit pair in an industrially fabricated Si/SiGe quantum-dot device using a fixed sequence of microwave and baseband pulses. Odd spin-parity states relax to the singlet charge state, whereas blocked even spin-parity states are microwave-driven through the triplet manifold and subsequently converted to the singlet by singlet-triplet mixing and charge hybridization. Repeated cycles produce the singlet-associated charge outcome with a median probability of 99.4% across the sampled preparation states, while exchange spectroscopy independently verifies mapping to the target $|\uparrow\downarrow\rangle$ operational state. Microwave spectroscopy and time-domain measurements identify the dark-state-limited single-cycle transfer and the subsequent blockade-lifting dynamics that set the initialization time scale. The demonstrated pumping sequence uses approximately $12\,μ\mathrm{s}$ of microwave bursts and mixing dwells, while we project sub-microsecond initialization under improved device conditions. These results establish fixed-sequence microwave initialization as a scalable control primitive for semiconductor spin-qubit processors, based on singlet-triplet physics that can be adapted to platforms with suitable Pauli-blockade transitions.

A system of free fermions can be simulated on a classical computer, and a single non-Gaussian state makes it a universal quantum computer. We show that the same line bounds quantum nonlocality. Measured as fermionic qubits, free fermions carry the Bell nonlocality of one entangled pair, no more, however many parties share them, and are never genuinely multipartite nonlocal. Fermion parity is the reason. Genuine multipartite nonlocality is thus the resource of universal fermionic computation, cannot arise from any mean-field state, and we certify it on $48$ qubits of IBM processors.

The quantum breakdown model is a model of randomly interacting fermions, motivated by the physics of dielectric breakdown. Here, we establish classification of symmetry and quantum chaos in a zero-dimensional, all-to-all-interacting version of the quantum breakdown model. It exhibits the $\mathbb{Z}_4$ periodicity with respect to the number of fermionic modes, reminiscent of the symmetry classification of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. A unique feature of the quantum breakdown model is that it realizes all the five classes with chiral symmetry and hosts an exponentially large number of many-body zero modes protected by the chiral index. We elucidate the separation and scaling of the spectral gap and demonstrate the symmetry-enriched hard-edge spectral statistics as signatures of quantum chaos in the chiral symmetry classes.

It is widely expected that the von Neumann entanglement of a local operator grows at most logarithmically in integrable many-body systems in infinite volume. We give a counterexample in a four-state brickwork circuit whose gate is a permutation matrix solving the constant Yang--Baxter equation. The von Neumann operator entropy grows as $(\log2)\sqrt{t/π}+O(\log t)$, whereas fixed-index Rényi entropies grow linearly below index one and logarithmically above it. At fixed relative Hilbert--Schmidt error below one, matrix product operator simulations require a bond dimension growing at least as $\exp(c\sqrt t)$ for some $c>0$.

Bivariate bicycle (BB) quantum codes are a prominent finite-length family of quantum low-density parity-check codes, but their minimum distance is usually established numerically rather than read from the defining polynomials. We study the $Z$-logical quotient $K/S$ over $\mathbb F_2[x,y]/(x^\ell-1,y^m-1)$ and show that it fits into a short exact sequence with an annihilator quotient as kernel and a colon quotient as cokernel. The sequence gives an explicit logical basis, a dimension formula, and a componentwise distance identity $d_Z=\min(d_{\mathcal A},d_{\mathcal C})$. Using the Frobenius structure of the finite group algebra, we prove $r_{\mathcal A}=r_{\mathcal C}=k/2$ for every BB code, including repeated-root cases. The algebraic component of a logical class is distinct from the support shape of its lightest representatives: an annihilator class can have a lighter two-block representative, and a colon class can have a one-sided minimum. For lower bounds we show that every proper subset of a minimum-weight logical operator has nonzero syndrome, and that this property persists inside the colon component but not inside the annihilator component. A translation-anchored cluster search built on it proves the distances $4,6,10,10,12,18$ of the six standard BB codes of lengths $18$ to $288$ and enumerates every minimum-weight logical operator. The resulting census shows that $[[108,8,10]]$ is the only one of the six whose distance is attained in a single component, with $d_{\mathcal C}=10$ and $d_{\mathcal A}=12$.

We investigate a finite-time quantum-battery charging architecture in which a driven two-level working system transfers nonequilibrium resources to an interacting two-qubit battery through a weakly anharmonic three-level mediator. Finite-time driving generates coherence and ergotropy, while excitation-number conservation organizes the transfer into distinct dynamical sectors. The mediator then provides spectrally selective charging channels: its lower transition enables nearly complete single-excitation transfer with negligible residual mediator energy, whereas initial mediator loading activates a cross-resonant two-excitation cascade toward the doubly excited battery state. The latter exhibits a modest reduction in transfer efficiency due to the unequal collective matrix elements of the effective three-state chain. Detuning scans quantify the spectral tolerance, and the full mixed-state dynamics reveals distinct energy- and ergotropy-transfer profiles. Finite-time compression, thermal reset, and switching work close the cycle-level energy balance to numerical precision. The resulting scheme combines nonequilibrium resource generation, spectral selectivity, coherent multilevel charging, and thermodynamic cycle closure within a single architecture.

We establish efficient learning for a family of fermionic magic states under unknown number-conserving free-fermion evolution. Each input block has a definite particle number and is a superposition of Fock states, with occupied mode sets disjoint both within and across blocks. The key idea is to exploit the spectral structure of particle reduced density matrices (RDMs) to separate contributions from individual blocks from those involving several blocks, allowing us to reconstruct the hidden block structure. For a fixed upper bound on the particle number per block, our algorithm uses single-copy measurements and polynomial sample and classical computational complexity to recover a compact description of the state with prescribed fidelity and high probability, without prior knowledge of the block decomposition or the evolution. RDMs up to this upper bound suffice for reconstruction. We further show that this RDM order is necessary in general: two orthogonal states in the family can have identical RDMs at every lower order. These results show that an extensive number of non-Gaussian blocks can be compatible with efficient state learning.

We construct the first known fault-tolerant scheme for injecting states into quantum error-correcting codes with constant space and time overhead. That is, we construct a family of constant-rate quantum error-correcting codes for which a set of bare physical qubits can be injected, i.e. fault-tolerantly encoded, into a code block. Similarly, a code state can be ejected, i.e. fault-tolerantly decoded, back into bare physical qubits. We show that these injection and ejection procedures succeed under circuit-level locally stochastic noise, while incurring just a small constant probability of corrupting each qubit, which is unavoidable for bare physical qubits. We also show how to perform fault-tolerant error correction and code-state preparation under locally stochastic noise. All of our gadgets can be implemented with constant quantum circuit depth (i.e. are single-shot), and with a number of physical qubits growing linearly with the number of logical qubits, assuming the ability to run polynomial-sized noiseless classical circuits on the side. We construct our quantum codes by taking a high-dimensional hypergraph product of classical LDPC codes, which in turn are a simplified version of Spielman's linear-time encodable codes (STOC'95). As our resulting product codes are only resilient to physical errors occurring with non-uniform probabilities across qubits, we then show how to concatenate with inner codes of various sizes to obtain fault-tolerance against uniform noise.

For the three-qubit Shifts unextendible product basis (UPB), the minimum product-state expectation value $λ_{\mathrm{Shifts}}=1-3\sqrt6/8$ of the UPB projector is known, and four attaining product states were exhibited previously. We determine the complete equality set over all complex product states and prove that it consists of exactly eight product rays: two rays invariant under cyclic permutation of the three qubits and two cyclic orbits of size three. The proof combines exact phase analysis, a Gröbner-basis classification of all 28 finite real stationary points, and a complete treatment of the projective boundaries. Crucially, the eight contact rays span the full three-qubit Hilbert space, whereas the four previously known rays do not. The complete equality classification therefore establishes that the associated projector witness satisfies the spanning criterion and is optimal in the sense that no nonzero positive semidefinite operator can be subtracted while preserving block positivity. As a corollary, for the white-noise family $ρ(p)=(1-p)ρ_{\mathrm{Shifts}}+p\mathbb I/8$, where $ρ_{\mathrm{Shifts}}$ is the complementary-projector Shifts state, the same witness detects entanglement for $p<2-3\sqrt6/4\approx16.29\%$.

Quantum information complexity (QIC), introduced by Touchette [Touchette, STOC 2015], has been shown to be one of the most powerful methods for proving quantum communication complexity and has also been shown to be equal to amortized quantum communication complexity. Unfortunately, QIC is generally hard to analyze because it is a sum of quantum conditional mutual information terms, which are difficult to estimate. In this work, we introduce a new variational approach, the information potential, for analyzing QIC and proving quantum communication lower bounds inspired by the resolvent representation for quantum relative entropy. This approach connects the QIC of individual messages to a quadratic form, making it more amenable and thus enables us to bound the cumulative positive increments of the potential throughout an interactive quantum protocol by its QIC. Lower bounds on the growth of the potential therefore translate into lower bounds on both QIC and quantum communication complexity. As an application, we give an optimal $Ω(1/r)$ lower bound on the QIC of the two-bit $\mathsf{AND}$ function as well as an optimal $Ω(n/r)$ lower bound on the quantum communication complexity of $r$-round Set-Disjointness, answering an open problem in~[Braverman, Garg, Ko, Mao, Touchette FOCS 2015]. Moreover, we further prove a direct-sum theorem for bounded-round quantum communication complexity of Set Disjointness. With the tight bound on the QIC of $\mathsf{AND}$ function, we further establish a nearly tight tradeoff for the asymmetric quantum communication complexity of $\mathsf{Set} \mathsf{Disjointness}$: $(q_A+1)(q_B+1)=Ω(n)$, where $q_A$ and $q_B$ denote the total numbers of qubits sent by Alice and Bob, respectively.

A recent work studied quantum two-prover one-round proof systems $\mathsf{MIP}^ψ[\text{poly},O(1)]$. It showed that when $ψ$ is a noisy EPR state with quantum maximal correlation $ρ_{\max}(ψ)<1$, the resulting complexity class is equivalent to $\mathsf{NEXP}=\mathsf{MIP}$. In contrast, $\mathsf{MIP}^{\text{EPR}}[\text{poly},O(1)]=\mathsf{RE}$. Not all noise, however, decreases quantum maximal correlation. A basic example is dephasing noise: a dephased EPR pair retain quantum maximal correlation $1$. In this work, we remove the constant-answer restriction and establish a complete dichotomy for $\mathsf{MIP}^ψ[\text{poly},\text{poly}]$, where the provers share arbitrarily many copies of EPR pairs subject to unital noise. Equivalently, let $ψ$ be a fixed two-qubit state with maximally mixed marginals. We prove that \[\mathsf{MIP}^ψ[\text{poly},\text{poly}]=\mathsf{MIP} =\mathsf{NEXP},~\text{if $ψ$ is separable or $ρ_{\max}(ψ)<1$};\]\[\mathsf{MIP}^ψ[\text{poly},\text{poly}]=\mathsf{MIP}^ψ[\text{poly},O(1)]=\mathsf{RE},\text{if $ψ$ is entangled and $ρ_{\max}(ψ)=1$.}\] Beyond the complexity classification, our proof develops two techniques that may be useful more broadly in quantum information and quantum complexity. First, we introduce a positivity-preserving low-degree approximation framework for quantum measurements: instead of truncating positive operators directly in the Pauli basis, we approximate suitable square-root factorizations, simultaneously achieving low Pauli degree, positivity, and global control over an entire POVM. Second, we develop a new dimension-reduction method, called Pauli folding, for low-degree positive operators. Its key ingredient is an almost-multiplicativity theorem for randomized Pauli hashing, which allows noncommutative products, positivity, and normalization to survive compression with controlled error.

Quantum algorithms and quantum hardware are advancing towards a promising paradigm for scientific applications. However, translating domain-specific problems into executable hybrid quantum-classical workflows remains a significant barrier for application researchers due to the required expertise in quantum algorithms, nuances in quantum programming, and hardware-aware system integration. At the same time, AI and primarily LLM based agents are increasingly capable of interpreting natural-language intent, reasoning over complex workflows, and translating high-level objectives into executable code and building computational pipelines. In this work, we introduce SQD Agent, an LLM-based agentic framework that translates natural-language user intent into executable workflows for Quantum Chemistry applications where algorithms from the Sample-Based Quantum Diagonalization (SQD) family are used. By automating this translation, SQD Agent reduces the level of human expertise and configuration overhead required, thereby simplifying experimentation in hybrid quantum-classical settings for application researchers new to quantum. SQD Agent adopts a modular and extensible architecture that supports seamless integration of heterogeneous quantum backends, classical solvers, and workflow components, ensuring adaptability to rapidly evolving quantum ecosystems. The framework further incorporates interactive capabilities for on-demand profiling, bottleneck analysis, resource optimization, intelligent result caching, and convergence visualization. Key features include quantum chemistry experiments, error mitigation on real quantum hardware, together with analysis of candidate mitigation schemes in terms of their potential error-recovery behavior and computational budget, helping users understand their practical trade-offs and decide which strategies to explore in subsequent experiments.

Nonlinear transformations are important in quantum machine learning and other quantum numerical applications, which can be reduced to the implementation of element-wise polynomials through polynomial approximation. Existing works establish the feasibility of transformations and improve query or auxiliary-space efficiency, but circuit depth remains linear in scale with degree. In this work, we develop a resource-tunable quantum framework that decomposes a $(2^d-1)$-degree polynomial into $m$ lower-degree factors, with $m$ controlling the degree of parallelism. By varying $m$ from $1$ to $2^d-1$, the framework provides a trade-off among query complexity, additional gate complexity, ancilla count, and normalization, ranging from a binary-tree implementation to a $\mathcal{O}(n+d)$-depth construction with highly parallel oracle queries that match the query lower bound. The effects of polynomial approximation and implementation errors are further analyzed. We demonstrate the framework for nonlinear activation functions such as sigmoid and tanh, as well as pixel-wise image transformations.

In an adiabatic evolution, the wave function follows the path of ground states $|Φ_0(s)\rangle$ of a Hamiltonian $H(s)$ as $s$ is tuned from $0$ to $1$. The geometry of this adiabatic path is described by quantities such as its length $L=\int_0^1 \|\partial_s |Φ_0(s)\rangle\|\,ds$ and its total curvature $K$. This geometry affects the evolution time $T$. For instance, $T$ is at least of order $L/Δ_*$, where $Δ_*$ is the minimum energy gap over $s\in[0,1]$. The traditional approach gives $L=\mathcal{O}(Δ_*^{-1/2})$ and $K=\mathcal{O}(Δ_*^{-1})$, which are loose in many cases. We improve these bounds by using $μ_<(γ)$, the width of the region in $s$ on which the gap is below $γ$. The gap profile is in width class $p$ when $μ_<(γ)$ falls at least as fast as $γ^{1/p}$. A typical avoided crossing is in width class $p=1$, which gives $L=\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{\log Δ_*^{-1}})$ and $K=\mathcal{O}(\log Δ_*^{-1})$. A profile in width class $p>1$ gives power laws with exponents $(p-1)/(2p)$ for $L$ and $(p-1)/p$ for $K$. The width class also bounds the evolution time. At $p=1$ we have $T=\mathcal{O}(Δ_*^{-2})$ with a schedule that advances $s$ at a constant rate, and $T=\mathcal{O}(Δ_*^{-1})$ up to a polylogarithmic correction with a schedule that traverses the path at a constant geometric speed. The bounds on $L$ hold for any twice continuously differentiable $H(s)$, and the bounds on $K$ for affine $H(s)$. We also prove the tightness of scaling of $L$ in $Δ_*$ for every integer $p\ge1$, and the scaling of $K$ at $p=1$. We demonstrate the bounds on the adiabatic Grover search, the XXZ spin chain, and molecular electronic Hamiltonians.

We give collective tomography protocols for quantum states and channels with known symmetries, using random purification and dilation to reduce learning to pure-state estimation. For states commuting with a compact-group representation with multiplicities $m_λ$, the optimal copy complexity is $Θ((\sum_λm_λ^2+\logη^{-1})/\varepsilon^2)$ for sufficiently small trace-distance error $\varepsilon$ and failure probability $η$ for the nontrivial case $\sum_λm_λ^2>1$. For $G$-covariant channels with finite-dimensional unitary representations of a compact group $G$, parallel $\widetilde{O}(D_G/\varepsilon^2)$ queries achieve a diamond-distance error $\varepsilon $ at fixed success probability $2/3$, where $D_G$ counts the real parameters of covariant Choi operators before imposing trace preservation. For permutation-covariant channels on $k$ qudits of fixed local dimension $d$, at sufficiently small fixed error and fixed success probability $2/3$, we obtain the optimal query scalings $Θ_d(k^{d^4-1})$ for diamond distance and $Θ_d(k^{d^4-d^2})$ for Choi trace distance. Furthermore, we resolve an open problem in quantum tomography of constructing efficient quantum circuits that approximate the Hayashi measurement for optimal pure-state estimation. We encode states in the symmetric subspace into bosonic occupation modes, realize the measurement by heterodyne detection and normalization, and approximate this procedure on qubits using the quantum Hermite transform. Combined with our symmetry-compatible purification and dilation circuits, this yields query-optimal and gate-efficient learners of permutation-covariant states and channels with gate complexity $O_d(\mathrm{poly}(k,\varepsilon^{-1},\logη^{-1}))$.

Characterizing entanglement in quantum materials through experimentally accessible observables remains a central challenge. Quantum Fisher information associated with sums of one-site spin operators provides one route by linking entanglement to measurable magnetic response functions. Extending this approach to local composite observables requires new entanglement bounds. Here we establish a rigorous bound for the total nearest-neighbour vector chirality of periodic spin-$1/2$ chains with an even number of sites. The quantum Fisher information per spin cannot exceed $k+1$ for any $k$-producible state, so exceeding this bound certifies entanglement depth of at least $k+1$. Combining infinite density-matrix renormalization group and thermal pure quantum-state calculations, we demonstrate multipartite entanglement encoded in vector-chiral correlations at zero and finite temperatures in an extended $J_1$-$J_2$ XXZ chain. The spin-current coupling between vector chirality and electric polarization offers, in principle, access to this witness through dielectric loss spectroscopy in multiferroic magnets, extending entanglement diagnostics beyond dipolar spin correlations.

Position verification, introduced by Chandran et al. (SIAM J. Computing 2014), allows verifiers to test a prover's claimed position by an interactive protocol. Classical position verification is impossible. Even for Quantum Position Verification (QPV), there always exists an LOCC (Local Operations and Classical Communication) attack if the adversary can hold an exponentially large amount of preshared entanglement. Somewhat surprisingly, we show that we can circumvent this barrier in the idealized continuous-time model, where time is represented by a real-valued parameter and challenge messages can be sent at a time sampled uniformly from a real interval. In this model, we give a BB84-based protocol that remains secure against any finite coalition of LOCC adversaries with arbitrary finite (possibly exponential) quantum storage and entanglement. Our construction can also be instantiated in the discrete-time model. Even though the previous impossibility results apply, we are able to obtain an information-theoretic QPV protocol in which the honest parties' total resources (communication and storage) can be significantly smaller than the adversarial resource bound. In fact, we can achieve any desired polynomial gap between honest parties and adversarial resources. To our knowledge, all previous protocols in the literature required resources of the honest parties to be at least as large as the adversarial entanglement. Interestingly, the resource gap between the honest and adversarial party resources in our protocol depends on how precisely time can be measured. As the precision of the best-known clock improves with further research, the resource gap in our protocol keeps increasing. In particular, the adversarial resource bound keeps increasing while the honest parties' resources remain largely the same. We call this the "I sleep, you work" paradigm.

Random circuit sampling is a leading approach to demonstrating quantum computational advantage, but benchmarking noisy implementations through linear cross-entropy requires costly calculations of ideal output probabilities. We propose a metrological benchmark based on the response to controlled perturbations, characterized by quantum Fisher information (QFI). A relation between QFI and out-of-time-order correlators enables protocols with local or global control. For Haar-random circuits, the average QFI approaches its maximal value in the local protocol and grows linearly with the number of qubits under collective control. In contrast, Clifford circuits yield zero QFI despite extensive operator spreading, showing that the response probes dynamical properties beyond spreading alone. A butterfly protocol further uses system size to enhance sensitivity, yielding a mean inverse sensitivity proportional to the number of qubits with single-qubit readout. Its fluctuations distinguish the Haar and Clifford ensembles despite their identical mean responses. For noisy implementations, we derive an exact relation between the noisy and ideal QFI within a global white-noise model, providing a quantitative reference for the degradation of the benchmark. These protocols enable metrological benchmarking of noisy random quantum circuits without computing ideal output probabilities.

Radchenko and Wheeler (RW) recently proved a finite pentagon relation for real quadratic special values of the modular quantum dilogarithm and used it to establish the rank-$1$ twisted convolution identity conjectured by the current authors. RW gave an explicit argument in the principal case and remarked that their proof holds for all rank-$1$ admissible tuples. We extend their proof to all rank-$r$ admissible tuples and provide an explicit dictionary between the modular quantum dilogarithm and the Shintani-Faddeev modular cocycle conventions in the respective papers. Thus, we establish that, if $d,r$ are positive integers such that $r<\frac{d-1}{2}$ and $\frac{d^2-1}{r(d-r)} \in \mathbb{Z}$, then there exist ghost $r$-SICs: i.e., configurations of $d^2$ rank-$r$ subspaces in $\mathbb{C}^d$ that satisfy a non-Hermitian equichordal condition. Under the Stark conjecture, these configurations are Galois conjugate to Hermitian equichordal configurations called $r$-SICs (or rank-$r$ SIC-POVMs).

Gausslet orbitals on a cubic lattice, introduced in [Steven R. White, J. Chem. Phys. 147, 244102 (2017)], represent a localized, smooth, and systematically refineable basis set featuring a "diagonal" approximability of the electron repulsion integral tensor. The present work develops efficient algorithms for evaluating overlap integrals required for electronic-structure simulations using these Gausslets, specifically the kinetic, nuclear, and electron repulsion integrals (both with and without the diagonal approximation). Computational efficiency improvements rest on the exploitation of translation, permutation, and octahedral symmetries, a reordering and precomputation of nested sums, as well as an early truncation of small coefficients. Our algorithms reduce the number of electron repulsion integrals on a $5 \times 5 \times 5$ grid from $125^4 = 244140625$ to $324275$ due to symmetries, and achieve a wall-clock runtime for evaluating the remaining integrals with a truncation tolerance of $10^{-5}$ in under 2 seconds on a laptop computer. We apply the developed methodology to compute the ground state of the hydrogen atom and molecule as a demonstration.

Fingerprint recognition is a widely deployed biometric, but supervised training requires large labeled enrollment sets. Self-supervised learning (SSL) removes this requirement, and hybrid quantum-classical models have been proposed to enrich the learned representations. Prior quantum SSL studies consider a single contrastive objective, so it is unclear whether reported benefits depend on the objective or can be attributed to the quantum circuit. We insert the QuFeX quantum feature-extraction module into three SSL frameworks, the contrastive SimCLR and MoCo v2 and the non-contrastive BYOL, and compare each hybrid with its classical counterpart at matched representation width (8 features, equal to 8 qubits) on the SOCOFing fingerprint dataset, with a CIFAR-10 control, using k-nearest-neighbor identification on encoder features. In single-run experiments the hybrid scores clearly higher for both contrastive objectives, whereas for BYOL a multi-seed analysis shows no reliable difference, suggesting that any benefit depends on the SSL objective. A hardware-efficient circuit (QNet) does not show the same gain. We examine whether the gains can be attributed to the quantum circuit, considering circuit architecture, trainable parameter count, nonlinearity, and the classical simulability of 8-qubit circuits.

Nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) underpin computational fluid dynamics, yet resolving nonlinear transport on fine grids remains computationally demanding. Quantum linear-evolution algorithms offer a possible route to large-scale simulation but cannot directly propagate nonlinear coupling. Here we develop a Frozen--Oseen quantum homotopy method (FOQHAM) framework that links transport-aware auxiliary-operator selection to the size of the resulting linear representation. We freeze the full Fréchet derivative at a prescribed flow profile, retaining transport and profile-gradient coupling and close each prescribed finite-order homotopy hierarchy as a fixed affine linear system by product lifting. We formulate its propagation through Linear Combinations of Hamiltonian Simulations (LCHS), without outer homotopy iterations or profile updates. For spatially semidiscrete equations, we establish local approximation bounds and exact closure of the finite-order hierarchy. Classical tests on Burgers, Korteweg--de Vries, Zakharov--Kuznetsov, and one- and two-dimensional isothermal compressible Navier--Stokes equations provide numerical evidence of accurate non-iterative approximations in the tested regimes. The framework thus connects nonlinear PDE approximation to quantum linear evolution and offers a conditional path toward quantum acceleration.

We characterize bound entanglement in bipartite qutrit systems by combining the Positive Partial Transpose (PPT) criterion with a structural, non-completely positive map. Focusing on a comprehensive three-parameter bipartite qutrit family $ρ_{a,b,c}$, we present an exact analytical and geometric partitioning of the physical state space simplex. We derive the closed-form quadratic boundary governing the leaf-like PPT region $(a^2+ab+b^2-b \leq 0)$ over the domain $0 < a \leq \frac{1}{3}$, and identify the exact linear threshold $(a > c)$ that characterizes the PPT bound entangled sub-region. This family strictly generalizes the well-known Horodecki bound entangled states, which appear as a single slice of the three-dimensional leaf. Applying the structural map to this decomposition, we show that it certifies bound entanglement throughout the entire threshold region, accounting for $14.76\%$ of the total PPT leaf area.

Consider two orthonormal bases of a bipartite Hilbert space such that states in one basis are weakly entangled and states in the other are strongly entangled. We establish a quantitative version of the following uncertainty principle: every state that is localized in one basis must be delocalized in the other. More specifically, we lower bound the sum of the Shannon entropies of any state's coefficient distributions in the two bases by the difference between the entanglement Rényi entropies of their basis states. The result follows from new lower and upper bounds on the entanglement of superpositions that may be of independent interest. As an application, our result limits the power of weakly-entangled states in representing ground states of Hamiltonians with strongly-entangled energy eigenstates. We illustrate this application numerically for the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model.

Faulty syndrome measurements can corrupt an otherwise correct quantum-error correction step. Bivariate bicycle (BB) codes contain dependent stabilizer checks, so their measured syndromes obey parity constraints that can be used as metachecks. We study when this built-in redundancy actually supports syndrome repair and how it interacts with the logical structure of the code. Annihilator quotients identify single-block logical classes and show when a mixed-block search is unavoidable. For syndrome repair, the metasyndrome is equivalent to reduction modulo the valid-syndrome ideal. The translation group therefore maps into the unit group of a quotient algebra of dimension $k/2$, with kernel $K_M$. This gives a distance-two characterization, a unit-group bound on distinguishable single faults, and a family-level obstruction: for bounded-$k$ BB families with growing block length, metasyndrome-only exact repair fails with probability tending to one at any fixed measurement-error rate. With no intervening data fault, the same orbit count also gives the minimum partial second measurement needed to remove every single-fault ambiguity. Exact calculations separate the standard examples. The $[[72,12,6]]$ code has syndrome distance three and minimum-weight repair corrects every single measurement fault, whereas Gross $[[144,12,12]]$ has 36 indistinguishable single-fault pairs. Sustained phenomenological experiments show the same qualitative contrast and favor joint data--measurement decoding over a separated repair stage on the codes with stronger ambiguity. The analysis extends our earlier coprime-period treatment to general two-block BB codes and separates measurement ambiguity from the data error it can induce.

Toroidal discrete Wigner functions (DWFs) for finite-dimensional systems are non-unique. We classify the labeled single-qudit ${d\times d}$ representations whose phase-point operators are Hermitian, unit-trace, Hilbert-Schmidt orthogonal, and Weyl-Heisenberg covariant. Our previously established stencil theorem expresses this family as descents of a doubled ${2d\times2d}$ parent. Here, we solve its projected-stencil admissibility conditions explicitly. In the symplectic-Fourier representation, admissibility fixes the modulus, leaving phase data on a ${d\times d}$ base cell satisfying a parity-dependent twisted-oddness relation. This gives the parameter space ${(S^1)^{(d^2-1)/2}}$ for odd ${d}$ and ${(S^1)^{(d^2-4)/2}\times\mathbb{Z}_2^3}$ for even ${d}$. Canonical horizontal and vertical marginals reduce these spaces to ${(S^1)^{(d-1)^2/2}}$ and ${(S^1)^{d(d-2)/2}\times\mathbb{Z}_2}$, respectively. The same phase data parameterize validity-preserving rephasings of the doubled Weyl-Heisenberg displacement operators. Requiring these operators to have order dividing the Hilbert-space dimension ${d}$ replaces each ${S^1}$ factor by a discrete ${\mathbb{Z}_d}$ factor. The associated symplectic-Fourier characteristic functions encode the same operator information, with pointwise magnitudes independent of the valid stencil convention. This classification separates the freedom intrinsic to DWF validity from that selected by marginal and displacement-algebra requirements and makes explicit the structural distinction between odd and even dimensions.

We study the problem of property testing quantum states: given a pure state $|ψ\rangle$ that either (A) belongs to some class $C$ of pure states, or (B) is $\varepsilon$-far in trace distance from all states in $C$, determine which is the case with high probability. It is known that there exists classes $C$ for which the sample complexity of property testing necessarily scales with the size of the system. In this work, we identify classes for which testing only requires a size-independent number of samples. We prove a tight sample complexity of $Θ(1/\varepsilon^2)$ for the property testing of five important classes of Gaussian quantum states: 1) Fermionic Gaussian states, 2) Slater determinants, 3) bosonic Gaussian states, 4) zero-mean bosonic Gaussian states, and 5) bosonic coherent states. While property testers for some of these classes have been studied previously, those analyses only gave upper bounds scaling polynomially in the number of modes. In each case, our tester is the projection onto the ``top'' irrep of two or three copies. We get to constant sample complexity by lower bounding how quickly the rejection probability increases with distance from the class; the main technical component involves bounding the spectral gap of symmetric extension of the test projector. We then establish optimality by proving matching lower bounds based on binary state discrimination for each class. Our testers and optimality claims also extend to the tolerant setting, wherein $ψ$ may be $O(\varepsilon)$-close to $C$ in case (A), rather than lying exactly inside.

Compiling a continuous gate set to a discrete universal gate set generally incurs an overhead. A circuit composed of $G$ arbitrary one- and two-qubit gates can be $ε$-approximated by a sequence of gates from $\{H,T,\mathrm{CNOT}\}$ by replacing each original gate by a sequence of $O(\log(G/ε))$ elementary gates. We show that this overhead can be avoided using adaptivity for polynomial-sized circuits with inverse-polynomial target error, which is optimal.

Engineering dissipation has emerged as a powerful strategy for controlling quantum many-body dynamics, complementing purely coherent control for state preparation. However, finite-time driving across a quantum critical point generates nonadiabatic excitations and coherences, and existing dissipation-engineering approaches have largely characterized how a fixed environment modifies critical dynamics rather than actively steering a system toward a prescribed thermal trajectory. Here we develop a Markovian dissipative framework for finite-time thermal-state tracking based on engineered population currents with non-negative transition rates, and apply it to the transverse-field Ising model driven across its quantum critical point. Compared with unitary dynamics and a natural thermal bath, the engineered dynamics strongly suppresses thermal excitation deviations and provides additional control over coherence damping through a free common current $Q_k$, while exhibiting a substantially steeper residual scaling, $δn_{\mathrm{ex}}^{\mathrm{th}}\sim(v/v_{\mathrm{ch}})^2$, than the Kibble--Zurek behavior recovered for unitary evolution. These results point toward engineered dissipation as a route for controlling thermal-state preparation in driven quantum critical systems.

Nonlinear exceptional points (NEPs) were proposed to circumvent the noise--responsivity cancellation that limits linear exceptional-point sensors. At an NEP, the stationary frequency response can be singular while the Hamiltonian Petermann factor remains finite, suggesting a genuine signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement. Yet recent model-specific analyses of nonlinear fluctuations have reached conflicting conclusions. We prove that any singular stationary frequency response requires a fixed-point bifurcation of the nonlinear dynamics. In local fluctuation regimes, the singularities in responsivity and long-time frequency uncertainty are both set by the critical relaxation rate, leading to exact cancellation in the SNR and precluding any divergent enhancement. Furthermore, we derive a path-information bound that applies across both local and nonlinear fluctuation regimes and places a finite ceiling on the long-time SNR enhancement. Notably, this upper bound is attainable in the local fluctuation regime, implying that frequency readout under such parameter settings is information-optimal.

Broadening the study of quantum optimization algorithms from binary to $k$-element alphabets has been shown to open new avenues for potential quantum advantage. A quantum advantage claim for approximate optimization requires showing that, under the same assumptions, an efficient quantum algorithm provably achieves a better performance than can be proven for the best known efficient classical algorithms. We study local classical and quantum algorithms for Max-$k$-Cut on $d$-regular graphs of girth $g$. We advance classical algorithms for this problem by developing a local vector algorithm based on the explicit vector construction of Thompson, Parekh, and Marwaha (TPM). Our algorithm gives the best provable cut fraction guarantee among known efficient classical algorithms on regular graphs for $k\geq3$. To evaluate the performance of QAOA under identical assumptions of girth and regularity, we develop tensor network techniques for general $d$ and $k \geq 2$. In addition, using an equivalence to a coupled qudit--boson system, we compute the QAOA performance in the infinite-degree limit. Together, these techniques give provable guarantees on QAOA performance on large graphs. Despite the improvements we introduce to the classical algorithm, QAOA achieves a better cut fraction guarantee for depths $p\geq 9$, corresponding to girth $g\geq 20$, for both finite- and infinite-degree regimes. Thus, we obtain an apparent quantum advantage from applying QAOA to the Max-$k$-Cut problem.

The rapidly growing landscape of quantum error-correction (QEC) protocols has produced a wealth of numerical data, but comparatively few heuristics for understanding and predicting their performance. Here, we develop a simple entropy-based proxy that predicts the thresholds of a variety of QEC protocols, ranging from the code-capacity setting of Clifford-deformed surface codes with biased Pauli or erasure noise to the circuit-level noise model of the surface or color codes with flag qubits. Our proxy estimates the threshold by locally comparing the noise entropy with the error information gained via stabilizer measurements (or spacetime detectors and flag outcomes in the circuit-level settings). Despite neglecting correlations between stabilizer outcomes and the contribution from code degeneracy, the proxy captures the main trends across diverse settings and yields threshold estimates in good agreement with numerical results. Our work develops much-needed phenomenology that enables simple back-of-the-envelope estimates of QEC performance, recovering and providing an explanation for the results of computationally intensive detailed simulations.

Recent work by Wills constructed codes with constant rate and transversal $T$. Extending this line of work, we construct asymptotically good CSS codes with \textbf{fully addressable} transversal $T$, permitting selective control over which logical qubits receive a $T$ gate. We also give Pauli-LDPC codes with transversal $T$ and growing distance at vanishing rate; and a protected-subsystem construction with fully addressable transversal $T$, constant protected rate, distance $Ω(\sqrt n)$, and sparse (non-Pauli) checks. More generally, we obtain asymptotically good binary codes with full transversal addressability for every fixed finite-order one-qubit gate, retaining CSS realizations for dyadic phase gates such as $\sqrt T$ and using generally nonadditive codes for rotations such as $R_z(π/7)$. The remaining challenge is to construct asymptotically good Pauli-LDPC codes with fully addressable transversal non-Clifford one-qubit gates.

Pseudorandom error-correcting codes (PRCs), introduced by Christ and Gunn [CRYPTO 2024], are classical error-correcting codes whose codewords are computationally indistinguishable from uniformly random strings. We initiate the study of quantum analogues of PRCs. We define quantum pseudorandom error-correcting codes (QPRCs). Assuming that Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) is hard for $2^{O(\sqrt{n})}$-time quantum algorithms, we construct QPRCs whose encodings are indistinguishable from Haar-random isometries. We call these pseudorandom isometric error-correcting codes (PRICs), and our construction is robust to all $o(n \frac{\log \log n}{\log n})$-local quantum noise, where $n$ is the number of physical qubits. Under the same assumption, we also construct QPRCs whose encodings are indistinguishable from the completely depolarizing channel and that are robust to all $αn$-local quantum noise for some constant $α>0$. The latter QPRCs give a direct quantum analogue of classical PRCs. To construct PRICs, we develop two technical ingredients of independent interest. First, we introduce a new classical cryptographic primitive which we call pseudorandom functional error-correcting codes (PRFCs) and construct them under the same LPN assumption. Second, we develop a new efficient decoding procedure within the codeword-stabilized (CWS) framework introduced in [Cross, Smith, Smolin, and Zeng, IEEE ISIT 2008], which is a generic framework for constructing quantum error-correcting codes by combining (possibly nonlinear) classical error-correcting codes and graphs. This resolves the open problem of finding a general method for efficiently decoding such CWS codes based on nonlinear classical codes, raised in [Li, Dumer, Grassl, and Pryadko, Physical Review A 2010].

It is well-known that thermalization breaks down in presence of an extensive number of symmetries or conservation laws that are mutually compatible or commuting with each other. We ask here how an extensive number of mutually incompatible local symmetries govern eigenstate thermalization (ETH). We will investigate this through models within the class of bond-dependent $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetric quantum spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ Hamiltonians that naturally admit this structure. This leads to exponentially large degeneracies in the spectrum governed by the incompatible symmetry structure. Here, using spectral diagnostics, we show that non-integrability can survive despite extensively many conserved quantities when they are incompatible. Furthermore, we show that ETH behavior persists deep into the many-body spectral edge due to this structure. In other words, incompatible local symmetries enable a mechanism to obtain enough thermodynamic entropy at low excitation energy densities to make ETH operational or predictive near the ground state.

The commuting local-Hamiltonian (CLH) problem is a restriction of the local-Hamiltonian problem, in which the terms of the Hamiltonian are required to pairwise commute. A long line of work has shown that the problem lies in $\mathsf{NP}$ for certain families of commuting local Hamiltonians. Nevertheless, there has been no formal evidence against the possibility that the general CLH problem is $\mathsf{QMA}$-complete. CLH is complete for the complexity class $\mathsf{QIMA}$, defined through quantum verifiers whose local gates commute. Therefore, CLH is $\mathsf{QMA}$-complete if and only if $\mathsf{QIMA}=\mathsf{QMA}$. In this work, we introduce a classical-oracle analogue $\mathsf{QIMA}^{\mathcal{O}}$ and construct a classical oracle $\mathcal{O}$ such that $\mathsf{BQP}^{\mathcal{O}}\not\subseteq\mathsf{QIMA}^{\mathcal{O}}$. Since $\mathsf{BQP}^{\mathcal{O}}\subseteq\mathsf{QMA}^{\mathcal{O}}$ for any classical oracle $\mathcal{O}$, this implies $\mathsf{QIMA}^{\mathcal{O}}\neq\mathsf{QMA}^{\mathcal{O}}$ for our constructed oracle. Thus, our result provides relativized evidence against the possibility that the general commuting local-Hamiltonian problem is $\mathsf{BQP}$-hard, and hence also against the possibility that it is $\mathsf{QMA}$-complete.

The generation of certified random bits is an emerging near-term application of quantum computers. Potential applications, such as randomness beacons and CRS generation, require nearly uniform randomness, whose rate (the ratio of min-entropy to bitlength) is ~ 1. However, existing protocols for certified randomness either produce weakly random strings with rate o(1), or they require a trusted random seed. We show how to certify randomness with the optimal rate ~ 1 without requiring any trusted randomness from the verifier. Our protocol is secure unconditionally in the quantum random oracle model (QROM). This improves the result of Coladangelo et al., who certified weakly random strings unconditionally in the QROM, and answers a question posed by Aaronson and Hung. We also define and construct a proof of conditional min-entropy, which certifies optimal min-entropy even conditioned on an adversarially chosen transcript. We show an application of this primitive to randomness beacons, where each pulse should have high min-entropy conditioned on all previous messages.

We numerically investigate frequency-comb generation in an electrically pumped vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser coupled to two mechanical modes of a suspended mirror. Displacement-dependent cavity loss and radiation-pressure feedback couple the mechanical motion to the carrier and photon densities, producing harmonics and combination-frequency components in the photon-density spectrum. Mechanical quality factors primarily control the intensity of comb lines, whereas resonance frequencies determine their spectral distribution. The initial mechanical amplitudes influence the threshold current and relative spectral intensities, with the simultaneous excitation of both modes yielding a broader set of observable components. These results establish the dependence of the calculated comb structure on mechanical dissipation, resonance frequencies, and initial conditions in an active optomechanical cavity.

We introduce a quantum-echo Markov process for combinatorial optimization. Quantum dynamics based on quantum annealing (QA) or the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is used to engineer the transition kernel. Increasing the annealing time in QA or the number of layers in QAOA enables transitions to explore distant configurations while suppressing large energy changes. The Hamming-space delocalization originates from operator spreading, whereas the energy-space localization arises from a dynamically generated correlation. For optimization, we propose quantum-echo local optimization with and without greedy descent. We find that its performance is governed by the interplay between Hamming-space nonlocality and energy-space locality, and that excessive energy-space localization can degrade optimization performance. Incorporating greedy descent substantially improves the performance, highlighting the complementary roles of quantum dynamics for exploration and greedy descent for exploitation. These results establish quantum-echo dynamics as a framework for engineering structured transition kernels and provide a route to using finite-resource quantum many-body dynamics as a computational primitive for iterative optimization.

We show that assuming the existence of homomorphic encryption, parallel repetition of all interactive arguments (after being run under homomorphic encryption) reduces the soundness error at a tight exponential rate even in the post-quantum setting. Moreover, we generalize this result to hold for threshold verifiers, where the parallel repeated verifier accepts if and only if at least $t$ of the executions are accepted (for some threshold $t$). Prior to this work, these results were known only when the cheating prover was assumed to be classical, and it was not known how to achieve tight bounds. As a corollary, we construct the first constant-round succinct argument for $\mathsf{QMA}$ with negligible completeness and soundness errors assuming only the existence of quantum homomorphic encryption.

In this work, we propose a defect-aware parallel atom reloading protocol that reloads atoms based on defect information to increase the atom filling rate. The proposed protocol is useful for neutral-atom quantum computers, where reloading atoms into the defects, or atom-loss positions, is mandatory for continuous operation against atom loss. Our protocol takes advantage of both parallelism and defect awareness to improve atom-reloading efficiency. The proposed protocol consists of the coherent atom reloading operation and the defect-aware planner. The former replenishes the defects with atoms preserving the quantum information coherently. This coherence allows us to adaptively choose the reloading strategy based on the current defect configuration. The latter determines the atom reloading pattern to efficiently replenish the defects. In numerical experiments assuming a low-noise environment, we confirmed that the average atom filling rate improved from 98.61% to 99.94% for a 36 x 90 atom array, matching the filling rate obtained with a mixed integer programming solver to within 0.001 percentage points while planning each reload in under 0.1 ms. These results demonstrate that defect-aware parallel reloading can achieve and sustain high atom filling rates while the performance of the defect-aware planner meets the real-time requirements of neutral-atom quantum computers.

Number-conserving cooling can fail to prepare an interacting flat-band target when Pauli exclusion blocks its transfer destinations. We study this failure on vertex-edge decorated graphs at one particle per flat orbital. The rank of a cut block of the flat-orbital Gram matrix bounds the number of residual source directions that can remain flat. For sublinear-range cooling with no Hamiltonian term, separated spin domains on periodic decorated hypercubic lattices support exponentially many stationary states with a nonzero bright-particle density. For a chain with fixed finite cooling range, we construct a physical Fock initial state whose overlap with a wrong dark state is independent of system size. This gives fidelity and bright-density bounds valid at every time. In higher dimensions, the bare overlap decays with boundary area, while local boundary rotations prepare states with a finite failure weight in constant circuit depth. Dephasing the occupations of all compact bright modes restores global attraction to the ferromagnetic target when the graph and cooling destinations satisfy the stated conditions. The result allows Hamiltonians that preserve the target. The compressed dynamics in the strong-dephasing limit also remains attractive and has a positive gap at each fixed size. Gram calculations, finite-system dynamics, and Liouvillian spectra test the analytic results. Weak-dephasing and particle-transport bounds constrain the preparation time despite eventual convergence.

Certified deletion allows a client to upload encrypted data to a server as a quantum state, then later request that the server delete their data and detect whether the server complies. If verification passes, then the data on the server will remain hidden even if the decryption key is later leaked. In publicly verifiable certified deletion, the verification key is published so that anyone may check for deletion compliance. In this work, we give a general compiler to publicly verifiable certified deletion that allows the client to initially upload the *quantum* ciphertext using purely *classical* communication, assuming the post-quantum hardness of LWE in the plain model. Our approach can be applied to a wide variety of primitives, including commitments and public-key, attribute-based, identity-based, and fully-homomorphic encryption. Moreover, our constructions allow the client to classically manage the encrypted data beyond just verifying its deletion. The classical client may non-destructively audit the ciphertext via a Proof of No Intrusion to check whether it has been leaked to a third party. The classical client may also retrieve the data while simultaneously verifying its deletion from the server. Thus, they do not have to choose between retrieving the data and protecting it against future key leakage. As our core technical contribution, we give a classical-communication protocol and simulation technique that allows adapting purification-based security arguments for BB84-style states which are prepared through classical interaction. It makes the required purification available in a hybrid experiment, despite the classical transcript uniquely determining the prepared state in a real execution.

A time-lock puzzle allows a sender to hide a message in a puzzle such that recovering the message requires substantially more sequential computation than the time required to generate the puzzle, even when parallel computation is allowed. Applications of time-lock puzzles include timed-release encryption, sealed-bid auctions, electronic voting, fair contract signing, coin flipping, and Byzantine consensus. However, time-lock puzzles are known to be impossible in the classical random oracle model. To overcome the classical barrier, in this work we consider quantum time-lock puzzles, in which the puzzle itself is a quantum state. Our construction in the quantum random oracle model achieves generation in one oracle round, solving in at most $T$ oracle rounds, and security against polynomial-width quantum adversaries of depth $o(T)$ for every polynomially bounded delay $T=T(λ)$, resolving an open problem posed by Mahmoody, Moran, and Vadhan (2011).

Neodymium-doped gadolinium vanadate (Nd:GdVO$_4$) is a popular laser material at room temperature. It has received limited attention for quantum technologies because of the linebroadening effects of disordered gadolinium spins in the host. Here we investigate the optical properties at temperatures below the 2.5 K Néel temperature, revealing narrow optical transitions. We demonstrate that rare earth ions in magnetic hosts give us a new way of observing the signs of magnetic g-factors. The interplay between the exchange and Zeeman interactions means that we see clear evidence of negative g-factors. These results provide a detailed spectroscopic foundation for Nd:GdVO$_4$ and expand the understanding of its candidacy as a material for hybrid quantum systems.

Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) seeks quantum advantage by sampling photon-number patterns generated with squeezed inputs and passive linear optics. Many proposed GBS applications instead target function computation by applying functions to mode-resolved photon-number outcomes---a natural form of experimental postprocessing that produces classical outputs. Sampling hardness alone, however, does not determine the complexity of these tasks. By analyzing the irreducible decomposition of fixed-photon-number operator spaces, we prove that the expectation value of every such function in the average case over passive linear-optical networks can be classically evaluated for inputs with finite squeezing strength. We also provide a classical algorithm that estimates this value to inverse-polynomial additive error. The result provides new theoretical tools for analyzing linear-optical quantum systems, helps clarify the origin of current GBS hardness evidence, and inspires new applications of GBS with genuine quantum advantages.

We probe the quantum response of plasmonic heterodimers with extended (plane waves) and localized (point dipoles and electron beams) sources. Implementing the surface-response formalism based on Feibelman parameters, we explore nanosphere heterodimers where one particle is characterized by electron spill-in, while the other by spill-out. We identify situations where the two quantum surface corrections that act in opposite spectral-shift directions can cancel out, producing mesoscopic spectra that do not differ from the predictions of the local-response approximation. This picture changes dramatically once localized sources are implemented, allowing one to selectively probe the quantum response of the particles independently. Such probing occurs in terms of higher-order modes in the case of electron beams, or for the complete modal landscape in the case of point dipole sources. This description offers a new insight into the mechanisms governing light--matter interactions in extreme plasmonic architectures, and opens new perspectives for the understanding and tailoring of plasmonic--quantum emitter architectures.

Clifford augmented methods have emerged as a powerful technique to simulate quantum circuits and many-body systems by exploiting the stabiliser structure found in said systems, whilst additionally enabling one to readily quantify the non-stabilizerness (i.e.\ magic) present. In this work, we utilise a qudit Clifford augmented simulation method to probe the presence of magic in the Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki (AKLT) model, finding that its ground state and scar states are highly magical as quantified by their Stabiliser Rényi Entropy (SRE). Nevertheless, owing to its low entanglement structure, these states are still readily expressible as a Clifford augmented Matrix Product State with low bond-dimension and moreover may be time-evolved using the Clifford augmented time-dependent variational principle (TDVP) algorithm. We utilise Clifford augmented TDVP to study the string order dynamics in the scar states of the AKLT model after a quench within the Haldane phase to the anti-ferromagnetic Heisenberg Hamiltonian. We observe that there is a decay of string order following the quench, which is more pronounced with increasing bimagnon number. This finding highlights the sensitivity of string order in the AKLT scar states to symmetry-preserving quenches, even when the initial and final Hamiltonians belong to the same topological phase.

An unbiased qubit positive operator-valued measure (POVM) can be uniquely expressed in terms of the Bloch vector. We prove that for POVMs with coplanar Bloch vectors, they are jointly measurable if and only if the perimeter of the convex closure of Bloch vectors is less than or equal to 4. Moreover, as a corollary, we give an affirmative answer to the conjecture suggested by [Andrejic-Kunjwal 2020] on the existence of a joint device for POVMs whose Bloch vectors lie on the same circle.

Optimistic matrix mirror-prox (OMMP) computes $ε$-approximate Nash equilibria in quantum zero-sum games with an $O(1/\varepsilon)$ average-iterate guarantee [arXiv:2311.10859]. We investigate whether this dependence on accuracy is tight and whether geometric last-iterate convergence can be guaranteed. We study these questions through explicit games with one qubit per player. First, we prove an $Ω(1/\varepsilon)$ lower bound for the uniform-average output that includes the maximally mixed initial state, independently of the regularizer and step size. Second, we construct a fixed game on which optimistic gradient descent-ascent (OGDA), initialized at the maximally mixed state, has last-iterate Frobenius distance to equilibrium $Θ(1/t)$ and duality gap $Θ(1/t^3)$ for every sufficiently small fixed step size. A separate fixed game exhibits arbitrarily long delays in reducing the initial error by a constant factor across a family of initial states. Finally, we give a fixed game with a unique, strictly complementary equilibrium on which optimistic matrix multiplicative weights updates (OMMWU) converge only polynomially from the maximally mixed state for every fixed positive step size. The last-iterate Frobenius distance and quantum relative entropy from the equilibrium to the iterates decay as $Θ(1/t)$, while the duality gap decays as $Θ(1/t^2)$.

Spin correlations govern numerous collective behaviors of quantum materials, underpinning exotic phenomena such as unconventional superconductivity and topological magnetism. In layered materials, the interlayer spin correlation is important because it characterizes the magnetic ground state and determines spin transport across the interface. Yet interlayer spin correlations have remained hard to measure directly, leaving one of the most basic quantities of two-dimensional magnetism out of experimental reach. Here we provide the first direct optical probe of interlayer spin correlations, using two-magnon Raman scattering in the van der Waals antiferromagnet (AFM) CrSBr, in remarkable agreement with a microscopic spin-wave model without any fitting parameter. Moreover, the two-magnon channel switches on only in the AFM state and vanishes when a magnetic field takes the crystal to a ferromagnetic state. We furthermore establish an exciton-mediated variant of the technique, where tuning the laser near the exciton resonance enhances the signal roughly tenfold due to the exciton's large oscillator strength. Magnon-pair Raman spectroscopy thus opens a direct optical window into interlayer spin correlations in van der Waals magnets, extendable to twisted bilayers and proximity-coupled heterostructures.

We propose a holographic dual of the relative entropy of entanglement for a boundary tripartition $A:B:C$. Our proposal is that, at the leading order, \begin{align} E_R(ρ_{AB}) = \frac{1}{4G_N}\Big[\mathrm{Area}(Γ_{\min}) - \mathrm{Area}(γ_{AB})\Big] \notag \end{align} where $Γ_{\min}$ is the minimal bulk tripartition surface and $γ_{AB}$ is the minimal surface homologous to $AB$. For a general random tensor network, we prove the corresponding upper bound by constructing a separable state associated with $Γ_{\min}$ and evaluating its relative entropy. We also establish the matching lower bound rigorously for networks of one, two, and three Haar random tensors by bounding the maximal tripartite product-state overlap. In appropriate geometries, the minimal tripartition surface can form a nontrivial tri-junction resembling the Mercedes logo. The proof proceeds by sequential optimization over candidate product states, which has a natural geometric interpretation as a local search for the minimal tripartition surface.

High-order coherent-state modulation with reflective cavity-coupled atomic memories can distribute multiple heralded ebits per transmitted optical mode, but requires a collective midpoint POVM optimized for maximum distillable entanglement rather than minimum-error state discrimination. An SRM-inspired 16-QAM receiver reaches $1.75$ ebits per mode at $0.5$~dB end-to-end loss, $3.8$~dB below the half-link capacity benchmark. For 4-QAM, a variational POVM with more outcomes than constellation points improves the SRM rate by $4.0\%$ yet remains below capacity, revealing measurement-design headroom. The advantage over single-qubit-per-mode midpoint protocols persists for per-interface loss $<0.2$~dB and calibrated phase error $<0.2π$.

Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) rely heavily on classical optimization routines to navigate high-dimensional, noisy parameter landscapes. However, the evaluation of analytical gradients via the parameter-shift rule requires $\mathcal{O}(p)$ circuit executions, rendering this approach computationally prohibitive for deep circuits. While simultaneous perturbation methods provide an $\mathcal{O}(1)$ alternative, their gradient estimates suffer from severe $\mathcal{O}(p)$ spatial variance, which impedes convergence. To resolve this tension, we introduce the Cached Recycled Variance-Reduced Gradient (CRVG) by leveraging variance reduction techniques. We formulate two variants: a 3-Circuit (1-Sided) Non-Recursive CRVG and a Recursive CRVG. By introducing a center-point caching mechanism, the 3-Circuit CRVG mathematically recycles quantum measurements to reduce the inner-loop circuit complexity by 25\% across both variants. We establish a theoretical separation between the two routing paths to achieve an $ε^2$-stationary point: the non-recursive variant reaches a sample complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\max\{p/ε^2, p^{2/3}/ε^{10/3}\})$, while the recursive variant achieves an improved complexity of $\mathcal{O}(\max\{p/ε^2, \sqrt{p}/ε^3\})$. Empirically, extensive evaluations on MaxCut and Maximum Independent Set (MIS) benchmarks validate these findings. While standard simultaneous perturbation remains a robust baseline across varying depths, CRVG demonstrates targeted advantages in specific amortizable regimes, such as the non-recursive variant on EfficientSU2 circuits and both variants on depth-three QAOA, yielding superior energy minimums and tighter output variances. Ultimately, CRVG establishes a principled bias-throughput trade-off for scaling near-term quantum optimization.

We introduce a framework for combinatorial optimization using sum-constrained continuous quadratic programs solvable by QCi's Dirac-3S photonic entropy computer. This is enabled by the Motzkin-Straus theorem which provides a powerful bridge between discrete clique problems and optimization over the probability simplex. We demonstrate this framework's versatility by solving constraint satisfaction problems, providing extensive benchmarks on the DIMACS suite. The Dirac-3S platform matches or outright leads two independently implemented classical baselines on more than four-fifths of the benchmark instances, reaching the best known solution on nearly all structured graph families, even outperforming both classical solvers on several of the largest instances tested. On the other hand, well-tuned classical continuous optimizers retain an edge only on the hardest planted-clique instances. This work establishes a viable pathway for solving combinatorial optimization problems using natively analog unconventional computing platforms, while positioning entropy computing as a competitive approach for navigating non-convex landscapes and providing rigorous baselines for an emerging computational paradigm.

Experimental tests of shallow-circuit quantum advantage require explicit classical bounds at finite circuit sizes. We refine the finite-size classical soundness bound of Aasnaess's graph-distributed construction to depend linearly on the number of players. Combined with standard disjoint-player repetition, this gives a two-round test on a single processor for any finite nonlocal game with a finite-dimensional perfect quantum strategy and classical winning probability $γ<1$, with arbitrarily small classical success. The method is based on playing $m$ copies with disjoint players and teleporting each player's register to a uniformly random one of $N$ sites before the questions are revealed. Each answer bit of a depth-$D$, fan-in-$K$ classical response with fixed wiring depends on at most $K^D$ question wires, making cross-player dependencies unlikely when $N$ is large. The quantum implementation has constant depth per round and wins with certainty. A classical device wins with probability at most $γ^m+O(mK^D/N)$, which vanishes as $O(\log N/N)$ for $m=\lceil\log_{1/γ}N\rceil$ at fixed $D$ and $K$. We present an explicit proposal for an experimentally testable quantum advantage with 99 qubits.

Two-dimensional atomic arrays provide versatile free-space quantum optical interfaces by coupling photons to collective lattice modes. Here we show that the Rayleigh--Wood anomaly provides a sharp control mechanism for both linear and nonlinear photon scattering from a single atomic layer. As the lattice spacing crosses the diffraction threshold, newly opened radiative channels rapidly broaden the dominant collective modes, converting specular reflection into diffuse off-axis scattering. In transmission, momentum-space Fano interference between the incident and collectively scattered fields produces single-photon intensity zeros that strongly reshape the momentum-space correlation pattern. An integrated nonlinear contrast reveals a pronounced channel asymmetry: upon opening the Rayleigh channels, the connected two-photon contribution drops by several orders of magnitude relative to the factorized background in transmission, while remaining close to unity in reflection. These results establish radiative diffraction thresholds as a control principle for quantum nonlinear optics in single-layer atomic arrays.

The Clifford hierarchy $\mathsf{C}_1 \subset \mathsf{C}_2 \subset \cdots$ was introduced by Gottesman and Chuang (arXiv:quant-ph/9908010) to characterize gates that admit fault-tolerant implementation by gate teleportation. Yet, despite its rich mathematical structure and the attention it has received in recent years, little is known about $\mathsf{C}_k$ for $k > 3$. Most progress has focused on identifying structural properties of restrictions of the hierarchy, such as diagonal gates and gates on systems of small dimension $d$ or with few qudits. The generalized semi-Clifford conjecture, proposed by Zeng et al. (arXiv:0712.2084), states that every gate in $\cup_k \mathsf{C}_k$ is, up to multiplication by Cliffords, the product of a permutation and a diagonal matrix. Beigi and Shor proved the case $d=2$, $k=3$ (arXiv:0810.5108) and Pllaha et al. found an alternative proof by exploiting fixed points of the conjugation map induced by (a Clifford correction of) $U \in \mathsf{C}_3$ on the span of maximal stabilizer subgroups (arXiv:2006.14040). By extending their fixed-point arguments to the group $Γ_1(U)$ generated by $U \mathsf{P} U^\dagger$ and beyond, we prove the conjecture for $k \leq 4$ and any prime dimension $d$. Our proof centers on conjugation groups $Γ_1(U), Γ_2(U), \ldots$ of $U \in \mathsf{C}_k$, which we expect to be a useful tool in the study of the Clifford hierarchy more generally. We also show a natural sufficient condition on such groups for gates in higher levels to be generalized semi-Clifford.

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond exist in neutral (NV0) and negatively charged (NV-) states, and quantifying their respective photoluminescence (PL) contributions is important for charge-state-based measurements. Existing methods either require additional experimental control or may suffer from limited physical identifiability. Here, we introduce a geometric method for determining NV charge-state contributions from PL spectra acquired at different excitation intensities. Each spectrum is mapped into a low-dimensional space through broadband spectral weighting, where changes in the relative NV0 and NV- contributions trace a one-dimensional trajectory. Zero-phonon-line (ZPL) information from two spectra physically calibrates this trajectory, enabling the NV-PL contribution to be determined by geometric projection. Measurements on two bulk single-crystal diamond samples yielded NV- contributions in close agreement with those obtained using an independent dual-excitation reference-spectrum method, with root-mean-square errors of 1.11 and 0.31 percentage points. Under additive spectral noise, the proposed method exhibited more than an order of magnitude less variation than a ZPL-only method. Fisher-information analysis further showed that the three-dimensional CIE XYZ representation retained approximately 81% of the information about the NV- contribution available in the full spectrum. These results establish a physically calibrated approach to low-dimensional spectral estimation that combines reduced experimental overhead with robust parameter estimation and provides a general framework for spectral sensing governed by a small number of physical degrees of freedom.

Random unitary operations are a fundamental resource for quantum information processing, yet provably generating them with experimentally available controls remains challenging. Existing approaches often require calculating higher-order operator expectation values, relying on statistical assumptions about the experimental Hamiltonian's spectrum to make these calculations tractable. We show how to implement random unitaries by a sequence of evolutions generated by a fixed Hamiltonian conjugated by a global control operator. We give a geometric argument that establishes exponential convergence to the uniform random (Haar) measure on the accessible unitary group under uniform parameter sampling, beyond a finite sequence-length threshold that we bound. We show this holds when the connected Lie subgroup generated by the conjugated Hamiltonians is closed. Native dynamics and global control thus provide a constructive route to uniform randomness, with applications to many experimental platforms including Rydberg atoms, bosons and fermions in optical lattices, transmons, and trapped ions.

Searching in a linked list is one of the most basic problems in classical algorithms. Although the nodes of the list come with memory addresses, classically those addresses play no role in the cost of search: one simply starts at the head and follows successor pointers to search for an element. In this paper, we show that the quantum setting is different. Here, the ambient address space from which the list vertices are drawn can itself affect the query complexity. We study the following problem analogous to search in a linked list in the query complexity model: the input consists of an address universe $[N]$, a public start symbol $s$, a successor oracle $f$ whose non-$\perp$ values trace a hidden simple path $s \to a_1 \to a_2 \to \cdots \to a_\ell \to \perp$, and a marking oracle $g$ that marks at most one list vertex. The task is to decide whether the list contains a marked vertex. We prove that both the decision and search versions of this problem for all $N \ge \ell \ge 1$ have quantum query complexity $Θ\!\bigl(\min\{\ell,(N\ell)^{1/4}\}\bigr)$. Thus, quite surprisingly, when $N < \ell^3$ the optimal quantum complexity is $(N\ell)^{1/4}$, which is strictly smaller than the $Θ(\ell)$ cost of ordinary linked-list traversal. This gives a precise characterization of when the ambient address space yields a genuine quantum advantage for linked-list search. We extend our results and give the same tight asymptotic bounds for the natural double linked-list version as well.

Unused encoding states offer opportunities to simplify quantum circuits. For algorithms restricted to reachable subspaces, unspecified diagonal-operator entries can be optimized without changing ideal computation. We investigate exact diagonal completion for the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) applied to placement, using permutation-preserving register swaps. We construct exact Manhattan-distance operators through weighted-$\ell_1$ optimization of Walsh coefficients and a sparse recurrence requiring $O(\sqrt{m})$ terms on balanced rectangles, avoiding $O(m^4)$ dense constraint storage. Across 160 geometries, weighted-$\ell_1$ completion reduces controlled-NOT (CX) counts relative to four alternative extensions in all 96 cases with unused binary codes under Gray-code synthesis. On an independently specified 60-case cohort, median reductions relative to virtual-coordinate extension are 28.0\%, 53.9\%, and 21.6\% at six, nine, and twelve sites. Under generic diagonal synthesis, reductions decrease to 10.9\%, 1.3\%, and 0.7\%, demonstrating compiler dependence. Additional ancillas reduce mixer serialization, but token circuits remain deeper than one-hot baselines. Ideal placement simulations show baseline-dependent solution quality, with classical search performing better. OpenROAD integration takes 72 QAOA and 216 classical placements across six RTL designs through clock-tree synthesis and global routing with zero overflow. Completion improves phase construction; no end-to-end advantage is established.

We study the ergotropy and the thermodynamic potentials of a qubit battery charged by repeated interactions with clusters of thermal ancillas, qubits or oscillators, through a composite system-bath coupling that generates steady-state coherence in the energy basis. A single parameter encoding the bath quantum statistics yields the coherence and ergotropy in closed form for any cluster size. For large clusters, the ergotropy becomes independent of the bath statistics and, at optimal couplings, reaches a universal fraction of the equilibrium internal energy of the qubit at the bath temperature. Since the charged state has no population inversion, all extractable work comes from coherence. The ergotropy is flat at low temperatures. We trace this plateau to the third law, and show that the ergotropy is proportional to the equilibrium enthalpy of the qubit, whose slope vanishes with the heat capacity. For a battery composed of multiple qubits, the coherence grows exponentially with the number of qubits while the ergotropy grows linearly, both remaining a nearly constant fraction of their respective maxima. The charged state is a non-equilibrium steady state with finite entropy at zero temperature, sustained by the work of switching the collisional interaction on and off. The cost is nonzero whenever the parallel coupling is nonzero, and, unlike the ergotropy, it depends on the bath statistics.

Readout-side residual hybrids concatenate raw inputs with measured quantum features. Under single-example gradient sharing, a biased first linear layer admits standard analytic recovery of its input, so the bypass exposes raw coordinates without requiring inversion of the quantum circuit. We audit this mechanism using two tabular datasets, four architectures, and metrics conditioned on feature visibility. Iterative gradient matching gives median full-record PSNR of 73-96 dB for residual and input-only heads. Quantum-only heads score 8-11 dB on the full record but 54-96 dB on the six input coordinates they actually encode. These are reconstruction results for the tested six-input, six-observable circuits, not a general statement about quantum encodings. A loss-threshold membership attack remains near chance. The contribution is a visibility-conditioned privacy audit: omitted coordinates must not be credited as protection supplied by quantum processing, and near-exact PSNR differences must not be interpreted as meaningful privacy rankings. Our findings concern individual gradients and do not establish leakage under aggregation or multiple local training steps.

Error mitigation is expected to turn noisy quantum measurements into more useful estimates. We show that it can instead amplify error. Under control-offset miscalibration, the evaluated unconstrained zero-noise extrapolation (ZNE) estimators are worse than no mitigation on 38-63% of simulated instances and produce extreme tail errors. A small IBM Heron study finds worsening on 80-88% of 18 instances across two depths, with mean error 3.0-4.1 times the raw error. In simulation, the median changes little, so median-only monitoring misses the failures. We then compare methods at the same online shot budget per evaluation and report offline training cost separately. After that cost is amortized, a budget-conditioned neural corrector occupies the low-budget end of the simulated accuracy-cost frontier and falls back to the raw estimate when an ensemble disagrees; its hardware transfer remains unsuccessful. Finally, we treat provider-reported calibration as an input that is not bound to the execution-time device state. A white-box projected-gradient stress test on this metadata increases the corrector's error 8.1 times within the feature ranges used for training and evades the disagreement monitor on half of the worsened cases. Together, the results connect budget-aware evaluation, tail risk, and calibration integrity in near-term quantum learning pipelines.

Recent works have demonstrated that quantum oracles have subtle behavior, as access to inverse, conjugate or controlled queries can exponentially change the query complexity of certain tasks. Inspired by these works, we introduce the notion of meta-complexity of quantum relativization. We ask: for any two quantum complexity classes, under which "types" of quantum oracles are they equal or separated? Different pantheons of oracles (or quantum oracle types, e.g. unitary vs state, poly- vs superpoly-dimensional, closed under inverse or not) form a partially ordered set based on their power in separating complexity classes. Moreover, two oracle pantheons A and B are separated if there exists a pair of complexity classes that are separated under an oracle from pantheon A but yet the complexity classes are equivalent under all oracles from pantheon B. We show that this meta-complexity can be nontrivial by giving a complete classification, within the family of oracle pantheons defined in this paper, of which models can separate the complexity classes $\mathsf{PostBQP}$ and $\mathsf{PreciseBQP}$, the exponentially precise variant of $\mathsf{BQP}$. Both classes equal $\mathsf{PP}$ in the unrelativized setting. Within our taxonomy, they remain equal relative to real or polynomial-dimensional unitary oracles and whenever inverse or conjugate access is supplied. In contrast, we give a separation relative to forward-only complex diagonal unitaries of superpolynomial dimension, as well as a separation relative to single-qubit state-preparation oracles. We view this as a test case for the meta-complexity of oracles which underscores the subtlety inherent to the relativization of quantum complexity classes.

Integrated quantum photonics benefits from photon-pair sources that generate photons directly in waveguides, where they can be efficiently collected, routed, and manipulated. Here, we investigate spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) in a fused tapered-fibre microcoupler formed from two single-mode fibres, and report four contributions. First, we observe SFWM photon pairs in this multimode device: its elliptical central region supports three spatial mode profiles, each with two polarisations, giving six guided modes, and pumping it near 800 nm yields two photon pairs at 648/1048 nm and 660/1021 nm. Second, because several allowed SFWM processes produce similar wavelengths and wavelength alone does not identify their origin, we distinguish the processes by combining phase-matching calculations and selection rules with two independent polarisation measurements: the dependence of the coincidence rate on pump polarisation and polarisation tomography of the generated photons. Third, within the present geometrical model, we find that the 660/1021 nm pair is generated by co-polarised pump photons in a process occurring entirely within a single higher-order mode, whereas the 648/1048 nm pair is generated by orthogonally polarised pump photons in an intermodal process coupling a fundamental and a higher-order mode; the signal photons from the two processes have similar output polarisations, while the idler photons are nearly orthogonal. Fourth, extending the analysis beyond the measured operating point, we theoretically identify pairs of simultaneous SFWM processes driven by a common pump that could generate either polarisation entanglement or composite spatial-polarisation entanglement, depending on the pump wavelength. More generally, this work provides a practical strategy for identifying intermodal SFWM processes in multimode waveguides when spectral information alone is insufficient.

Quantum sensing traditionally focuses on using quantum resources such as squeezing and entanglement to improve precision for sensing fixed signals. However, in many applications such as gravitational-wave detection and electromagnetic-field sensing, the signal evolves continuously and varies through time. Additionally, the learner is free to prepare, control, and measure the sensor at arbitrary times, possibly chosen adaptively. In this work, we establish exponential separation in sensing time for continuously evolving signals due to the available squeezing. The signals we study are characterized by a pattern size $T$, and we find that a sensor with squeezing at least $ω(\sqrt{\log T})$ offers a $\mathrm{poly}(T)$ sensing time, whereas those with squeezing at most $o(\sqrt{\log T})$ must use an exponential sensing time in $T$.

Insider Brief Roadrunner Venture Studios and New Mexico opened a 35,000-square-foot quantum lab in Albuquerque to give startups access to specialized equipment, researchers and commercialization support. Initial participants include Diraq , IonQ , QBoltz, Mesa Quantum , Quantum Machines , QuEra Computing , Photon Queue and Conductor Quantum . Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories will help operate an on-site demonstration facility where companies can prototype, test and benchmark quantum technologies. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; R oadrunner Venture Studios and New Mexico’s Technology and Innovation Office (TIO) today debuted the Roadrunner Quantum Lab (RQL) Powered by the State of New Mexico. Built in Albuquerque’s Innovation District, the new 35,000-square-foot will be an anchor facility for New Mexico’s $450M commitment to quantum, granting essential access to founder resources such as lab space, specialized equipment, and access to leading researchers. “New Mexico has been a home for quantum information science for decades, and it’s now emerging as a place where quantum companies can grow and thrive,” said David Kistin, Roadrunner ’s Director, Roadrunner Quantum Lab. “The RQL is helping bring together researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, and industry partners to build a stronger quantum ecosystem across the Southwest.” The lab is a direct result of the State of New Mexico’s selection of Roadrunner Venture Studios and its coalition partners to establish and operate a quantum venture studio. The RQL has already attracted leading quantum information science companies and partners to the space to build alongside new startups and researchers. These companies will take up residence at the RQL later this year. “New Mexico doesn’t just talk about the future of quantum; we build the room where it happens,” said Economic Development New Mexico Secretary Rob Black. “The Roadrunner Quantum Lab gives quantum startups access to the infrastructure, equipment and connections t

Insider Brief Five UC Santa Barbara researchers will participate in three NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes focused on quantum sensing, superconducting quantum systems and quantum computation. The eight QLCI institutes will receive a combined $290 million NSF renewal, with each institute receiving about $28 million to $37 million over five years. The institutes will combine research with industry partnerships and education programs covering workforce development, internships, K-12 programs and training for early-career researchers. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Through the National Science Foundation ’s Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI) program, several UC Santa Barbara researchers are poised to tackle hurdles on the road to building widespread, powerful quantum-based technologies. “We are very proud that UC Santa Barbara professors Dan Blumenthal, Michel Devoret, Andrew Jayich, Ania Jayich and David Weld will be involved in three of the National Science Foundation &#8216;s Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes,” said UCSB Chancellor Dennis Assanis. “These faculty members are shaping the future of quantum science through visionary, multidisciplinary research that addresses the field&#8217;s greatest challenges. Their accomplishments represent UC Santa Barbara’s strength and expertise at the forefront of the quantum revolution.” Thanks to NSF’s $290 million-dollar renewal of its QLCI program, a total of eight Institutes —five ongoing, three newly formed — will be making strides in several areas of quantum information sciences, each receiving between about $28 and $37 million over five years. “For more than four decades, NSF has been laying the foundational groundwork of research and discovery that is powering today’s modern quantum computing, sensing and communication,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director. “It’s time for focused activities to leverage that base of knowledge to drive us even further forward to the benefit of all Americans. The N

Insider Brief UMass Amherst hosted NeSQom 2026, a workshop that brought together researchers in quantum networking, quantum information science, quantum security and classical networking. About 50 researchers from across the U.S. discussed open problems and systems architecture for hybrid classical-quantum networks to inform the National Science Foundation ’s research agenda. The workshop produced open-problem statements focused on areas including quantum networking, distributed quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum key establishment. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Quantum computing, an emerging subfield of engineering and computer science that relies on quantum mechanics to tackle problems that are out of reach for today’s most powerful classical computers – could change computing forever. But first, researchers need to overcome some challenges. “Quantum computing uses quantum mechanics to process information in fundamentally different ways from today’s computers,” said Taqi Raza , assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in UMass’s Riccio College of Engineering.&nbsp; Classical computers use binary bits to process complex information; quantum computers use qubits, harnessing the laws of quantum mechanics. Regular bits can exist as either 1 or 0; qubits can be 1, 0 or a combination of the two. These properties could make quantum computers more efficient than classical computers, which in turn could lead to large-scale system advances for medical, environmental, cybersecurity and other applications.&nbsp; But quantum information is fragile, which poses problems for storage, transmission and reliable operation, Raza said. Researchers around the world are working on this and other challenges of quantum computing, and approximately 50 from across the U.S. gathered recently at UMass Amherst to discuss quantum networking, quantum information science, quantum security and classical networking. Their goal was to help guide the National Science Foundation

Insider Brief C12 and Thales have developed QuantumTrack, a hybrid quantum-classical approach for real-time multi-target radar tracking that won the 2026 Quantum Effects Award for Quantum Computing Hardware. QuantumTrack matched the time-to-solution of the best classical solver in the reported benchmark and was about 100 times faster than competing quantum annealers on C12 ’s Callisto emulator. The project has reached TRL 5, with C12 and Thales targeting a TRL 6 demonstration on C12’s physical processor and potential defense-system deployment. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; C12 , the French quantum computing company building carbon nanotube spin-qubit processors, and Thales , the global technology leader in Aerospace, Defence, and Cyber &amp; Digital, today announced QuantumTrack, a hybrid quantum-classical solution for real-time multi-target radar tracking. The project has won the 2026 Quantum Effects Award in the Quantum Computing Hardware category, and the two partners are presenting it at the Quantum Effects trade fair in Stuttgart, Germany, on October 6. On the benchmark, QuantumTrack matched the time-to-solution of the best classical solver and delivered results around 100 times faster than competing quantum annealers. These results were obtained on Callisto, C12 &#8216;s quantum emulator, which faithfully reproduces the physical behavior of a processor with up to 20 qubits. QuantumTrack The project reflects a broader, ongoing collaboration between C12 and Thales that spans both science and industry. &#8220;This award is first and foremost a recognition of the work we have been doing with Thales for several years,&#8221; said Pierre Desjardins, CEO and co-founder of C12 . &#8220;QuantumTrack shows that a quantum processor can take on a real-world operational problem with demanding real-time constraints, and that our carbon nanotube architecture is particularly well suited to this kind of use case. The next step is demonstrating these results on our own chip.&#8221; A B

Insider Brief Xanadu and Bluefors announced a multi-million-dollar partnership to develop a cryogenic prototype for utility-scale quantum computing (USQC). The companies aim to develop modular cryogenic infrastructure that could support Xanadu ’s planned USQC data center and future quantum data centers. Xanadu and Bluefors plan to use the prototype’s results to develop a mass-manufacturable cryogenic module for single-photon detectors and USQC data center environments. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Xanadu Quantum Technologies Limited (“ Xanadu ”; NASDAQ/TSX: XNDU), a leading photonic quantum computing company, and Bluefors , the industry-leader in cryogenic solutions, announced today a strategic partnership to develop a novel, high-performance cryogenic prototype for utility-scale quantum computing (USQC). This work aims to realize a shared vision of scalable modular cryogenic infrastructure for USQC. This partnership represents a key milestone for Xanadu and Bluefors ’ joint development efforts. The USD $ multi-million collaboration will leverage Bluefors’ cutting-edge cryogenic solutions and aims to establish a foundational blueprint not only for Xanadu’s planned USQC data centre, but for all future USQC data centres. “Until recently, the industry assumed that USQC would require massive, industrial-scale cryoplants,” said Dr. Christian Weedbrook, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xanadu . “Our collaboration with Bluefors has yielded a concept that integrates their most advanced technology into a compact module. This approach is expected to remove the need for traditional cryoplants, greatly improving the scalability and economics of future quantum data centres.” Looking ahead, Xanadu and Bluefors plan to utilize insights from this development to engineer a mass-manufacturable cryogenic module tailored specifically for single-photon detectors and USQC in a data centre environment. “ Bluefors and Xanadu share a vision of making utility-scale quantum computing achievabl

An international team of physicists has developed a new method for determining the precise color of laser light using an image that rotates as the laser's frequency shifts.

Insider Brief Terra Quantum and Empa developed LP-FNO, a Fourier Neural Operator model that predicts three-dimensional temperature fields and melt-pool boundaries from laser welding parameters. The model was trained on high-fidelity simulations of Ti-6Al-4V across laser powers of 40–190 watts and scan speeds of 0.1–1 meter per second. Once trained, LP-FNO generates full 3D predictions in about 8 milliseconds at standard resolution and 88 milliseconds at twice the resolution. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Terra Quantum , a global leader in quantum technologies , and Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, announced LP-FNO (Laser Processing Fourier Neural Operator), an artificial intelligence surrogate model that predicts full three-dimensional melt-pool dynamics in laser welding up to 100,000 faster than traditional multiphysics simulation. Removing the computational bottleneck that has long blocked real-time process control and digital twin deployment in industrial laser processing. The Simulation Bottleneck in Laser Welding Laser welding is a precision manufacturing process used across aerospace, medical device, and automotive production, where control of the melt pool, the zone of molten metal found beneath the laser beam, is central to weld quality and consistency. High-fidelity multiphysics simulations have been the primary tool for understanding and optimizing the process, but their computational cost has made real-time application impractical. A single simulation run using current gold-standard tools takes approximately six minutes at standard 10 µm resolution and over one hour at finer 5 µm resolution, placing process control, large-scale parameter optimization, and uncertainty quantification out of reach for industrial operators. What LP-FNO Does LP-FNO learns the relationship between laser process parameters, power and scan speed, and the resulting three-dimensional temperature fields and melt-pool boundaries, using a Fourier Neur

Insider Brief Project Eleven acquired Riva Labs to expand its post-quantum cryptography, wallet, MPC, account abstraction, and blockchain infrastructure capabilities. Riva Labs brings technology and intellectual property from work on Ethereum and other public blockchains, including post-quantum signatures and hardware signing. The Riva team will join Project Eleven ’s research and product efforts focused on post-quantum cryptography, digital asset custody, and blockchain security. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Project Eleven , the company building post-quantum security infrastructure for digital assets, today announced its acquisition of Riva Labs , expanding its expertise in post-quantum signatures, wallets, MPC, and account abstraction. The acquisition also brings technology and intellectual property developed through Riva&#8217;s work across Ethereum and other public blockchains, adding to Project Eleven &#8216;s capabilities in post-quantum cryptography and blockchain infrastructure. Riva Labs has built a reputation for translating post-quantum cryptographic research into practical blockchain systems. Its work spans hash-based post-quantum signatures, post-quantum MPC, account abstraction, wallet infrastructure, and hardware signing, including recent demonstrations of post-quantum signing on consumer hardware. The addition of Riva expands Project Eleven &#8216;s research and engineering bench as the digital asset industry prepares for the complexity of post-quantum migration. Rather than treating signatures, wallets, key management and protocol infrastructure as separate problems, Project Eleven is bringing together expertise across each layer required to make that transition practical. That work is becoming more urgent as AI accelerates cryptographic research and cryptanalysis, allowing new techniques to be developed, tested, and challenged at greater speed. Riva has made AI a core part of its research and engineering process, bringing that capability into Project Elev

Insider Brief Infleqtion and Riverlane signed an MOU to explore integrating Riverlane ’s real-time quantum error correction technology with Infleqtion ’s neutral-atom quantum computing platform and software stack. The companies will evaluate Riverlane ’s Deltaflow and Deltakit tools alongside Infleqtion ’s Superstaq compiler and open-source qLDPC software library. The partnership includes plans for a technical workshop and potential demonstrators focused on utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing as part of the UK’s Quantum Computing Programme. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Infleqtion (NYSE: INFQ), a global leader in quantum computing and quantum sensing powered by neutral atom technology, today announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Riverlane , a UK company specialising in quantum error correction. The companies will explore the integration of Riverlane’s real-time quantum error correction technology with Infleqtion ’s neutral atom quantum computing platform and software stack. The partnership addresses a central requirement for useful, large-scale quantum computing: creating reliable logical qubits from physical qubits. Physical qubits are susceptible to errors from noise and other disturbances. Quantum error correction uses groups of physical qubits to detect and correct those errors while preserving the quantum information needed to complete a computation. For this to work at scale, the quantum processor, compiler and error correction system must operate together in real time. Under the MOU, Riverlane and Infleqtion will evaluate Riverlane’s error correction technology and tools, including Deltaflow and Deltakit, with Infleqtion’s neutral atom platform, Superstaq compiler and open-source quantum low-density parity-check, or qLDPC, software library. “The race to build useful quantum computers is increasingly a race to master quantum error correction,” said Steve Brierley, Founder and CEO of Riverlane . “Reliable logical qubits will be the foundation o

Insider Brief The University of Illinois Chicago has joined the Midwest Quantum Collaboratory, a consortium of eight universities focused on quantum research, innovation and workforce development. UIC’s membership will support collaboration among its faculty and students with researchers at other Midwest universities across quantum computing, communication, sensing and related fields. UIC plans to use the collaboration to expand quantum education, research partnerships, internships, jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities for students. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; UIC has joined the Midwest Quantum Collaboratory , a consortium of eight universities shaping quantum technology’s future through collaborative research, innovation and workforce development.&nbsp; “UIC is claiming a larger presence in this constantly evolving quantum ecosystem,” said Daniela Tuninetti , professor and department head of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering.&nbsp; UIC’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research financially supports the university’s membership.&nbsp; “This is a wonderful opportunity for UIC, our faculty and trainees to consider new approaches to big questions in quantum with our colleagues at other universities. Innovation thrives when researchers from different areas and institutions collaborate,” said Vice Chancellor for Research Joanna Groden . The UIC Quantum Club visits the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center led by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. (Photo: Jim Young/UIC) Quantum information science and engineering applies the principles of quantum mechanics to develop new technologies for computing, communication, sensing and measurement that surpass what classical technologies can do. Purdue University, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Indiana University, Washington University in St. Louis, The Ohio State University and Northwestern University also belong to the collaboratory , which began in 2021 to s

Quandela is establishing South Korea as its Asian hub for photonic QPU manufacturing and R&#038;D, aiming to partner with South Korean semiconductor foundries and optoelectronic integrators. This initiative will focus on scaling mass production of photonic control chips and optical component packaging, with collaborations including KAIST for electronic control units, KRIBB for molecular simulation, and NVIDIA for reduced GPU-to-QPU communication latency. The expansion includes growing Quandela Korea and deploying Korean-fabricated components into Quandela's QPUs. The post Quandela Establishes South Korea as Asian Hub for Photonic QPU Manufacturing and Hardware R&#038;D appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Pasqal, a neutral-atom quantum hardware developer, has restructured its collaboration with French authorities to focus on civil, commercial-led fault-tolerant quantum computing, moving away from defense initiatives. This strategic shift follows its Nasdaq debut and aims to accelerate commercial deployments. Additionally, Pasqal received an EIC Fund Award, recognizing its transition from a deep-tech startup to a publicly traded quantum computer manufacturer. The post Pasqal Restructures French Government Collaboration and Secures EIC Recognition Following Nasdaq Debut appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Quantum eMotion (QeM) is set to acquire Plurilock Security Inc. for C$33.8 million, creating a quantum-safe cybersecurity platform. The deal, expected to close in late 2026, combines QeM's quantum hardware with Plurilock's AI-driven cybersecurity to enhance access control and identity management. Plurilock shareholders will receive C$0.084 in cash and 0.0763 QeM shares per Plurilock share, totaling C$0.28 per share. The post Quantum eMotion to Acquire Plurilock for C$33.8M ($23.8M USD) to Commercialize Quantum-Safe Cybersecurity Platform appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Insider Brief Cloudflare announced plans to establish a public Certificate Authority that will issue traditional TLS certificates and post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs). The company plans to acquire publicly trusted Root CA key material from GlobalSign and has applied to join the Chrome, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla root programs. Cloudflare expects classical certificate issuance to begin after the browser root program process, with production MTC issuance scheduled for Q1 2027. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the leading connectivity cloud company, today announced its intent to become a public Certificate Authority (CA), an open service that issues the digital certificates websites need to encrypt traffic and prove their identity to visitors. The new CA will support both traditional encryption and next-generation post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs), giving every website a path to stay protected as computing power advances—with no new tools or rebuilds required. Additionally, Cloudflare has agreed to acquire established, publicly trusted Root CA key material from GlobalSign, which will provide ubiquity across the global Web PKI ecosystem. Every secure website depends on a certificate authority to verify its identity and enable encrypted connections. Today, that trust is concentrated in a small number of dominant issuers, creating systemic risk if any one of them fails or is compromised. At the same time, most certificate infrastructure was built before quantum computing became a practical concern. Quantum computers capable of breaking today&#8217;s encryption are expected within years, and much of the web is not prepared for that shift. “Twelve years ago, Cloudflare made encryption free and automatic for millions of websites. Today, we’re taking the next step by building an open, transparent and reliable Certificate Authority for the entire Internet,” said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare. “Upgrading the web&#8

Insider Brief Royal Bank of Canada has expanded its quantum strategy with the appointment of a Director of Quantum, two multi-year university partnerships and a quantum-safe security program. Dr. Elizabeth Iwasawa will lead RBC’s quantum research and development team, while partnerships with the University of Waterloo and University of Toronto will support research and quantum talent development. RBC is also working with Xanadu on quantum workforce training and plans to migrate client services toward quantum-safe security, building on its 2025 investment in Photonic. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is advancing its quantum strategy with the appointment of a Director of Quantum, the signing of two strategic partnerships with leading Canadian universities and a multi-year roadmap to drive innovation while ensuring quantum-safe operations. “As quantum technologies move from research to real-world applications, RBC is taking a leadership position to harness these technologies for the benefit of our clients and the broader financial system, including strengthening our cyber security defences,” said Naim Kazmi, Group Head, Technology &amp; Operations, RBC. “We see this as an opportunity to help build Canada’s leadership in this emerging field and to develop and grow a quantum talent pipeline for RBC and the country.” Key Components of RBC’s Quantum Commitments Leadership appointment &nbsp;– Dr. Elizabeth Iwasawa has joined RBC as Director of Quantum. In this newly created role, Dr. Iwasawa will lead a team of quantum researchers and developers and manage the development and buildout of the bank’s quantum strategy. “RBC’s proven ability to identify and execute on transformational technologies, combined with Canada’s world-leading quantum ecosystem, creates a unique opportunity to drive real impact,” said Dr. Iwasawa. “I’m excited to help build a program that delivers concrete outcomes for clients and advances the global quantum landscape.” Academic partner

Insider Brief CTM and Huawei have launched what they describe as the world’s first integrated QKD-communication target IP network to strengthen quantum-secured communications in Macao and the Greater Bay Area. The network integrates quantum and conventional communication channels into a single network architecture for protecting sensitive government, financial and critical infrastructure services. CTM plans to develop quantum-secured private lines for enterprise and government customers, while the two companies aim to expand quantum security applications across the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; To counter the emerging network security challenges posed by quantum computing, CTM has actively embraced the national quantum strategy. It is designing a quantum-secured framework to build an integrated QKD-communication network security foundation, further enhancing the end-to-end transmission security of critical data. In addition, CTM plans to roll out quantum-secured private lines for enterprise and government sectors to unlock new growth opportunities while supporting Digital Macao and fortifying digital security across the Greater Bay Area. CTM and Huawei are pioneering the world&#8217;s first integrated QKD-communication target IP network, driving the development of the quantum industry chain throughout the region. The rapid advancement of quantum computing is driving a disruptive shift in the global network security landscape. Encrypted data that would take traditional computers trillions of years to crack can now be breached in just minutes using quantum computing. This poses an unprecedented, seismic challenge to the security defenses of critical digital assets and sensitive data. To strengthen China&#8217;s digital security defenses, the 15th Five-Year Plan Outline has designated quantum technology as a strategic future industry. CTM and Huawei have jointly launched the world&#8217;s first integrated QKD-communication target net

Insider Brief The EU-funded Q-VERSE project aims to develop open, standardized software tools that enable quantum applications to run across different hardware platforms without dependence on a single provider. Simula will lead work on hybrid quantum-classical workflows, automated testing, noise mitigation and performance benchmarking. The 36-month project brings together Simula and 12 partner organizations from six European countries to validate the tools across five industrial use cases, including railway scheduling, finance, drug design and telecommunications. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Quantum computing promises unprecedented processing power, with the potential to transform fields from medicine to finance. However, today’s quantum computers operate in a noisy, error-prone environment, and their programming tools remain fragmented across different hardware vendors. To take on these challenges, the EU-funded Q-VERSE (Quantum Virtual Ecosystem for a unified Runtime for agnostic Software Engineering) project is bringing together leading European research institutions and industry partners. Q-VERSE is recognised as part of the European Quantum Flagship, which is a 10-year European Union initiative launched to establish Europe as a global leader in quantum technologies. The project aims to create open, standardised software tools that allow developers to write applications that run reliably across different types of quantum hardware, without relying on a singular provider. Simula to lead quality and testing Simula will lead Q-VERSE’s Work Package 4 ( Quantum Enablers and Integration Components ). Simula’s efforts are headed by Dr. Shaukat Ali (Head of Department for Engineering Complex Software Systems) and Dr. Paolo Arcaini, Chief Research Scientist with Simula. The Simula team will focus on ensuring quantum software is reliable, fast, and accurately tested: Hybrid quantum-classical workflows: Quantum computers rarely work alone; they operate alongside classical supercom

Insider Brief EigenQ and Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp. have filed a registration statement with the SEC for their proposed business combination, which remains subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals. The transaction would result in SVAQ becoming a Delaware corporation named EigenQ Holdings, with EigenQ continuing as a wholly owned subsidiary. EigenQ recently secured approximately $45 million in convertible financing to support commercialization of its quantum-safe security portfolio and development of quantum products. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; EigenQ , Inc. (&#8220;EigenQ&#8221; or the &#8220;Company&#8221;) and Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: SVAQ ) (&#8220;SVAQ&#8221;) today announced the public filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (&#8220;SEC&#8221;) of a registration statement on Form S-4 (the &#8220;Registration Statement&#8221;) in connection with their previously announced proposed business combination (the &#8220;Business Combination&#8221;). The Registration Statement includes a preliminary proxy statement/prospectus relating to the proposed Business Combination. The Registration Statement has not yet been declared effective by the SEC, and the information contained therein remains subject to change. The public filing represents another step toward completion of the proposed Business Combination. Earlier this month, EigenQ announced that it has secured approximately $45 million in a convertible financing, with approximately half of the capital already funded, to support the commercialization of its quantum-safe security portfolio and continue developing quantum products across security, communications, networking and sensing. Under the terms of the Business Combination Agreement, as amended, SVAQ is expected to domesticate to become a Delaware corporation and, following completion of the Business Combination, be renamed as EigenQ Holdings, Inc. (&#8220;PubCo&#8221;). EigenQ will survive the merger as a wholly owned subsi

Quantum phase transitions reveal deep insights into the behavior of many-body quantum systems, but identifying these transitions without prior knowledge of order parameters remains a significant challenge. In this work, we introduce a method for constructing phase diagrams using the vector field of the reduced fidelity susceptibility (RFS), and demonstrate how information encoded in this vector field can be used to discover observables corresponding to order parameters. We apply our approach to well-established models: the Axial Next Nearest Neighbour Interaction (ANNNI) model, a cluster state model, and a chain of Rydberg atoms; and validate the discovered order parameters using eigendecomposition and finite-size scaling analysis, confirming the expected universality classes. Our results demonstrate that the RFS vector field offers a unified framework for phase characterization and order-parameter discovery that requires no prior knowledge of symmetry or transition type, while relying only on reduced density matrices of small subsystems.

Abstract Unidimensional (1D) Gaussian-modulated continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocols have been proposed as a way to simplify implementation and reduce costs through single-quadrature modulation, requiring only one modulator while maintaining compatibility with standard optical infrastructure. Here, we determine security bounds for 1D discrete-modulated protocol under the Gaussian extremality assumption by extending the method of Ghorai et al. [Phys. Rev. X 9, 021059 (2019)]. We establish the appropriate symmetry arguments to extend the method to the 1D discrete-modulated case, define the physicality zone in which the protocol is allowed to operate, and derive a security bound against collective attacks in the asymptotic regime via semidefinite programming. Our analysis for uniformly distributed coherent states reveals a limitation: the Gaussian extremality assumption systematically overestimates Eve's information with increasing constellation size, yielding bounds so conservative that secure key extraction becomes increasingly limited for larger constellations, even under ideal conditions. This overestimation worsens with excess noise and restricts viable modulation amplitudes to near-vacuum values. Unlike two-dimensional (2D) protocols, where Gaussian extremality improves with constellation size, 1D protocols lack the growing phase-space isotropy required for the approximation to remain tight as the constellation grows. Our results expose these limitations and highlight the necessity of alternative methods or optimized non-uniform constellation designs for this class of protocols.

Abstract Universal quantum computers require entanglement and non-stabilizerness, a resource known as quantum magic. Here, we introduce a protocol that prepares magic steady states by leveraging non-Hermitian dynamics, which, contrary to unitary dynamics, can host pure-state attractors. By studying the dissipative qubit, we find the optimal parameters to prepare |H⟩ and |T ⟩ steady states. Interestingly, this approach does not require knowledge or preparation of a particular initial state, since all the states of the Bloch sphere converge to the engineered target steady state. We also consider the addition of classical noise in the antihermitian part and provide the regimes for which the noisy dynamics still converges to high magic states. We also introduce a dissipative protocol to prepare magic steady states, compare the approaches with magic state cultivation and provide a particular realization of the non-Hermitian scheme in a cat qubit.

The quantum Hall effect, topological insulators and quantum capacitance are usually treated as distinct topics, yet they share a common thread. Bulk topology determines a protected boundary state, and quantum capacitance is one of the few electrostatic methods able to detect the density of states. This paper examines that connection. The integer quantum Hall effect showed that quantised boundary transport has a topological origin given by the Chern number, later extended to zero field in Z2 topological insulators with helical edge and Dirac surface states. Quantum capacitance, developed for two-dimensional electron gases, has since become a key technique for mapping the Landau level density of states underlying the quantum Hall effect and the linear Dirac density of states of topological surface states. This picture is complicated by self-consistent screening theory, which shows that the quantum Hall bulk splits into compressible and incompressible regions that shift with field. Local quantum capacitance measurements confirm that the bulk is not uniformly insulating across a quantised plateau, even though the plateau stays quantised. The paper argues that quantum capacitance is not a secondary feature of these phenomena but one of the clearest windows into the boundary density of states that topology imposes, and that it reveals the local, field-dependent nature of the insulating bulk assumption underlying the analogy between the quantum Hall effect and topological insulators.

We present fully two-dimensional self-consistent calculations of the electron density, local filling factor and current distribution in a six-terminal GaAs/AlGaAs Hall bar of width W = 3 micrometers with two additional square contacts, A and B, placed on the channel axis and connected to the outside by air bridges, following the interior-contact experiment of Kendirlik et al. [Nat. Commun. 8, 14082 (2017)]. Within the screening theory of the integer quantized Hall effect, the Thomas-Fermi-Poisson equations are solved on the full device plane, including the probe arms and the depletion regions around the interior contacts, and the current is obtained from a local Ohm's law with a filling-factor dependent conductivity tensor, for source-drain and interior-contact excitation separately. Across the nu = 2 plateau the interior contacts pass through three regimes as the field is lowered: galvanically connected to the current path in a compressible bulk, floating in the Hall potential of a fully incompressible bulk, and isolated from both the bulk and the edge strips by closed incompressible rings encircling each contact. In the floating and isolated regimes the two-terminal resistance between the interior contacts rises by orders of magnitude. The isolation interval lies within the Hall plateau and ends before its low-field edge; its high-field end is sharply set by the disappearance of the incompressible bulk, while its low-field end shrinks with temperature and Landau-level broadening. The resistance between an interior contact and a perimeter probe approaches one half of the quantized Hall resistance across the plateau. The topology of the incompressible regions and the boundaries of the isolation interval are insensitive to the regularization of the local conductivity, to the grid and to moderate disorder, whereas the magnitude of the isolation resistance is not.

We analyze a novel approach for quantum magnetic sensing via optical detection of nuclear spin precession in a noble gas. The detection is carried out with an ultraviolet frequency comb laser, so no alkali vapor is required to be mixed with the noble gas during the sensing stage, allowing for hours-long spin relaxation time at room temperature. Our analysis reveals that combining high laser power and low laser intensity noise is crucial to achieving and exceeding state-of-the-art magnetometric performance, including that of cryogenic magnetometers. We find operational regimes where either fundamental or technical noise dominate, which directs experimental effort towards increasing laser power or lowering laser intensity noise, respectively. We also show that optimizing beam size is key to achieving optimal sensitivity. Our calculations predict that a record-breaking sensitivity of $24~\mathrm{aT}/\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ is achievable in 10 minutes with a 10 W ultraviolet laser with a relative intensity noise of -100 dBc/Hz.

We introduce the terminology \emph{passive realism} to encapsulate the scale-independent assumption that a physical system's pre-existing properties can be passively observed without altering its subsequent dynamics. A necessary condition for passive realism is provided by the no-signalling in time (NSIT) condition, which states that a measurement outcome is independent of whether or not a prior measurement was performed. While closed quantum systems generically violate NSIT due to measurement back action, we investigate whether open-system dynamics can dissipate this disturbance to the environment and restore NSIT. By modeling the time evolution between sequential measurements as an arbitrary quantum channel, we show that such environmental masking is possible only in two special cases. Specifically, we show that if the initial state of a two-time sequential measurement scenario is not maximally mixed, and if the channel governing the dynamics between measurements is not a discard-and-prepare channel, then there necessarily exist binary projective measurements violating NSIT, hence violating passive realism. By providing a constructive procedure for determining these violating measurements---applied here to depolarizing and dephasing channels---we demonstrate that, outside these two cases, system-environment interactions cannot erase the statistical footprint of a quantum measurement for all measurement choices.

High-dimensional spatial entanglement generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) provides a powerful resource for quantum information processing, yet its mode structure becomes increasingly complex when the pump occupies a higher-order Laguerre--Gaussian (LG) mode. Here, we develop an algebraic framework for characterizing biphoton spatial-mode entanglement by factorizing LG-pumped SPDC into a spatial-mode beam-splitter transformation followed by spatial two-mode squeezing. By choosing the biphoton LG basis radius as the geometric mean of the pump-beam radius and the crystal-induced correlation width, we obtain a natural modal basis in which the two operations can be treated separately. When the pump-beam radius matches the correlation width, spatial squeezing vanishes, and the two circular-mode components of the pump are independently conserved across the signal and idler photons, leading to conservation of both orbital angular momentum and the total spatial mode number. We further derive an analytical expression for the Schmidt number for arbitrary LG pump modes and squeezing strengths, revealing how the radial and azimuthal pump indices govern the dimensionality of the spatial entanglement. This algebraic characterization provides a unified description of the mode structure, conservation laws, and entanglement dimensionality of higher-order-LG-pumped SPDC.

We develop a normal-ordered perturbative expansion method to compute the reduced dynamics of a matter system interacting with a general continuous-mode photon field state. In this expansion, all field correlation functions are automatically normal-ordered, while the free evolution is modified by spontaneous emission. Our normal-ordered expansion elucidates the physical meaning of non-normal-ordered correlation terms in the conventional expansion. Furthermore, under intermediate coupling strengths, the normal-ordered expansion converges significantly faster than the conventional expansion, allowing one to extend the applicability of perturbative expansion to much larger matter-light coupling strengths. Interestingly, given an $m$-photon Fock state input, the normal-ordered expansion truncates exactly at the $2m$-th order. For special classes of input states, we show the normal-ordered expansion is consistent with the corresponding master equations. We demonstrate the normal-ordered expansion numerically for a two-level system interacting with coherent state, $m$-photon Fock state, and cat state inputs.

Imaginary-time evolution can be reconstructed from real-time quantum simulations using exact integral transforms. We identify the construction of Guo, Shibu, Lin, and Zhao as a continuous linear combination of Hamiltonian simulations and show that its slow $1/t_{\rm cut}$ convergence arises from a redundant kernel component. We extend the construction from pure-state matrix elements to thermal traces and correlators. One real-time dataset then reconstructs targeted inverse temperatures, Euclidean separations, and chemical potentials through classical post-processing, bringing finite-$(T,θ,μ)$ physics within reach of real-time quantum simulation without thermal-state preparation. We benchmark the method on one- and two-flavor lattice Schwinger models, including circuit-level simulations with depolarizing noise.

Matter-wave interferometers are sensitive probes of low energy physics and have been used for precise tests of gravity and quantum mechanics. These applications would benefit from interfering particles of higher mass, but observing the interference of a large particle is challenging due to the need to control its initial state and to avoid decoherence. Here we propose to demonstrate matter-wave interference of a microparticle with an embedded rare-earth ion. Optical transitions of the rare-earth ion will impart momentum to the microparticle's center of mass. The use of a time-symmetric interferometer geometry and a rare-earth ion state with angular momentum $J = 1/2$ will eliminate sensitivity to the initial conditions of the microparticle. We show that the rates of all relevant external decoherence mechanisms either decrease or remain constant as the microparticle mass is increased, allowing decoherence to be avoided by using sufficiently large particles. An apparatus at moderate vacuum levels will support microparticle interferometry with up to $10^3$ photons per beam splitter and millisecond coherence time. This demonstration will establish microparticle interferometry as a new platform for quantum sensing, improving searches for minimal modifications of quantum mechanics by up to four orders of magnitude in the near term and laying the foundation for future gravitational tests.

We develop an input-output formulation of quantum light spectroscopy (QLS) by combining the input-output theory, commonly used in quantum optics, with the perturbative expansion method for nonlinear spectroscopy, commonly used in chemical physics. The use of the input-output relation provides physical intuition for how matter systems alter the photon input field. As examples, we consider linear spectroscopy, fluorescence, intra-beam $G^{(2)}$, and Hong-Ou-Mandel correlation. For certain initial photon states, we show that signal expectation values can be evaluated non-perturbatively. For general initial photon states, the signals can be computed via a perturbative expansion of the input-output relation. The input-output relation reduces the work needed to perturbatively expand the optical signal, allowing for cleaner derivations and clearer physical interpretations.

Rare-earth orthochromites exhibit rich, chemically tunable magnetic behavior, making them attractive for temperature sensing and temperature-dependent switching applications. Realizing this potential requires understanding how synthesis conditions and particle morphology influence the underlying Cr$^{3+}$ magnetic ordering. Orthochromite magnetism has traditionally been characterized by ensemble techniques such as neutron diffraction and SQUID magnetometry, which report only averaged magnetic properties and cannot access particle-level information. Here we use widefield nitrogen-vacancy (NV) magnetometry to image the stray magnetic fields of individual LaCrO$_3$ microcrystals produced via molten salt synthesis, resolving the antiferromagnetic Néel transition in single particles. Of the 18 particles measured between 278 and 298 K, five show a clear onset of magnetization near the ensemble Néel temperature, four show no measurable magnetic signal, and nine display temperature-independent signatures consistent with localized magnetic impurities undetected by ensemble measurements. Below the Néel temperature, particle magnetization remains fixed under a rotating in-plane field, consistent with canted antiferromagnetic ordering rather than paramagnetism, while repeated thermal cycling shows that the magnetic field pattern varies between cooldowns with certain features recurring at the same locations, consistent with micron-scale structurally pinned antiferromagnetic domains in which the sign of the weak ferromagnetic moment is set independently each time they pass through the Néel transition. These results establish single-particle NV magnetometry as a sensitive probe of magnetic ordering and domain structure in individual microcrystals, a key step toward correlating individual particle morphology and defect structure with magnetic ordering in orthochromites.

Probing multiple properties of ground states is central to understanding quantum matter, yet conventional readout can be prohibitively costly because it consumes many independently prepared copies. Here, in copy-scarce regimes, we establish optimal trade-offs between the number of initial ground-state copies and elapsed Hamiltonian-evolution time required for estimating multiple observables or reconstructing a full classical description of a unique gapped ground state. We derive a unifying inequality that quantifies how well ground states can be distinguished using initial copies and controlled dynamics, even when all copies may be consumed. It yields worst-case lower bounds on elapsed Hamiltonian time that any protocol must incur to perform either task. We construct parallel catalytic readouts that return all initial copies nearly unchanged while attaining these bounds up to poly-logarithmic factors. Our protocols require no coherent preparation circuit or its inverse, and their elapsed Hamiltonian time depends only logarithmically on the inverse of the desired return error. Thus, optimal copy--dynamics trade-offs can be attained together with catalytic return. Numerical benchmarks further show substantial reductions in end-to-end elapsed Hamiltonian time relative to a task-specialized copy-consuming protocol, even under an optimistic preparation-cost model. Our results reveal a copy--dynamics resource landscape connecting copy-scarce learning to copy-only endpoints realized by known protocols for shadow tomography and pure-state tomography.

Near-field wavefront curvature enables joint angle-range localization, but exploiting it entails repeated covariance-eigenspace tests over a two-dimensional spherical manifold. We propose a quantum subspace-projection algorithm (Q-SPARSE) for super-resolution estimation of parameters in the near field, employing spectral signature similar to MUSIC. Q-SPARSE prepares each spherical steering hypothesis as a quantum state, applies quantum phase estimation (QPE) to covariance-generated evolution, and converts the resolved spectral mass into a localization spectrum. The proposed method does not need the full classical preparation of the eigenstates, which is a major bottleneck of the QPE algorithm, the main subroutine in quantum variants of MUSIC algorithms. Under an ideal signal-noise partition, its score equals the classical signal-subspace overlap exactly and thus preserves the maximizer of normalized near-field MUSIC. For a finite q number of qubit phase registers, we derive the score from the complete QPE kernel, and propose a nearest-bin selection scheme with soft-thresholding based on Marchenko-Pastur-calibrated logistic weighting decision criteria. Numerical results on IBM's QISKIT software platform are demonstrated for near-field array processing.

Efficient models for secure computation often rely on offline preprocessed correlations, which subsequently enable private online computation from minimal assumptions. Within these models, the study of secure non-interactive reductions (SNIR) formalizes when one classical correlation can be non-interactively transformed into another, while guaranteeing information-theoretic simulation-based privacy. In this work, we introduce quantum secure non-interactive reductions (QSNIR), a natural extension of SNIR, in which the source and target resource are each a bipartite quantum state. Specifically, when the target resource is classical, our framework enables us to analyze the problem of disseminating private correlations from entanglement, in addition to classical resources. Our primary technical result is that QSNIR privacy in this context can be computed exactly via a semidefinite program (SDP) pair that quantifies an error operationally rooted in a simulation-based cheating advantage. We prove that QSNIR privacy is lower-bounded by a decision problem related to minimum-error state discrimination (MED), and use both definitions to compute exact one-shot privacy errors for universal two-party computation (2PC) preprocessing correlations.

Secure position verification certifies that a remote prover occupies a claimed location, a task that is provably impossible with classical resources alone against colluding adversaries. Most existing quantum position verification schemes require transmitting quantum states between verifiers and provers, and the resulting photon loss makes long-distance verification impractical. Classical verifier position verification (CVPV) schemes with classical verifier-prover communication exist, but rely on complex quantum processes that generate certifiable randomness, placing them outside the reach of near-term hardware. Here we introduce a general compiler that maps any complete-support non-local game with the required quantum advantage into a multi-prover CVPV protocol. This addresses both limitations, with entirely classical verifier-prover communication and all quantum resources confined to shared entanglement and local measurements on the prover devices. Instantiating with the CHSH game enables near-term implementation on existing experimental platforms. We prove finite-size security in the quantum random oracle model for both simultaneous verification of multiple provers and verification of a single prover with multiple prover devices. Notably, security in the multi-prover setting is governed not by the certified randomness of the joint provers' outputs, but by certified blind local randomness that depends critically on the spatial arrangement of provers and verifiers.

Whether quantum computation can reduce the amount of data sampled from an unknown probability distribution required to learn a prediction rule is a fundamental question in quantum machine learning. Quantum PAC learning studies this question using quantum data as a quantum state whose squared amplitudes encode the unknown distribution from which classical learning data are sampled. With only copies of such quantum data, the optimal worst-case sample complexity asymptotically matches that of classical PAC learning. In contrast, access to both a state-preparation unitary for this state and its inverse can improve the query-complexity dependence on the accuracy parameter in realizable learning. However, it has remained unclear whether forward-only access allows such an improvement. In this work, taking the worst case over compatible state-preparation unitaries and their finite ambient dimensions, we show that the optimal forward-only query complexities of realizable and agnostic learning are, respectively, $Θ((d+\log(1/δ))/\varepsilon)$ and $Θ((d+\log(1/δ))/\varepsilon^2)$, where $d$ is the VC dimension of the concept class, $\varepsilon$ the accuracy parameter, and $δ$ the failure probability. These bounds match the optimal sample complexities with classical data or quantum data copies. To prove them, we establish a reduction using $q$ copies of the prepared state to approximate the Haar-averaged output of any $q$-query forward-only algorithm. These results show that forward-only access cannot provide an asymptotic query-complexity advantage over learning from classical data or quantum data copies in this worst-case setting, and establish the essential role of inverse access in the known realizable-setting improvement. Our reduction also provides a new framework for analyzing limitations of forward state-preparation access via state-copy lower bounds.

An important open question in quantum cryptography is the construction of publicly-verifiable NIZKs for QMA. Classically, one can construct NIZKs for NP in the random oracle model (and sometimes in the standard model) by compiling an honest-verifier ZK (HVZK) $Σ$-protocol for NP using the Fiat-Shamir transformation. Broadbent and Grilo introduced a quantum analog of a $Σ$-protocol (which they call a $Ξ$-protocol) in which the prover's first message is quantum, and show that HVZK $Ξ$-protocols exist for QMA. However, it is not clear how to compile such protocols into NIZKs in the (Q)ROM, because the Fiat-Shamir transformation seems to be incompatible with quantum messages. In this work we give formal evidence that this is indeed the case: we show that if generic "Fiat-Shamir-like" compilers for quantum protocols exist in the QROM (with small completeness and soundness error) then QMA = BQP.

Quantum networks face a fundamental challenge absent in classical networks; finite memory coherence times mean that queuing delay directly degrades information quality, causing decoherence that has no classical analog. Existing routing protocols optimize for hop count or channel fidelity while treating scheduling delays as a secondary concern, leaving fidelity vulnerable to congestion-induced decoherence. We present a coherence-aware routing protocol that integrates decoherence constraints into path selection via a priority-modulated aging model derived analytically from Weighted Fair Queueing theory, where high-priority traffic receives compressed effective queue delay. We build a custom discrete-event simulator verified against NetSquid (across 104 states), and evaluate across two structurally diverse topology classes under identical physical parameters, isolating topology structure as the sole independent variable. In all experiments, our protocol is benchmarked against loss-only Dijkstra routing and FIFO scheduling as baselines. On topologies, P2 traffic achieves 96.08% fidelity under a 9x load increase with only 0.04 percentage point degradation, versus a 13.51 percentage point collapse for the loss-only baseline; P2 tail latency holds stable at 0.055 ms while Dijkstra degrades 5.5x. On Barabasi-Albert scale-free topologies, our protocol delivers a +4.12 percentage point fidelity advantage with 97.8% higher aggregate throughput at operational loads over the baseline, with a clearly characterized hub-saturation boundary at 160k QPS. FIFO scheduling provides negligible priority differentiation on both topology classes, providing strong evidence that coherence-aware routing-not scheduling alone is responsible for the observed QoS gains.

Reset performance in superconducting qubits is often summarized by the population that remains at the end of the pulse. This is an important number, but it does not describe what happens during the reset itself. A protocol may reach a small final residual while keeping the qubit in a leakage state for a comparatively long part of the trajectory. In this work, we therefore use time-integrated leakage, together with the usual endpoint population, to study a multi-mode dissipative reset model under flux-frequency control. We examine finite thermal occupation, parameter sweeps, frequency disorder, an auxiliary-chain ablation, and a literature-based rate benchmark. At the representative ablation point, adding the auxiliary chain reduces Lf from 8.56 to 0.78 ns and shifts the sustained Pf less-than- 10-2 crossing from 39.5 to 9.8 ns. Interestingly, the configuration without the chain still reaches the smaller long-time residual. The two metrics can therefore favor different reset configurations. For the same 300 ns analysis window, an effective rate model built from the f-ket and e-ket decay rates reported by Zhou et al. gives Lf is 108.0 ns, while the complete simulated configuration gives 0.783 ns. We use this only as a kinetic reference and not as a reproduction of the experiment. In the wider set of simulations, thermal occupation is the main source of degradation, while the frequency disorder considered here has a much weaker effect. The results suggest that time-integrated leakage is a useful quantity to report alongside endpoint residuals, especially when reset is part of repeated quantum-error-correction cycles.

Topology under non-Hermitian dynamics is encoded in the phase of the bulk evolution, yet strong dissipation suppresses the amplitudes carrying it. We resolve this using a programmable photonic integrated circuit that implements such dynamics in synthetic momentum space through unitary dilation, with the phase recovered by phase-shifted interferometry. For the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, the method distinguishes trivial and non-trivial Zak phases and yields a coherence winding $q=\pm 1$ induced by an exceptional point. Extending to a synthetic torus via a Rice-Mele pump gives the first Chern number $\mathrm{Ch}_1=0,1$ for trivial and non-trivial cycles, showing a programmable route to momentum-space topology under strongly dissipative non-Hermitian dynamics.

Collective non-equilibrium phenomena in many-body systems are strongly influenced by fluctuations, particularly in the vicinity of phase transitions, where the interplay between classical and quantum effects can alter cooperative behavior. Here, we investigate this classical-quantum competition in a kinetically constrained spin chain, the dissipative far-East model. In absence of fluctuations, the system exhibits emergent collective dynamics, resulting in phase coexistence. We find that this phenomenon is robust to quantum fluctuations, which further stabilize it, whereas classical fluctuations suppress phase coexistence at long times. We map out the steady-state phase diagram using a cluster mean-field approach and characterize the dynamics with stochastic tensor-network methods. Within the bistable phase we identify signatures of dynamical heterogeneity in both the local magnetization and the entanglement dynamics. This highlights how competing quantum fluctuations and classical kinetic constraints shape the relaxation dynamics and the phase structure of many-body systems.

We establish exponential strong converse theorems for blind quantum data compression of finite-dimensional mixed-state sources, with and without entanglement assistance. Blind compression is a fundamental quantum information processing task in which the sender aims to transmit quantum states without direct access to the classical label. Strong converse is a notable aspect of data compression: the accuracy of the compression abruptly drops down to zero once the compression rate goes below a threshold. Strong converses for data compression have been established for pure-state sources; however, for mixed-state sources, the optimal compression rate is determined by a structural decomposition of quantum states and can change substantially under small perturbations. This sensitivity makes it difficult to quantitatively analyze the trade-off between compression rate and error. Despite recent progress, whether a strong converse holds at the optimal rate has remained unresolved in general. In this work, we resolve this question affirmatively. For unassisted compression, we show that at every rate below the optimum, the accuracy decays exponentially with the block length for general mixed-state sources without restrictions on protocols. We also prove exponential strong converse for blind compression with unlimited entanglement assistance at its optimal rate. Combining the two strong converse bounds yields exponential decay at every compression-entanglement rate pair outside the complete achievable rate region. Our proof introduces a new overlap quantity based on the structure of quantum states; this quantity connects preservation of the source information to the dimension of the transmitted system. We expect that this approach provides useful tools for converse analyses of other quantum information-processing tasks involving mixed states.

Nonstabilizerness is a critical resource for quantum advantage, but evaluating it, especially for mixed states, requires superexponentially many samples in system size, making the problem NP-hard. While symmetries are known to reduce this complexity, it is unclear whether they also restrict the amount of magic. In this work, we provide an explicit example of such a symmetry by proving that the Robustness of Magic (RoM) for N-qubit X-states is at most $\sqrt{3}$. Leveraging this symmetry constraint, we introduce a computationally efficient method to lower-bound the RoM of arbitrary many-body states, demonstrating its utility on the ground states of a spin-1/2 Hamiltonian with system sizes well beyond the reach of exact evaluation. Furthermore, for Hamiltonians whose equilibrium states are X-states, we analytically derive the critical temperature at which magic emerges. Our work shows why certain symmetries constrain magic while others do not, provides a scalable lower-bounding method, and identifies a nontrivial regime where many-body nonstabilizerness is analytically solvable.

Loop-current order has been invoked to explain unconventional electronic phases, with the crystal lattice usually regarded as a passive host for the underlying collective dynamics. Here we show that circulating currents can originate in the lattice itself, sustained by quantum and thermal fluctuations. We develop a microscopic description of angular momentum exchange that separates transfer between sites from crystalline restoring torques and reveals how circulation can emerge in a symmetry-preserving equilibrium state. In a two-dimensional elastic lattice preserving time-reversal, inversion, and fourfold rotational symmetries, we uncover opposite current loops on neighboring plaquettes while the mean angular momentum vanishes at every site. These currents are sustained by zero-point fluctuations in the phonon vacuum and persist at finite temperature. We trace their origin to directional elastic interactions in locally symmetry-lowered environments, with the higher crystal symmetry organizing the resulting currents into a compensated pattern of circulation. Our results extend the physics of equilibrium loop currents to lattice dynamics, revealing that elastic geometry can organize fluctuations into persistent angular momentum circulation without electronic or magnetic order, external driving, or spontaneous symmetry breaking.

The amount of secret key that can be obtained from a quantum key distribution run depends on both the physically observed error rates and the mathematical bounds used to certify security. For finite datasets, conservative bounds force users to discard a substantial fraction of the potentially available key. Here we further refine and extend the privacy amplification bounds achievable through the recent leftover hash lemma of Regula and Tomamichel [arXiv:2603.04493] and incorporate them into the security analysis of quantum key distribution based on entropic uncertainty relations. This improves on state-of-the-art key rates in finite-block regimes, certifying more secret key from the same experimental data without changes to the protocol, and outperforming techniques based on entropy accumulation. The results illustrate how sharper mathematical estimates can directly increase the usable output of a quantum communication system.

Matchgate circuits describe classically tractable dynamics in a physically relevant setting while nonetheless exhibiting features characteristic of complex quantum systems, such as high amounts of magic. This invites the broader question: to what extent are typical complexity measures saturated under trivial dynamics? Here, we address this by studying the behaviour of different Heisenberg-picture complexity measures in random matchgate ensembles. Our main technical contribution is a tractable and generalisible free-fermionic unitary Weingarten calculus formulated entirely in the Majorana basis. This method is tailored to computing moments of operators, and simplifies to a combinatorics problem which depends on the boundary conditions prescribed by a given operator functional. Using this framework, we derive closed-form expressions for the typical local-operator entanglement, operator stabiliser entropy, and higher-order out-of-time-ordered correlators. For extensive initial Majorana strings, both operator entanglement and stabiliser entropy obey volume laws, even though the underlying circuits remain classically simulable. Out-of-time-ordered correlators can likewise become exponentially small, showing that their late-time saturation value alone does not witness computational hardness and constituting a classically tractable example of emergent free independence. Finally, we relate these separations to operator resource theories, showing how operator entanglement beyond the Gaussian baseline lower-bounds the number of non-Gaussian gates in doped matchgate circuits. Our results present a practical toolbox for computing exact averages over random matchgates, while clarifying the distinction between quantum resources versus simulation complexity, and their dependence on the representation being exploited.

In this article I revisit the frequency interpretation of probability of von Mises, and argue that it contains the key elements of any coherent interpretation of scientific probability - notwithstanding the heavy criticisms von Mises collected from mathematicians and philosophers alike. I propose a modified definition that is not based on von Mises' "infinite collectives" but retains an essential ingredient of his interpretation, namely that probability can only quantitatively be defined for events that are, or can be, repeated in similar conditions and that exhibit frequency stabilisation. New is that the mentioned "conditions" should be "partitioned". Thus, I will partition probabilistic systems into object and environment, or in object, initiating, and probing subsystem, and show that such partitioning solves a series of classic problems. Other consistent interpretations can be unified with frequentism, e.g. Bayesianism à la Jaynes. I explore in detail the tantalising subjective or operationalist touch of probability, and argue that it can be put on objective grounds. One further upshot of the model is that several quantum puzzles can be seen as deriving from an imprecise interpretation of probability.

Entanglement and state distinguishability have long been central topics in quantum foundations. While each has developed into a rich subject in its own right, they can be connected through measurements in complementary bases. This connection provides insights into quantum and classical correlations and underlies many information-processing tasks, most notably quantum error correction (QEC). However, it has remained largely open whether the connection between entanglement and distinguishability extends to general measurements without assuming complementarity. We answer this question in the affirmative: the key is irreducibility induced by measurements, a much more relaxed condition than complementarity. Specifically, for POVMs satisfying an irreducibility condition, we establish a quantitative relation between the infidelity of one-sided local transformation into a maximally entangled state and the failure probability in state discrimination. We then characterize when both errors can vanish simultaneously. Our results have direct applications to entanglement distillation and QEC. Their errors can be certified by estimating classical input-output correlations from experimentally accessible local measurements, without requiring complementarity. The results also extend to quantum measurement theory. We derive novel trade-off relations that bridge two historically distinct approaches: information gain--irreversibility and observable noise--disturbance. Our connection between entanglement and distinguishability via irreducibility thus offers a common framework for entanglement distillation, QEC, and measurement trade-offs.

Quantifying dissipation is essential for controlling quantum noise and characterizing open-system dynamics. In practical experimental settings, residual noise may still persist despite efforts to suppress it, making it important to determine whether the dissipative strength remains within a prescribed tolerance threshold. We study this question for an unknown, time-independent Lindblad generator with bounded strength, where the jump operators are local but with unrestricted overlap, using only memoryless forward-evolution access. The task is to distinguish dissipative strength of at most $\varepsilon_1$ from strength of at least $\varepsilon_2$, for $0 \leq \varepsilon_1 < \varepsilon_2$, measured in the canonical dissipator's normalized Frobenius norm. We give an algorithm that solves this task in total evolution time $O(\varepsilon_2/(\varepsilon_2-\varepsilon_1)^2)$ for all nontrivial thresholds, with constant success probability, and provide a matching lower bound $Ω(\varepsilon_2/(\varepsilon_2-\varepsilon_1)^2)$ that establishes optimality even for adaptive protocols. This extends dissipation testing to the tolerant setting and eliminates the bounded-degree requirement, making the framework applicable to a broader range of experimentally relevant settings.

In the study of quantum process tomography, it has remained open how to learn a unitary channel in diamond distance with strictly parallel queries as efficiently as with sequential queries. Sequential queries allow one to exploit adaptivity to refine the estimate and adjust the learning strategy accordingly, whereas such adjustments are impossible for parallel queries. From the perspective of higher-order quantum operations, any parallel learning strategy can be simulated by a sequential one, whereas the converse does not hold in general, suggesting that sequential learning strategies are potentially more powerful. Contrary to this intuition, we present a new protocol for learning an unknown $d$-dimensional unitary channel to within $\varepsilon$ in diamond distance using $\mathcal{O}(d^2/\varepsilon)$ parallel queries, matching the lower bound presented in [Haah, Kothari, O'Donnell, and Tang, FOCS '23]. Our protocol thus closes the gap between parallel and sequential strategies for unitary channel tomography. As applications, it achieves optimal query complexity for boundary-regime quantum channel tomography and improves the query efficiency of the best-known protocol for tomography of fermionic linear optics.

We determine the exact strong converse exponent for secret-key transmission and generation over general finite-dimensional quantum wiretap channels, measuring reliability and secrecy jointly by squared fidelity to an ideal secret key. We introduce a novel Renyi private information whose regularization characterizes this exponent. An exact integral representation in terms of ordinary private information gives a uniform continuity bound, showing that the regularized quantity converges to private capacity as the Renyi order approaches one. This establishes for any wiretap channel an exponential fidelity decay at every rate above private capacity.

We introduce a local and distributed framework for decoding quantum LDPC codes. Built atop belief propagation (BP), the architecture combines strictly local processing of syndrome information, local feedback, autonomous operation, and highly parallelized decoding. We establish the framework at two complementary levels. First, we show that any code exhibiting a threshold under iterative BP decoding can be promoted to an autonomous local measurement-and-feedback dynamics while preserving that threshold. We then turn to codes for which naive BP does not itself exhibit threshold behavior. Our key observation is that BP can nevertheless provide sufficiently accurate \emph{local} marginal information: active syndrome defects use these local beliefs to \emph{move}, pair, and annihilate through asynchronous feedback. We demonstrate numerically that this construction exhibits threshold behavior in the point-like sectors of the two- and three-dimensional toric codes, where conventional BP decoding fails. Exploiting the graph-generality of BP, we then study the inference dynamics on the membrane-like sector of the three-dimensional toric code and in a family of bivariate-bicycle quantum LDPC codes.

Can a symmetry be tested optimally without using the quantum resource naturally associated with it? For parallel subgroup-versus-Haar testing, we derive a quantitative representation-theoretic converse for every protocol with zero type-I error: the excess type-II error is bounded below by the sum of two nonnegative penalties, one for weight on suboptimal subgroup types and one for deviations of within-type Schur profiles from their typewise extremal profiles. At optimality, both penalties vanish, yielding support and weight locking for every optimal system marginal. Disjointness of the resulting locked set and the free marginal set rules out resource-free optimality, whereas overlap alone does not establish attainability. For the diagonal torus in dimension $d\geq 2$, optimal testing without coherence is possible only with a single query. We determine both the exact optimal type-II error over all protocols with incoherent system marginals and the minimum system-marginal coherence required to attain the unrestricted optimum. For the orthogonal subgroup in dimension $d\geq 2$, a real protocol attains the optimum at every query number. For the qutrit Clifford group, Wigner-positive optimal protocols exist at three and four queries but not from five through nine; whether they exist beyond nine queries remains open. Together, these results relate the subgroup- and query-dependent resource requirements of optimal symmetry testing to structural constraints on optimal system marginals.

Multimode optomechanical scattering is ubiquitous in free-space imaging protocols, but its radiation pressure counterpart is challenging to detect with extended objects. Here we demonstrate radiation pressure actuation of a nanomechanical membrane using dynamically structured light from a spatial mode demultiplexer (SPADE). Using single- and two-mode illumination, we directly image the position-dependent intermodal coupling between Hermite-Gauss (HG) modes as mediated by the membrane's motion. As an application, we use multimode radiation pressure feedback to simultaneously cool two nearly degenerate membrane modes. Our results are applicable to diverse mechanical systems and serve as a stepping stone to SPADE-based quantum optomechanics.

It is shown that Shannon entropy, Fisher information, and quantum-mechanical kinetic energy may all be viewed as measures of correlation. We begin with a fundamental correlation-destroying map: a joint probability density $ρ(x,y)$ is replaced by $ρ_x(x)ρ_y(y)$, the product of its marginal distributions. In the discrete case, Shannon's entropy is nondecreasing under this map. For continuous distributions, this fundamental map leads to a well-behaved, coordinate-invariant correlation measure, analogous to the discrete Shannon entropy: \[ I[ρ] = h[ρ_x] + h[ρ_y] - h[ρ]. \] In the continuous case, however, another measure appears: Fisher information. The relative Fisher information $J(ρ\|ρ_xρ_y)$ behaves similarly under the fundamental map. For a normalized real quantum wavefunction, this decrease is exactly proportional to the decrease in mean kinetic energy, \[ \langle T\rangle_ψ- \langle T\rangle_Φ= \frac{\hbar^2}{8m} J(ρ\|ρ_xρ_y), \qquad Φ= \sqrt{ρ_x ρ_y}. \] In Jaynes's language, the result supports a principle of minimum justified correlation: given physical constraints and a set of possible distributions or related amplitudes satisfying those constraints, select from that set those with the least correlation. This is Part I of a two-part paper. Here we develop the entropy, Fisher-information, and kinetic-energy identities above, and state the principle they support. Part II addresses questions which Part I raises but leaves unanswered: multiple solutions, time dependence, the role of spin, a route to the Schrödinger equation itself, and a proposed experimental test. AI has been used.

Berry curvature and quantum metric of Bloch states govern a wide range of phenomena, yet unified experimental access to both remains limited. Here we show that light spatial-dispersion alters the selection rules of second-order photocurrents and responses forbidden by parity become allowed in centrosymmetric crystals without any external fields, magnetic order, interfaces, strain, or engineered symmetry breaking. The resulting response is intrinsic and its weight is set by the quantum geometry of the Bloch states. Conventional photogalvanic effects are constrained by crystal symmetry and entangle the quantum metric with shift vector contributions. The spatially-dispersive response instead isolates the quantum metric and Berry curvature in distinct polarization channels. Implementing this approach in 1T'-MoTe2 across its temperature-driven transition to Td-Weyl phase, we resolve helicity-even and helicity-odd photocurrents corresponding to quantum metric and Berry curvature contributions, respectively, from the same device. The metric-dominated response persists across both phases and exhibits a robust spectral structure reproduced by first-principles calculations and linked to momentum-resolved quantum metric hotspots. In contrast, the curvature-driven channel emerges only when inversion symmetry is broken and shows strong sensitivity to carrier doping through competing momentum-space contributions. Our results establish photogalvanic effects with spatially varying optical fields as a general route to accessing quantum geometry in materials where photon energy and electronic filling probe different parts of the excitation manifold.

Suppose a Hamiltonian $H$ has a unique ground state $|ψ_0\rangle$ with an eigenvalue $E_0$, and we have an estimate $\tilde{E}_0$ such that $|\tilde{E}_0-E_0|\leqδ$, and there is a gap of at least $3δ$ between $E_0$ and all other eigenvalues. Suppose we have a unitary $A$ available that can produce a "guiding state'" $A|0\rangle$ that has overlap at least $γ$ with $|ψ_0\rangle$. We show how to obtain an $\varepsilon$-approximation of $|ψ_0\rangle$ using $O(\log(1/\varepsilon)/γδ)$ applications of $U=e^{iH}$ and $A$, and their inverses. We give two different algorithms, one based on interleaving amplitude amplification and error-reduction in the style of [HMdW03], and one using the composition of transducers. This paper is the state-preparation follow-up to our two recent ground-state-energy estimation papers [JW26, SdW26]. Combined, our results show an optimal $O(\log(1/\varepsilon)/γδ)$ upper bound for ground state preparation.

Quantum algorithms are powerful tools for finding symmetries of classical objects, most famously through Shor's algorithm and the framework of the Hidden Subgroup Problem (HSP). In this work, we study quantum algorithms for learning symmetries of quantum objects. Our starting point is the recently introduced State Hidden Subgroup Problem (StateHSP), a quantum generalisation of HSP in which the task is to learn the symmetry subgroup of a quantum state. We obtain positive results for non-abelian StateHSP, giving efficient quantum algorithms whenever the hidden subgroup is normal and for ambient groups belonging to a broad class of non-abelian groups, extending the previous general theory beyond the abelian setting. StateHSP learns \emph{Bose} symmetries, associated with linear representations, whereas physically equivalent pure states are defined only up to global phase. Motivated by this, we introduce a new \emph{Anyonic} state symmetry learning problem based on a more physically natural notion of symmetry than that considered by StateHSP. We give an efficient quantum algorithm by reducing the problem to StateHSP, where the reduction relies on a new connection between linearisations of projective representations and linear error-correcting codes. As an application, we obtain an improved algorithm for learning stabiliser groups that applies to mixed qudit states of arbitrary local dimension. Finally, we introduce symmetry learning problems for other quantum objects, including unitaries, Hamiltonians, and finite collections of states, and obtain efficient quantum algorithms by reducing them to instances of StateHSP.

We show that the optimal commuting operator correlation for a variant of Coladangelo's two-player generalized nonlocal game, based on the embezzlement of entanglement, is a commuting operator self-test. Our result gives the first correlation self-test for an exact entanglement embezzlement protocol in the commuting operator framework. Because the unique optimal correlation necessitates the exact embezzlement of entanglement, the correlation is unrealizable using quantum tensor-product models, even if the local spaces are allowed to be infinite dimensional. As such, our result provides an example of a commuting operator self-test where the Hilbert space shared by the two parties cannot be factored into a tensor-product of local spaces that is compatible with the local measurement operators. Our main proof technique relies on Harris' unique abstract state characterization of exact embezzlement of entanglement involving Cuntz algebras.

For every odd prime power $q$ and $D=q+1$, we construct an infinite family of Ramanujan quantum expanders of degree $D$. The construction transfers Morgenstern's Ramanujan Cayley graphs on $\operatorname{PSL}_2(\mathbb{F}_{p})$ for $p$ which is an even power of $q$, through the odd irreducible subrepresentation of the Weil representation of $\operatorname{SL}_2(\mathbb{F}_{p})$. For a quantum expander of dimension $N$, our implementation uses $O(\log^2 N)$ elementary gates, and $O(\log N)$ ancilla qudits, using a fixed finite gate set depending on $q$. An advantage compared to the previous work of Iyer, Jain, Jordan, and Somma (FOCS 2026) is that assuming the quantum circuit is implemented exactly, we satisfy the $2\sqrt{D-1}/D$ singular value bound exactly without any additive error.

We study exact learning with membership queries for concept classes $\mathcal C\subseteq\{0,1\}^N$, focusing on the relationships among their deterministic, randomized, and quantum query complexities, denoted $\mathsf{D}(\mathcal C)$, $\mathsf{R}(\mathcal C)$, and $\mathsf{Q}(\mathcal C)$, respectively. The two canonical quantum speedups in this model are witnessed by Grover search and Bernstein-Vazirani, leading to the longstanding conjecture $$ \mathsf{R}(\mathcal C)=O(\mathsf{Q}(\mathcal C)^2+\mathsf{Q}(\mathcal C)\log N). $$ We first refute this conjecture by constructing concept classes $\mathcal C$ and $\mathcal C'$ satisfying \[ \mathsf{R}(\mathcal C)=Ω\!\left(\frac{\mathsf{Q}(\mathcal C)^3\log N}{\log \mathsf{Q}(\mathcal C)}\right) \qquad\text{and}\qquad \mathsf{D}(\mathcal C')=Ω(\mathsf{Q}(\mathcal C')^3\log N). \] The first bound matches the upper bound of Arunachalam et al.~[Quantum'21] up to constant factors, while the second matches the upper bound of Servedio and Gortler~[SICOMP'04]. In particular, this shows that the saving in the randomized upper bound of Arunachalam et al. fundamentally relies on randomness. Apart from characterizing the optimal relationship between classical and quantum query complexity, our results are the first to show that quantum speedups for learning can go beyond the Grover and Bernstein-Vazirani paradigms.

Computational self-testing gives a classical verifier command over the quantum register of a single computationally bounded prover. We use this framework to construct the first argument system for BQP with quasilinear total resource requirements in the circuit model. Our argument system is based on the learning with errors (LWE) assumption and requires total resources of $O(\mathrm{poly}(λ, \log g)\cdot g)$ for delegating a circuit with $g$ gates, where $λ$ is the LWE security parameter. This is achieved by constructing a new computational self-test for certifying the prover's quantum state and using it to dequantize the efficient verification protocol of Broadbent (ToC 2018). Specifically, this self-test enables the verifiable, random remote state preparation of tensor product states of the single-qubit Clifford observables $σ_X, σ_Y, σ_Z, (σ_Y-σ_X)/\sqrt{2}$ and $(σ_Y+σ_X)/\sqrt{2}$, with constant robustness: the verification error is independent of the number of prepared qubits. This approach was first proposed by Coladangelo et al. (ToC 2024) in the multi-prover setting. We replicate their result in the single-prover setting by applying the compiler proposed by Kalai et al. (STOC 2023)---which turns any nonlocal game into a single-prover argument system---to a modified version of their self-test.

Atomic bilayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) host quantum phases governed by the layer degree of freedom, including bilayer Wigner crystals, fractional Chern insulators, and exciton condensates. These phases are probed primarily through exciton spectroscopy, yet it remains poorly understood how excitons and carriers interact to form Fermi polarons in bilayers, where both the impurity and the Fermi sea carry a layer pseudospin. Progress has been limited because most TMD bilayers have momentum-indirect optical bandgaps, in which non-radiative decay and inhomogeneous broadening obscure the intrinsic spectra. Here, we show that bilayer MoTe$_2$, unlike most TMD bilayers, retains a direct optical bandgap, providing a clean platform for studying bilayer Fermi-polaron physics. In a dual-gated device, an out-of-plane electric field continuously tunes the hybridization between intralayer and interlayer excitons, forming layer-coherent excitons. Upon electrostatic doping, the excitonic spectrum evolves into multiple polaron branches, controlled by both carrier doping and the out-of-plane electric field. Among these, we identify a polaron with no analog in monolayers, in which a layer-coherent exciton is dressed by carriers in the opposite layer, and is quantitatively captured by our field-theoretic model. Our results establish that pseudospin structure in both the impurity and the bath reshapes polaron formation, opening new avenues to many-body states such as Bose-Einstein condensates with interlayer coherence.

We reveal an unexpected connection between the parallel Kac's walk and the Kipnis-Marchioro-Presutti (KMP) process. The twirling channel induced by the parallel Kac's walk on the symmetric subspace is exactly encoded by a classical Markov chain on partitions, which lifts to a parallel KMP process on complete graphs. This correspondence reduces the analysis of the twirling channel to the mixing of the parallel KMP process. We prove that $O(\log d+\log(1/\varepsilon))$ repetitions suffice to approximate Haar twirling on the symmetric subspace of $(\mathbb C^d)^{\otimes t}$ to error $\varepsilon$, uniformly in the number of copies $t$. For the standard KMP process on general graphs, we prove a mixing-time analogue of Aldous's conjecture: at fixed accuracy, the mixing time of the $t$-particle process is at most a constant times the single-particle mixing time multiplied by the logarithm of the number of vertices, uniformly in $t$. As an application, we improve the total variation mixing-time bound for coordinate hit-and-run on the $n$-dimensional standard simplex from $\widetilde O(n^3)$ (Kook and Vempala, 2026) to $\widetilde O(n)$, while removing the dependence on the initial distribution. Our main technical contribution is conditional product structure for both parallel and standard KMP processes. Conditioned on suitable auxiliary randomness, the labeled particles evolve independently. Combining this structure with an exact coupling yields mixing bounds uniform in the number of particles for both unlabeled KMP models. These bounds are sharp up to logarithmic factors and imply rapid convergence of the parallel Kac twirling channel on the symmetric subspace.

Entanglement distillation from noisy bipartite states and reliable quantum communication over noisy channels are fundamental tasks in quantum information theory, yet optimal coding schemes typically rely on prior knowledge of the underlying state or channel. Here, through Schur-Weyl duality, we establish a universal quantum error-correction principle that removes this dependence entirely. We show that the irreducible permutation spaces arising from the local Schur-Weyl decomposition of many identical copies of an unknown bipartite mixed state form maximally entangled quantum code spaces, with an error structure determined entirely by representation theory. Correcting these symmetry-resolved errors yields universal protocols for entanglement distillation and quantum communication that achieve coherent-information rates with exponentially vanishing error and optimal second-order correction. The protocols are invariant under local unitaries and allow both input marginals to be recovered exactly. At finite block length, their achievable rates are governed by an associated Schur-Weyl information spectrum, which we relate to Petz-Rényi conditional entropies of the underlying state. The resulting sample complexity depends only on the relevant spectral ranks, rather than on the respective Hilbert space dimensions. In particular, for $n$-qubit states of $O(\operatorname{poly} n)$ global rank, we show that a Petz-Rényi conditional-entropy promise suffices for optimal sample-efficient entanglement distillation. Altogether, these results identify Schur-Weyl duality as a fundamental and general mechanism for optimal, tomography-free universal quantum coding, placing entanglement distillation, quantum error correction and quantum communication within a unified representation-theoretic framework.

Interlayer excitons in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) heterostructures exhibit long lifetimes and long-range transport, making them promising for excitonic devices and quantum many-body phases, such as Bose-Einstein condensates. Achieving these goals requires a precise understanding of spin-allowed bright and nominally spin-forbidden dark excitons, because the lowest-energy exciton species governs population, transport, and condensation. Despite substantial progress, unambiguously distinguishing singlet and triplet interlayer excitons has been challenging, as moiré excitons in these heterostructures can mimic their optical signatures. Here, we report the direct spectroscopic identification of bright (singlet) and dark (triplet) interlayer excitons in high-quality, dual-gated WSe$_2$/hBN/WSe$_2$ homobilayers. Electric-field-dependent photoluminescence and reflectance reveal two momentum-direct interlayer transitions with distinct spin configurations. The interlayer dark excitons obey selection rules that differ from those of bright excitons. Strikingly, interlayer dark excitons retain strong valley polarization, even with their ultralong lifetime exceeding microseconds. Finally, we demonstrate twist-angle control, wherein twist-induced electron-hole momentum mismatch modulates interlayer exciton emission. These results provide critical insights into the electronic and excitonic structure of TMD heterostructures, opening new avenues for excitonic many-body physics and optoelectronic devices.

Pulsed light is represented by density matrices whose correlation functions have different properties of stationarity and coherence. We show that these density matrices yield equivalent measurement results after accounting for finite detection times. This in turn reveals a physical meaning to the length of a quantization cavity and explains the origin of the physical spectrum for pulsed light. By generalizing the density matrices for pulsed Gaussian states of light, we can describe pulsed light of varying statistics in the same basis and relate the photocount rate to the pulse spectrum.

We establish improved locally Markovian properties of quantum Gibbs states at every fixed positive temperature. For finite-range interactions of bounded interaction degree, the conditional mutual information (CMI) decays exponentially with separation, with a prefactor exponential in the boundary size. This improves the exponential volume dependence of the local Markov bounds established by Chen and Rouzé \cite{Chen2025}. For exponentially and stretched-exponentially decaying interactions, we obtain stretched-exponential CMI decay with a boundary-dependent prefactor. For power-law interactions, we prove inverse-logarithmic or algebraic decay with polynomial region-size dependence. Our proof is static, in contrast to the dynamical approach of Chen and Rouzé. We compare the Gibbs state with a product state obtained by removing boundary interactions, reducing the CMI bound to a relative-entropy loss that we control using locality estimates.

The semiconductor diode, which allows current to flow preferentially in one direction, is a fundamental building block of numerous modern electronic circuits. Its superconducting analogue---the superconducting diode effect---enables directional dissipationless current flow and may provide similar functionality in future superconducting quantum circuits. Realization of such a nonreciprocal supercurrent requires broken time-reversal symmetry. At zero applied field, this has been typically associated either with intrinsic unconventional superconductivity or extrinsic spin-split electronic states induced by magnetic proximity. Here we demonstrate a field-free superconducting diode effect in conventional superconducting Al proximitized by collinear antiferromagnetic CuMnAs, whose electronic structure breaks time-reversal symmetry without generating spin splitting. By tuning the proximity effect through an insulating AlAs interlayer and correlating the reversal of the diode polarity with the reversal of the remanent Néel state, we establish that the antiferromagnet controls the superconducting diode effect. Our results show that neither spin-split bands nor net magnetization is required for a magnetically controlled field-free superconducting diode effect, extending superconducting nonreciprocity to a broader class of collinear compensated magnets.

Kac's walk is a classical local random walk whose action on a single real unit vector in dimension $d$ mixes in total variation in $Θ(d\log d)$ sequential steps~\cite{PS17}. Lu, Qin, Song, Yao, and Zhao introduced a parallel version of Kac's walk that mixes a single quantum state in $O(\log d)$ rounds~\cite{LQSY+26}. After discretizing the randomness and replacing it by suitable pseudorandom primitives, this parallel walk gives rise to pseudorandom state scramblers, and was subsequently shown to yield pseudorandom unitaries~\cite{LQSY+25}. We study what happens when the parallel Kac's walk acts simultaneously on $k$ orthonormal quantum states. We prove that, for any $1\leq k < d$, after $O\!\left((k+\log d)\log(d/\varepsilon)\right)$ steps, the joint distribution of the $k$ output states is $\varepsilon$-close, in both Wasserstein and total variation distance, to that obtained by applying a common Haar-random unitary to the same inputs. This generalizes the dispersing property of the parallel Kac's walk from a single quantum state to multiple orthonormal quantum states. Equivalently, viewing an ordered collection of $k$ orthonormal states as a point on the complex Stiefel manifold $V_{d,k}=\{X\in\mathbb C^{d\times k}:X^\dagger X=I_k\}$, we show that the parallel Kac's walk mixes rapidly on $V_{d,k}$, with both Wasserstein and total variation mixing times bounded by $O\!\left((k+\log d)\log(d/\varepsilon)\right)$. This extends the Wasserstein mixing result of Pillai, Smith, and Vaikuntanathan for the standard Kac's walk on real Stiefel manifolds~\cite{PSV26}.

Strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking (SWSSB) is a novel phase transition in mixed states associated with the loss of global charge information. In this work we study fermions with $U(1)$ symmetry under infinite density dephasing and derive the SWSSB properties of the resulting mixed states. Our central observation is that at infinite dephasing every Renyi correlator is exactly the spin-spin correlator of a compact XY model, whose Boltzmann weight is the squared full-counting-statistics generating function of a classical ensemble built from the parent state. For the Renyi-2 correlator it is the full counting statistics of the parent state itself. We complement the infinite dephasing mapping with a novel diagrammatic expansion for the Renyi-1 correlator, applicable to any diagonal mixed state, which computes the couplings of the Renyi-1 XY model. We also study a replica field theory for even Renyi index quantities, applicable at finite dephasing. Our analysis indicates that fully dephased metals display long-range SWSSB in $d\geq 2$, as confirmed numerically and experimentally in $d=2$, and quasi-long-range SWSSB in $d=1$. For insulating parent states both an SWSSB and a trivial phase are possible at infinite dephasing depending on UV details. Long-range SWSSB in $d\geq 3$, or quasi-long-range SWSSB in $d=2$, survives above a nonuniversal, Renyi-index-dependent threshold and is lost when the parent state is deep in the insulating phase, with the exception of quantum Hall insulators which generically have quasi-long-range SWSSB. For even Renyi indices we also determine the stability of the SWSSB phase away from infinite dephasing and derive the universality class of the SWSSB transition.

We study the query complexity of testing quantum juntas. Given an unknown $n$-qubit unitary or quantum channel, the goal is to decide whether it acts nontrivially on at most $k$ qubits or is $\varepsilon$-far from every such operation. For unitaries, we consider the forward-only model, where the tester has access to $U$, but not to $U^\dagger$ or controlled-$U$. We give tight bounds for both unitary and channel junta testing. For sufficiently large $k$, $n \ge 2k$, and a broad range of $\varepsilon$, both problems have query complexity $Θ\left(k/(\varepsilon^2\log k)\right)$. Our upper bounds are achieved by simple nonadaptive testers using product inputs and single-qubit measurements. For junta channels, this closes the gap by Bao and Yao (COLT 23, TPAMI 2025) between an $\widetilde{O}(k)$ upper bound and a $\widetildeΩ(\sqrt{k})$ lower bound at constant $\varepsilon$, establishing the optimal $Θ(k/\log k)$ query complexity. At the heart of both bounds is a strong connection between quantum junta testing and classical support-size testing. For the upper bounds, we reduce quantum junta testing to a generalized support-size problem for distributions over random subsets, and develop a new tester with improved sample complexity. For the lower bounds, we proceed in the reverse direction, reducing classical support-size testing to quantum junta testing through a phase-masked hard ensemble and showing that forward quantum queries can be exactly classicalized on average. Together, these reductions identify support-size testing as the classical core of quantum junta testing and yield matching lower bounds. At constant $\varepsilon$, they also give a separation between $Θ(k/\log k)$ forward queries and $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{k})$ queries with inverse access.

Efficient end-to-end entanglement distribution in quantum information networks requires routing under limited resources and fidelity constraints. We study entanglement routing as a fidelity-constrained unsplittable multicommodity flow problem that maximizes the number of admitted requests. As a proof of concept, we integrate neutral-atom quantum optimization into a hybrid classical--quantum column-generation framework. A classical restricted master problem selects routes, while a pricing problem generates fidelity-feasible paths. We formulate this NP-hard constrained shortest-path pricing problem as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem and address it with hardware-aware register embedding and instance-driven pulse shaping. To our knowledge, this is the first study of neutral-atom quantum optimization as a pricing oracle for fidelity-constrained entanglement routing. On small benchmark instances evaluated with neutral-atom processor emulators, the method, combined with warm-start and post-processing, achieves an optimality gap below 1% across all tested sizes; the selected simulated-annealing route-generation baseline exhibits gaps of up to 6%. These results indicate that the generated bitstrings can provide useful candidate routes for classical refinement within column generation. This proof of concept does not establish quantum utility or scalability; further evaluation on larger instances, against stronger classical baselines, and on quantum hardware is needed.

Demonstrating quantum advantage on current quantum hardware is a central goal of quantum computing, and random quantum circuits underpin many leading proposals. Yet sampling-based demonstrations are often difficult to verify, while observable-based approaches face a different challenge: concentration can suppress differences between circuit instances. Recent experiments have put forward the estimation of out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) in random circuits as a promising task for verifiable quantum advantage, yet whether their circuit-to-circuit fluctuations survive concentration as system size grows has remained open. Here we show that they do. For broad classes of local random circuits in any fixed spatial dimension, we prove inverse-polynomial fluctuations of fixed-order OTOCs at system-scale depths. In one-dimensional Haar-random brickwork circuits, we further show that macroscopically many gates contribute to these fluctuations, yet in each layer they remain confined to a sublinear-width region. As a byproduct, we develop a classical algorithm exhibiting the first rigorous improvement over brute-force classical simulation of OTOCs in 1D. Although classical hardness remains open, our results rule out strong concentration as an obstruction to OTOC-based proposals for verifiable quantum advantage.

Correlations between optical modes, ranging from classical fluctuations to quantum entanglement, are a cornerstone of modern optics and emerging quantum technologies. However, probing these correlations on the natural timescale of electronic motion - the attosecond regime - remains a major challenge. Here, we generate and characterize correlated attosecond extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) emission by perturbing gas-phase high-harmonic generation with two-mode bright squeezed vacuum. The signal and idler fields imprint their correlated amplitude and phase fluctuations onto two families of harmonics, thereby transferring these correlations from the infrared to broadband XUV modes. Even harmonics serve as an intrinsic attosecond phase-sensitive probe of these correlations through interference between indistinguishable XUV pathways. Shot-resolved covariance measurements reveal the amplitude correlations, while even-harmonics resolve the phase correlations with sub-cycle precision. Time-domain reconstruction of the correlated emission reveals a transition from maximal fluctuations to near-silence within only 30 as. Whereas the signal and idler driven attosecond pulse trains exhibit excess fluctuations individually, their joint reconstruction shows strongly suppressed fluctuations, reflecting their shared correlations. These results establish a framework for generating and probing quantum correlations on attosecond timescales, opening the door to quantum attosecond science.

The weak value of an operator is the average result of measuring that operator on a quantum system given specified initial and final states. The overlap between these states appears in the denominator of the weak value, and thus if that overlap is small, the weak value can be arbitrarily large. In 1988, Albert, Aharonov, and Vaidman proposed a weak Stern-Gerlach experiment which would be able to measure a so-called anomalous weak value, a measurement result which lies out- side of the eigenvalue spectrum of the operator being measured. Though anomalous weak values have been measured in numerous optical systems, here we present the first such realization of this experiment as originally proposed. By placing a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb in a magnetic gradient and performing an unlikely postselection, we measure an effective magnification of a weak magnetic momentum kick (~ 8 $μ$m/s) by a factor of 14. We also demonstrate that increasing the momentum kick decreases the "weakness" of the measurement and reduces the amplification.

Simulating nonlinear dynamics with quantum computers has gained increasing attention. In general, such simulations require additional quantum resources because unitary quantum evolution is linear. A fundamental question is how nonlinear dynamics can be embedded into fully coherent, ancilla-free unitary circuits and how the complexity of the dynamics governs the required quantum resources. In this work, we generalize the ancilla-free double-bracket quantum algorithm for imaginary-time evolution by replacing its state-independent Hamiltonian with a state-dependent Hermitian operator. Our framework recursively calls an initial state preparation oracle and its inverse, and prepares the target solution to any prescribed accuracy using a fully coherent, ancilla-free unitary embedding. We relate the query cost to the complexity of the nonlinear dynamics, specifically their sensitivity to initial conditions. We obtain query upper bounds of $\exp(O(T))$, $\exp(O(T^2))$, and $\exp(\exp(O(T)))$ when the distance between solutions contracts at least exponentially (contractive), does not increase (nonexpansive), or grows at most exponentially (expansive), respectively, where $T$ is the target evolution time. For the discrete Gross--Pitaevskii equation, our ancilla-free double-bracket circuit achieves optimal worst-case query complexity $Θ(e^{gT/2})$ over a specified family of single-qubit initial states, where $g>0$ is the nonlinearity strength. These results connect the complexity of nonlinear dynamics to the query cost of coherent quantum simulation and provide a foundation for designing ancilla-free unitary embeddings with optimal query complexity.

Estimating nonlinear properties of an unknown quantum state with restrictive experimental accessibility is a fundamental problem in quantum learning. We study the sample complexity of estimating the state moments $\operatorname{Tr}(ρ^t)$, allowing arbitrary adaptive single-copy measurements. While purity estimation has optimal sample complexity $Θ(\sqrt d)$ at constant additive error, the optimal dimension dependence for higher moments has remained unclear. We resolve this question for every fixed integer $t\ge 2$: for any sufficiently small constant additive error, the optimal sample complexity is \[ Θ\!\left(d^{\frac{\lceil\log_2 t\rceil}{1+\lceil\log_2 t\rceil}}\right) \] with constant success probability. The complexity thus follows a dyadic hierarchy: for each integer $h\geq1$, all moment orders $2^{h-1}<t\leq2^h$ share the same exponent. In particular, the third and fourth moments both require $Θ(d^{2/3})$ copies. We also establish an $Ω(d^{1-1/t})$ lower bound for arbitrary nonadaptive single-copy protocols, matching the known upper bound and demonstrating an advantage from adaptivity for every $t\geq4$. Our upper bound uses adaptive state filtering to reduce higher-order moment estimation to lower-order moment estimation in a smaller state space. For the lower bound, we directly compare moment-matched ensembles through a smooth interpolation, bypassing the maximally mixed state as an intermediate hypothesis and yielding matching bounds beyond $\sqrt d$.

We derive nonlinear Zitterbewegung velocity of electrons augmented by band torsion in crystals. The equation of motion with multistate quantum geometric tensors and torsion culminates in transient nonlinear photocurrent responses distinct from the recently measured resonant steady-state photovoltaic effects induced by circularly polarized light. Tomography protocols for measuring the multistate quantum geometric torsion tensors are proposed.

Arrays of neutral atoms excited to Rydberg levels have emerged as one of the most promising platforms for quantum computation and simulation. With the hope to outperform classical devices, the number of atoms has been increased by orders of magnitude. However, the interaction time, i.e., the maximum accumulated time during which an atom interacts with its neighbours, has been limited to a few microseconds only. This restrains the number of gates per atom or prevents the simulation of long-time dynamics of quantum many-body systems. Here, we observe the spin-exchange interaction between two spin 1/2s encoded in laser-trapped circular Rydberg atoms over more than $60μs$ and 40 spin-oscillation periods, improving the state of the art by an order of magnitude. These unprecedented timescales allow us to record for weak atomic trapping a collapse and revival of the spin-exchange oscillation contrast induced by spin-motion coupling. Our results constitute the first observation of this coupling with laser-trapped Rydberg atoms. To counteract its detrimental effect for quantum simulation, we demonstrate a novel dynamical decoupling method that prevents the collapse of the spin oscillations. This method exploits the advantages of our recently developed hybrid platform that enables the measurement and the optical manipulation of long-lived circular Rydberg atoms with auxiliary Rydberg atoms. This work opens a direct route to long-duration quantum simulation of strongly-interacting many-body systems.

We introduce an exact algebraic architecture that evaluates an arbitrary finite Fourier series using a two-mode ($2 \times 2$) linear optical circuit, with the only tunable components being single-mode phase shifters encoding the function argument. We prove that such a circuit must exist for every Fourier series and derive an analytical method for its construction based on spectral factorisation. The resulting optical system exhibits an $\mathcal{O}(N)$ depth for an $N$-harmonic expansion, executing function evaluations in the passive optical time-of-flight. Finally, we validate our claims numerically, demonstrating that even for sequences with thousands of Fourier terms, our proposed circuit construction correctly synthesises continuous and discontinuous nonlinear functions. Our architecture thus provides a universal, deterministic foundation for single-variable nonlinear optical computing on integrated photonic platforms.

Second-quantized neural-network quantum states have achieved accurate molecular energies, but extending them across molecular geometries requires a shared representation of the geometry-dependent wavefunction coefficients. We introduce geometry-conditioned foundation neural-network quantum states for molecular electronic structure in second quantization. A single autoregressive model learns a family of ground states from sparse anchor geometries and provides wavefunctions at untrained geometries without further optimization. Orbital alignment matches orbital identities and transports their phases, establishing an aligned orbital basis across geometries. Frozen energies reach chemical accuracy at every untrained query geometry for N$_2$, CO, and H$_4$. On additional molecular paths, the energy-trained wavefunctions yield dipoles, quadrupoles, and natural occupations without property labels. Across three paired N$_2$ training seeds, orbital alignment lowers the mean absolute energy error over all untrained query geometries from 34-37 mHa to 0.049-0.085 mHa. At approximately 1 mHa mean absolute error, frozen evaluation reduces the per-geometry cost by $986\times$ relative to independent optimization, yielding an estimated $25.8\times$ end-to-end GPU-cost reduction on a 161-point N$_2$ grid.

Low-space-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation requires not only high-rate quantum error-correcting codes but also space-efficient implementations of logical operations. Transversal and fold-transversal gates are promising since they limit error propagation and require no additional qubits. However, the logical operations they enable are typically restricted, and a central challenge is to construct codes that combine a complete set of logical Clifford gates with favorable code parameters. In this work, we introduce a family of quantum codes with an asymptotically constant encoding rate and sublogarithmically growing stabilizer weight, while supporting the entire logical Clifford group using only transversal and fold-transversal gates. Our construction is based on classical codes whose code spaces are absolutely irreducible Steinberg modules of their Tanner-graph automorphism groups. Taking hypergraph products of these classical codes yields quantum codes for which all logical Clifford operations can be synthesized from a fixed set of transversal and fold-transversal gates. Moreover, the slow growth of the stabilizer weight enables a high error-correcting performance in small instances. These results provide a path toward fault-tolerant quantum computation with low space overhead using transversal and fold-transversal gates.

A low-noise, high-speed balanced homodyne detector is demonstrated, combining a capacitive-feedback transimpedance amplifier implemented in 28 nm CMOS with a custom photonic integrated circuit fabricated in imec's iSiPP200 silicon photonics platform. The receiver achieves a 3-dB bandwidth of 7.6 GHz, a maximum shot noise clearance of 27 dB, a shot noise-limited bandwidth of 13.7 GHz and a common-mode rejection ratio up to 54.8 dB. These results demonstrate the suitability of CMOS capacitive-feedback transimpedance amplifiers for demanding quantum and coherent sensing optical applications, including continuous-variable quantum key distribution, quantum random number generation, and optical coherence tomography.

We argue that the exponential quantum advantage in Shor's algorithm is broken under one-layer depolarizing noise of arbitrary small error rate, by analyzing a resonance breaking phenomenon in noisy quantum circuits. First, we express the distribution of measurements on $n$-qubit strings as the superposition of the $4^n$ wave functions in the Pauli path integral. In the noiseless case, the bit-strings achieving resonant peaks guaranteed a constant rate of successful measurements to factor a large number. Secondly, when the middle layer of the quantum circuit has independent depolarizing noise of rate $λ$, for any Hamming weight $d$, we obtain corresponding measurement rate bounded by $2(1-λ)^d$ for higher frequency terms and by $O(n^d)/2^{n/2}$ for low frequency terms. The rate approaches to zero as $n$ and $d$ approaches to infinity. Resonance breaking destroys the exponential quantum advantage. Furthermore, we design a classical factoring algorithm in polynomial time $O(n^d)$ to substitute the low frequency contribution.

Accurate decoding of quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes often relies on expensive post-processing search, although decoding difficulty varies strongly between syndromes. We find that the benefit of deeper post-processing search is highly concentrated in a small subset of decoding instances, and that these instances can be identified directly from the decoder itself. To this end, we introduce an adaptive decoder based on belief propagation (BP) and ordered-statistics decoding (OSD), using the disagreement between the BP hard decision and the syndrome-consistent order-zero OSD solution as an internal risk signal to determine where deeper search is required. On a $[[144,12,12]]$ bivariate bicycle code under circuit-level depolarising noise, encoding $12$ logical qubits in $144$ data qubits with distance $12$, escalating only the highest-risk $20\%$ of instances recovers $85\%$ to $92\%$ of the improvement in logical error rate available from a full one-free-variable sweep, while reducing the mean serial decoding cost by a factor of $3.6$ relative to applying the same truncated search to every instance. At matched budget, disagreement-guided routing also outperforms routing based on the BP syndrome residual, syndrome weight and random selection. The same behaviour reappears on a structurally distinct radial qLDPC code obtained from a lifted-product construction, where escalating $20\%$ of instances recovers $87\%$ to $94\%$ of the available gain. A $Z$-memory experiment on the Quantinuum H2 trapped-ion processor, implementing both $X$-type and $Z$-type checks, further shows that the signal remains predictive under device noise. These results show that decoder-internal disagreement can expose where additional decoding effort is valuable, allowing classical computation to be concentrated on the instances most likely to benefit from it.

We use the analogy between the quadrature operators in quantum optics and the phase-space coordinates in a mechanical harmonic oscillator to generalise the theory of linear optics beyond quantum theory. For this, we introduce a framework for analysing photonic circuits within generalised probabilistic theories based on quadrature operators. Using this framework, we ask whether phenomena like the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect, Mach-Zehnder interferometry are specific to quantum theory or also occur across a broader class of theories. We find the latter: the vanishing photon coincidences at the output of a beam splitter also occur for classical light and for a modified version of quantised light. Similarly, for Mach-Zehnder interferometry we find that there is no qualitative difference between quantum theory and these alternative theories. Our framework can serve as a foundation to study generalised theories of complex photonic set-ups and photonic quantum computers.

Multiphoton indistinguishability is a key resource for photonic quantum technologies, yet its characterization typically relies on resource-intensive methods. In this work, we develop two efficient and experimentally friendly protocols to estimate or bound the fidelity $F_{\mathrm{ind}}$ of an $N$-photon state to the closest perfectly indistinguishable state. The first protocol applies to sources preparing separable states, uses a single Fourier interferometer together with photon-number-resolving detection, and yields tight two-sided bounds on $F_{\mathrm{ind}}$. The second protocol combines randomized implementations of linear-optical interferometers with photon counting, enabling direct estimation of $F_{\mathrm{ind}}$ for arbitrary $N$-photon states. Both protocols can certify $F_{\mathrm{ind}} = 1 - \mathcal{O}(ε)$ using provably optimal $\mathcal{O}(1/ε)$ samples, in contrast to previous approaches which required prior assumptions on the model of partial distinguishability. Our methods, based on a multiphoton generalization of the Hong-Ou-Mandel test, bring the rigorous and operationally meaningful certification of multiphoton indistinguishability within reach of current photonic technologies.

The ratio $T_2$/$T_2^*$ of the Hahn-echo and Ramsey times of nitrogen-vacancy (NV$^-$) ensembles is independent of the nitrogen concentration [N] and is $\approx$ 16 in diamond of natural isotopic abundance ($^{14}$N), yet a recent $^{15}$N-doped ensemble magnetometer gives only 8.05 $\pm$ 0.18 in the single-quantum convention. We ask whether the nitrogen nuclear isotope alone can cause such a reduction. Using a semiclassical spin-bath model with the Jahn-Teller-resolved P1 hyperfine tensor, we show that the fraction of P1 pairs that are hyperfine-degenerate, and hence free to flip-flop, is 1/4 for $^{14}$N (I = 1) but 5/16 for $^{15}$N (I = 1/2). Simulations over [N] = 0.1--100 ppm confirm that this shortens $T_2$ while leaving $T_2^*$ exactly unchanged: $T_2$($^{14}$N)/$T_2$($^{15}$N) = 1.118 $\pm$ 0.011, independent of [N] and 11$σ$ above unity. The measured contrast, 2.07 $\pm$ 0.25, is 3.8$σ$ larger, identifying resonant-channel counting as a real but partial contribution and setting a quantitative benchmark for many-body calculations.

We propose a quantum heat engine based on a two-component Fermi gas with s-wave contact interaction, operating across the BCS-BEC crossover. The work is extracted from the statistical properties of the gas, which are controlled by the interaction, rather than relying solely on compression and expansion stages. Using the functional renormalization group formalism, we obtain the equation of state in a non-perturbative form along the crossover, encompassing the superfluid-normal phase transition. The cycle combines isentropic density strokes, isochoric thermalization, and isothermal interaction sweeps. This construction makes it possible to integrate features of both Otto and Carnot cycles, in which the system simultaneously saturates both efficiency limits without the net work vanishing. In the absence of density variations, the cycle reduces to a statistical Stirling-like engine, in which the work generated arises exclusively from the interaction, achieving efficiencies up to $38\%$. A pronounced asymmetry emerges through the crossover, giving rise to distinct operating regimes depending on the trajectory followed in the phase diagram. Consequently, the same architecture can be tuned to function as an engine, refrigerator, accelerator, or heater. These findings highlight pairing correlations as a versatile thermodynamic resource for quantum heat machines.

Quantum state preparation is crucial for quantum algorithms, and improved state preparation methods can reduce resource requirements by orders of magnitude. In this work, we introduce a state preparation method for lattice Hamiltonians on digital quantum computers inspired by nucleation. In our method, the exact ground state of a small lattice Hamiltonian is prepared in a quantum circuit, then a series of growth stages are performed via Trotterized adiabatic evolution to increase the size of the lattice to the desired model. Using the adiabatic theorem and Trotter error bounds, we provide sufficient conditions on the total evolution time and number of Trotter steps required for nucleation to prepare an initial state with desired fidelity. In addition, we introduce optimized nucleation which considers variational optimization on top of the nucleation structure. For a two-dimensional Ising model, we show that optimized nucleation can outperform a current leading method for state preparation on digital quantum computers.

In periodically driven open quantum systems, nonnormality renders the Floquet spectrum insufficient as the system approaches the thermodynamic limit, so that pseudospectra are needed to characterize the dynamics accurately. While conventional approaches mainly focus on the local dynamics of isolated pseudospectra, their global connections and the resulting physical consequences for observables have remained largely unexplored. Here, we uncover this collective behavior by classifying the unit disk into distinct domains of exponential, algebraic, and bounded accuracy according to the asymptotic size-scaling laws of pseudospectral residuals, yielding an underlying geometric structure. We demonstrate the physical implications of this structure through two exactly solvable models. First, in a dissipative shift chain, parameter tuning drives geometric transitions that are detectable via spin-wave observables. Second, in a chiral XY model, we use this geometric structure to explain the origin of a measurable phenomenon: two correlation signals exchange their retention order under continuous parameter tuning. Our findings not only establish a new theoretical paradigm for understanding dissipative Floquet quantum systems, but also predict geometry-driven observables for quantum computing experiments.

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion is a primary resource for generating non-classical light, yet phase mismatch fluctuations from temperature drift, angular misalignment, and domain fabrication errors reduce pair-generation efficiency and phase stability. Here, we analyze error mitigation in spontaneous parametric down-conversion using composite segmentation governed by SU(1, 1) spatial dynamics. We show that odd spatial Fourier harmonics preserve error-cancellation flatness with pair-generation rates scaling asymptotically as $m^{-2}$, while a coordinate-dilation symmetry provides a design prescription for translating configurations across distinct operating wavelengths (405, 532, and 775 nm). Furthermore, an open-loop thermo-optic bias counteracts off-axis angular drift to broaden the 90%-efficiency angular acceptance half-width by 3.46x, and up to two missing poling domains are tolerated with no numerically resolved loss in relative conversion efficiency. Across a 5$^\circ$C thermal window, the generated pairs sustain a relative conversion efficiency of $η\ge 0.954$ with the modeled phase-coherence metric remaining above 0.95, providing a structurally robust approach for entangled photon generation without requiring continuous closed-loop feedback stabilization.

We study spin-current fluctuations of the folded XXZ chain, which describes the strong-anisotropy limit of the XXZ chain. We obtain an exact expression for the moment-generating function of the time-integrated spin current at infinite temperature. A long-time asymptotic analysis establishes that the rescaled time-integrated current converges to a non-Gaussian distribution described by the M-Wright function. The derivation relies on a nonlocal map to the one-dimensional t-0 model and its exact spin-charge separation. By extending this approach, we also show that the dynamical correlation function of the spins summed over two adjacent sites exhibits a diffusive Gaussian profile at long times.

Certifying Bell correlations in increasingly larger multipartite quantum systems is challenging because conventional Bell inequalities rely on many-body correlations, which become experimentally demanding to estimate as system size grows. Here we demonstrate that multipartite Bell correlations can be certified using few-body permutation-invariant (PI) correlations with a fixed maximal correlation order. We experimentally test few-body PI Bell correlation witnesses tailored for six- and eight-photon postselected Dicke states. The addition of a few four-body correlators is found to significantly enhance the noise tolerance compared with previously studied two-body witnesses: for instance, for six qubits, the selected witness tolerates a white-noise fraction of $p_c\approx0.301$, compared with $p_c\approx0.048$ for the best two-body PI inequality with the same two settings per party. For six and eight photons respectively, we observe violations of the witness bounds by $32$ and $8.9$ standard deviations, arising from postselected polarisation states with fidelities of $0.933(4)$ and $0.916(11)$ to the corresponding half-excitation Dicke states. The witnesses for the six- and eight-photon cases use the same symmetric two- and four-body correlators, just with different coefficients. These results demonstrate an experimentally accessible approach for certifying multipartite Bell correlations in larger systems without requiring full-body correlation measurements.

Succinct arguments are a fundamental cryptographic primitive for verifying computational claims with small communication. In the classical setting, succinct arguments for NP can be constructed from unstructured hardness alone (e.g., hash functions) by compiling probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs) or interactive oracle proofs (IOPs) for NP via the commit-and-open paradigm. In contrast, known succinct arguments for QMA rely on ``structured'' cryptographic primitives, or on the quantum PCP conjecture. We construct the first succinct argument for QMA in the quantum random oracle model (QROM) without relying on additional cryptographic assumptions or unproven conjectures. This yields succinct arguments for QMA from unstructured hardness alone, showing that ideal hash functions not only suffice for succinct arguments for NP but also for QMA. Underlying our result is an efficiency-preserving transformation that compiles quantum interactive oracle proofs (QIOPs), a recently introduced interactive generalization of quantum PCPs, into quantum arguments for the same language, via a natural quantum commit-and-open paradigm. Our transformation applies to every QIOP with public-query soundness, a notion that we formalize to capture a natural requirement of the commit-and-open paradigm and is satisfied by a known QIOP for QMA. As a key ingredient in our transformation, we formalize and construct extractable vector commitments for quantum states with local openings in the QROM, which may be of independent interest.

The consistent histories formulation of quantum mechanics assigns classical probabilities to sequences of coarse-grained events when the corresponding interference terms vanish. In finite models these terms generically need not vanish exactly, and their smallness alone supplies no asymptotic geometry on the space of histories. We construct such a geometry for histories that accumulate quantum records. When the normalized Dowker - Halliwell interference between two histories factorizes as the cumulative fidelity of their records, its decay is controlled by the accumulated squared Bures distance. In the infinite registration limit, the Kakutani - von Neumann dichotomy gives a sharp sector alternative: summable Bures defect yields weakly equivalent record sequences, whereas nonsummable defect produces orthogonal superselection sectors and vanishing normalized interference. The convergence exponent of the Bures defect defines a pseudo-ultrametric on histories. After quotienting its zero distance degeneracy, it becomes a complete ultrametric, requiring neither compactness of the outcome space nor continuity of the record family, and coincides with the gauge invariant sector metric $\tilde d$ introduced in \cite{LesTP}. Its value, the \emph{consistency rate}, has three equivalent interpretations: it is the sector separation metric, the polynomial growth exponent of the negative logarithm of normalized interference, and, by the Helstrom formula, the corresponding exponent of the negative logarithm of the minimum error probability for discriminating the cumulative records. Classical separation profiles determine the rate: positive long time mean defect gives the maximal value $δ=1$, while the borderline profile $d_m^2\asymp m^{-1}$ produces distinct superselection sectors at zero polynomial rate, $δ=0$.

A phase that reaches a fault-tolerant processor in additive pieces can be remembered until the last piece arrives, or executed on arrival: the first option costs classical memory carried across rounds, the second costs magic states committed before the phase is known. We determine the exchange rate $α$, committed $T$ gates per bit of memory forgone, for ancilla-free coordinatewise Clifford+$T$ compilation. The Ramanujan bound for the Clifford+$T$ lattice gives $α\ge2$ with explicit constants, the square-root barrier of the spectral method. An elementary determinant method, using that quaternion numerators are lattice points on spheres in both real embeddings of $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt2)$, counts words near an arbitrary rotation coset below that barrier and gives $α\ge11/5$ asymptotically and unconditionally, and a height dichotomy for the resulting sphere sections raises this to $α\ge17/7$. At Clifford-framed cosets the volume law holds up to subexponential factors: all but a vanishing fraction of $z$-rotations need $T$-count $(3-o(1))\log_2(1/\varepsilon)$, and processes whose committed pieces are close to Clifford-framed $z$-rotations, including per-rotation pipelines, have $α\ge3-o(1)$, which a fractional-passthrough family attains under the Ross-Selinger typical-cost hypothesis. Under an equidistribution conjecture supported by exhaustive enumeration to $T$-count 22, $α=3$ in general and memory should be shed in whole rotations. The bounds hold even when the phases cancel to the identity; side information enters through a conditional entropy; probabilistic mixing halves the costs but not the rate. With clean ancillas and a phase-gradient catalyst, table lookups batched across coordinates drive the rate to $O(1/\log\log(1/\varepsilon))$, so the constant-rate law is specific to coordinatewise synthesis.

We outline a complete set of operations for manipulating nuclear spin qubits of trapped-ions stored in high magnetic fields such as required for Penning trapping, where the nuclear and electron spins are largely decoupled due to the dominance of the external field Hamiltonian. The reduced nuclear magnetic moment results in insensitivity to external magnetic fields compared to the use of an electron spin, but also makes the nuclear spin hard to manipulate on fast timescales. To maintain speed, we propose a two-qubit phase gate technique which utilizes the electron spin, but for which the qubit remains protected from magnetic fields through retaining the nuclear encoding. This method works for magnetic-field insensitive qubits at lower fields as well as for both microwave and laser field gradients.

Programmable exchange interactions support quantum gates and many-body simulation in superconducting circuits. Fast excitation transfer, however, opens two leakage pathways in weakly anharmonic transmons, degrading gates and driving simulated dynamics outside the encoded state space. We introduce parametric derivative removal by adiabatic gate (PDRAG) to suppress both pathways while preserving the target exchange. Their conjugate structure determines first- and second-derivative corrections implemented through one real frequency command. At $g/2π=100$ MHz, calibrated PDRAG achieves a geometric-mean leakage reduction of $5.27\times10^5$ relative to the base pulse across 12.5--35 ns in Duffing simulations. At 13 ns, endpoint leakage reaches $1.98\times10^{-7}$ for the calibrated full-exchange pulse. Transferring the derivative coefficients to a charge Hamiltonian gives a mean 893-fold reduction over 12.5--22 ns after amplitude and carrier recalibration. Floquet return interference and charge-induced gap shifts explain the calibration and transfer gains, connecting compact pulse design to leakage-suppressed programmable interactions.

Quantum infrared (IR) spectroscopy is a novel technique based on nonlinear interferometry and quantum sensing with undetected photons. In this approach, spectrally far-separated correlated photon pairs are used for detection and probing, respectively. Hence, the probing wavelength domain (mid-IR) is substantially different from the detection spectral range (near-IR), which enables shot-noise-limited and cost-effective sensing schemes attractive for applied metrology. In this paper, we implement and employ a custom-built scanless quantum Fourier-transform mid-IR (sQFTIR) microspectrometer for chemical characterization and analysis of solids and interfaces. The sQFTIR system employs spectral-domain acquisition, without the need to scan the optical delay. This results in enhanced sensitivity and short measurement times and therefore enables rapid spectral acquisitions in 100~ms spanning a spectral band from 3000 cm$^{-1}$ - 2400 cm$^{-1}$. The capabilities of our approach are demonstrated for hyperspectral mid-IR imaging of dried pharmaceuticals (insulin on a gold surface) and investigation of a security feature on a banknote. Furthermore, we demonstrate hyperspectral imaging and spectroscopy through a turbid ceramic medium.

We initiate the study of quantum leakage resilience of unmodified Shamir secret sharing over prime fields. A well-studied leakage model for Shamir's secret sharing classically is single-bit local leakage from each share. We consider its quantum analogue where, for each party, a local leakage channel takes as input the party's share and outputs a leaked qubit. Without preshared entanglement, we show that the distinguishing advantage is $2^{-Ω(n)}$ when the threshold rate $t/n=τ$ exceeds $τ_\star\approx0.73339$ by a fixed positive margin. More generally, we allow disjoint entangled blocks of any fixed maximum size where there is no entanglement between different blocks or with the adversary, and each block emits at most a fixed number of qubits. Security holds when the threshold rate is high enough (sufficiently close to one). We then allow a specified set of devices to share entanglement with the adversary. We show that security holds even when a linear number of devices ($αn$ for small $α>0$) share entanglement with each other and with the adversary for a large enough threshold rate. As a complementary negative result, we also show that even classical single-bit leakage makes Shamir scheme insecure if we allow arbitrarily large entanglement between the leakage devices. A GHZ state shared by exactly $t$ leakage devices makes even classical one-bit leakage insecure, without any entanglement with the adversary. In this attack, each participating device emits only one classical bit, and their joint parity distinguishes any chosen pair of secrets with a constant advantage. Thus, for fixed threshold rates above $τ_\star$, the maximum number of devices that may share arbitrary entanglement with one another and with the adversary while preserving security is linear in $n$ up to constant factors, although the optimal support fraction remains open.

We develop a completely positive and trace-preserving non-Markovian transmon model with longitudinal Markovian dephasing and transverse renewal events motivated by a glassy two-level-system environment. A microscopic Hamiltonian identifies coupling subspaces; a normalized Prabhakar waiting-time law phenomenologically coarse grains slow defect reconfigurations. Forward chronological renewal histories yield an exact map-level Volterra equation, a noncommuting kernel--resolvent master equation, and an equivalent drift-conjugated Caputo-type representation with its required initial-value term. Without energy relaxation, Pauli-space dynamics splits into two one-dimensional subspaces and a coupled $(σ_y,σ_z)$ subspace supporting directional transfer between coherence and longitudinal polarization; $σ_x$ polarization is renewal-insensitive. For heavy-tailed waiting times with $0<α<1$, branch-cut analysis gives a generic $t^{-α}$ storage tail in longitudinal polarization generated from initial coherence and $O(t^{-1-α})$ reverse transfer; constant-rate Poisson renewal yields pole-generated exponential decay. Independent zero-temperature relaxation at finite $T_1$ exponentially cuts off these tails when its rate is below twice the pure-dephasing rate. We compare independent inverse-Laplace reconstructions of the waiting-time density, memory kernel, and selected qubit-response components to assess numerical accuracy. For the studied parameters, Prabhakar renewal gives larger forward-transfer magnitudes at the prescribed readout than both a scale-matched constant-rate Poisson reference and an inhomogeneous Poisson reference matching the full expected-count profile, including finite-$T_1$ tests. Both Poisson references yield larger evaluated finite-window peaks. Disorder-motivated renewal memory reshapes transmon decoherence selectively by state and direction.

Monolithic integration of single-photon sources into silicon photonics offers a compelling solution for realizing scalable quantum telecommunication architectures. Among the candidate silicon color centers, the C-center features a zero-phonon emission in the telecom L-band, corresponding to the spectral window of minimum transmission loss in optical fibers. Despite this advantage, isolating single C-centers has remained an unrealized challenge in solid-state quantum optics. In this work, we report the isolation of a single silicon C-center. We enhance the spontaneous emission rate of the zero-phonon line by coupling the single emitter to a nanophotonic crystal cavity, observing a fivefold reduction in the excited-state lifetime compared to bulk conditions, which corresponds to a Purcell factor lower bound of 33. Second-order autocorrelation measurements confirm single-photon emission from the investigated defect, obtaining an optical purity of $g^{(2)}(0) = 0.23$ without background correction. Our results establish a native telecom L-band quantum light source in silicon, laying the foundation for ultra-low-loss and long-distance quantum applications.

A central challenge in quantum information theory is to determine whether entanglement provides an advantage for information processing when coherent operations across multiple channel uses are allowed. For depolarizing channels, King's proof of the additivity of the minimum output entropy rules out such an advantage for classical communication at leading asymptotic order, while leaving open the possibility of an advantage for higher orders. In this work, we conjecture a majorization relation for the outputs of depolarizing channels and prove an approximate version of this conjecture. Our proof combines an exact ordering of shifted log-determinants with an anti-concentration bound for the spectrum of the product-state output, refining King's analysis based on Schatten norms. As a direct application, we obtain a tight third-order expansion for the classical capacity of quantum depolarizing channels. Consequently, entangled codewords and collective decoding can improve the message size over the product-coding strategy by at most $O(\log \log n)$ bits, sharpening our understanding of the role of entanglement in the finite-blocklength regime.

A large code distance does not by itself guarantee a well-protected quantum memory, as faults during syndrome extraction can propagate into correlated data errors. Certifying circuit distance becomes demanding as circuits grow. In this work, we introduce distance amplifiers, a modular approach to increasing both code distance and certified circuit-level protection in quantum low-density parity-check codes. The construction tensors a base code with an amplifier, adapting their syndrome-extraction circuits to the amplified code. To certify the resulting memory, we develop a fault-response certificate that yields rigorous lower bounds on circuit distance. Suitable gate ordering and flag qubits control correlated errors, allowing us to establish explicit conditions under which the amplified circuit distance equals the product of the constituent circuit distances. We prove this multiplicative relation for three types of amplifiers: the flagged $[[4,2,2]]$, hypergraph-product, and rotated surface codes. The certificate extends recursively, so the circuit distance multiplies exactly at every amplification step. For example, four successive applications of the flagged $[[4,2,2]]$ amplifier to a $[[18,4,4]]$ seed yield a $[[13320,64,64]]$ code with the circuit distance $d_{\mathrm{circ}} \geq 48$ and check weights $w \leq 14$. We further show how individual logical qubits can be tracked explicitly through amplification. By enabling high-distance quantum memories to be built and certified from smaller building blocks, our framework offers a systematic route toward scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing.

We compare and study different Bivariate-Bicycle (BB) encodings and node choices for distributed quantum operations such as transversal non-local CNOTs. We observe that while some encodings have more physical qubits requiring more ebits for a distributed computation, reducing ebit consumption alone might not be the best criterion for selecting an encoding for the logical qubits, if the goal is to reduce the logical error rate of the distributed computation; for example, one should also consider encodings with a larger distance, which using more physical qubits can provide. We consider distributed, or non-local, CNOTs and computation of the global gate (GCZ) over distributed logical qubits as examples. The choice of encoding enables particular concurrent operations; e.g., we show that a transversal physical GCZ on a self-dual $[[120,8,12]] BB$ code can realize eight concurrent logical GCZ operations after accounting for the logical permutation induced by transversal Hadamard.

We develop quantum algorithms that construct block-encodings of solution matrices for continuous- and discrete-time algebraic Riccati equations (CAREs and DAREs), differential Riccati equations (DREs), and finite Riccati recursions. The Quantum Weighted Riesz Method, unifying four kinds of Riccati problems, constructs projectors onto the solution graphs using weighted Riesz branching operators and recovers the solution matrices. Under the stated access and normalization assumptions, our algorithms for CAREs and DAREs have near-optimal query complexity $Θ(\mathcal Rα)$ up to logarithmic factors, with the generalized singularity factor $\mathcal R$ that reflects spectral separation, and the output normalization $α$. For DREs and finite-horizon problems, the query complexity has an additional initialization conditioning factor $κ_{\rm init}$. We establish product query lower bounds for specified input-oracle families, demonstrating necessary joint dependence on spectral separation and initialization or output scale. We also prove that selected-value promise problems are BQP-complete on explicit circuit-generated families of single-control discrete-time algebraic and zero-terminal differential Riccati equations. Applications include classical feedback evaluation for linear-quadratic control, a query-complexity comparison for stable random-phase approximation Riccati equations in quantum chemistry, and heated boundary control with numerical validation.

Entanglement routing establishes entangled pairs between distant nodes of a quantum network by purifying and swapping pairs generated on elementary links. Existing methods typically restrict the decision space along two axes: the operation order, often fixed to purify-then-swap (PtS), and the purification schedule of each link, often restricted to pumping. Focusing on linear repeater chains with finite link capacities, we relax both restrictions and study the maximization of the expected end-to-end throughput subject to a fidelity threshold under two quantum-noise models. We develop a unified capacity-aware optimization framework comprising an exact mixed-integer linear program (MILP) under PtS, instantiated with either pumping or general tree purification schedules, and an exact dynamic program (DP) over arbitrary operation orders. Under symmetric Pauli noise, we prove that pumping converges to a fidelity strictly below unity, imposing a capacity-independent feasibility bound and a maximum chain length on every pumping-based PtS method, whereas general tree schedules yield a capacity-dependent bound. We further prove that post-swap purification never increases the throughput, so a free operation order can only increase feasibility. Numerical evaluations confirm the bounds: tree schedules serve over 90\% of the requests that pumping cannot at moderate fidelity thresholds; within the pumping class, a free operation order recovers much of this advantage; but once links use tree schedules, the tree-based MILP and the order-exact DP serve identical request sets throughout. Operation order and purification schedule are thus substitutes, with the purification schedule the dominant factor governing feasibility under symmetric Pauli noise.

The Berry phase is a fundamental geometric quantity for characterizing the geometry and topology of quantum many-body systems. Previous work established a super-polynomial quantum advantage in Berry phase estimation at inverse-polynomial precision, given an ansatz state approximating the initial ground state. However, whether this hardness persists for Berry phases quantized by symmetry, which can be distinguished at constant precision, remained open. In this work, we characterize the computational complexity of quantized Berry phase estimation. First, we prove that deciding whether the Berry phase is exactly $0$ or $π$ is $\mathsf{BQP}$-complete when the spectral gap is inverse-polynomially small. This result implies that distinguishing the quantized Berry phase still has a super-polynomial quantum advantage, assuming $\mathsf{BPP}\neq \mathsf{BQP}$. To prove this result, we introduce an encoding that maps the output of any quantum computation to a Berry phase that is exactly $0$ or $π$. Second, we extend this hardness to physically motivated Hamiltonians on a 2D square lattice, including Heisenberg and XY interactions. Third, we provide a classical polynomial-time algorithm for geometrically local Hamiltonians on fixed-dimensional lattices with constant spectral gaps. Therefore we identify that the spectral gap is a key resource for the classical tractability, rather than precision. These results establish a super-polynomial quantum advantage for computing a quantized topological invariant that is unchanged under symmetry- and gap-preserving deformations, and provide new steps towards practical quantum advantage in quantum physics.

The fast-developing quantum technology is propelling thermal machine, which lies at the heart of thermodynamics, into a new golden era. Being stochastic because of the non-negligible thermal and quantum fluctuations, the efficiency and power of a finite-time quantum heat engine exhibit a trade-off, preventing the simultaneous achievement of high power and high efficiency. Conventional studies treat the statistics of a heat engine by assuming canonical thermalization, which is valid only under weak-coupling conditions. We here investigate the noncanonical effect on the statistics of the efficiency and power for a finite-time quantum Otto cycle. It is revealed that their average values and variances are highly controllable by engineering the energy spectrum structure of the composite system consisting of the working substance and the bath. Near the quantum critical point induced by the formation of a bound state in the energy spectrum, the average efficiency and power can be boosted simultaneously, meanwhile, both of their variances are decreased. Deepening our understanding of the usefulness of quantum reservoir engineering in thermodynamics, our result lays the foundation for the realization of efficient and stable quantum energy devices.

We study whether the coordinate dependence of the improved Self-Organizing Migrating Algorithm (iSOMA) can be reduced while retaining its inexpensive leader-directed migration mechanism. We introduce iSOMA-AR, which learns a basis from successful migration displacements and selectively applies the standard perturbation mask in that basis. On the complete noiseless BBOB suite, iSOMA- AR significantly outperformed baseline iSOMA across matched conditions, with the largest gains on geometrically difficult landscapes. A targeted ablation shows that the learned orientation is beneficial on a rotated ill-conditioned landscape and that moderate changes of the gate threshold and rotation cap preserve the qualitative result. On CEC 2011 Real World Optimization Problems, iSOMA-AR outperformed iL-SHADE on most problems, although its advantage over baseline iSOMA was not statistically significant. A canonical-jSO rerun is reported as a post-hoc sensitivity check alongside the original jSO-derived comparator. On frustrated-spin variational quantum objectives, adaptive rotation improved most transverse-field conditions, while gains on the diagonal and anisotropic models were absent or selective. Under strong effective sampling noise, the SOMA variants were the most robust population-based methods in the comparison, but iSOMA-AR was not significantly better than baseline iSOMA. Repairing all-zero PRT masks greatly reduced repeated-point evaluations without changing endpoint quality significantly, making this implementation detail unlikely to explain the noise result. Overall, adaptive rotation is most useful on coordinate-sensitive deterministic problems, while the observed noise robustness appears to arise mainly from the underlying SOMA migration mechanism.

Single-crystal diamond combines exceptional optical, thermal, and mechanical properties while hosting optically addressable and spin-coherent colour centres, making it a promising platform for integrated quantum and nonlinear photonics. However, practical post-fabrication mechanisms for dynamically controlling and tuning monolithic diamond photonic circuits remain limited. Here, we demonstrate all-optical modulation and long-lived tuning of suspended diamond Fabry--Perot nanobeam cavities containing nitrogen-vacancy centres. Under 532~nm illumination, the infrared (1000 to 1100~nm) cavity response is governed by two competing contributions: a well-understood thermo-optic red-shift, and a novel charge-mediated blue-shift that we attribute to the free-carrier plasma dispersion effect. With 10~mW of 20~kHz-modulated green light, we achieve an infrared modulation depth of approximately 45\% of the available reflection contrast. Green illumination also produces quasi-permanent photo-refractive resonance blue-shifts, with a maximum observed tuning of 3.15~nm (0.87~THz), without measurable degradation of the cavity linewidth or contrast. Achieving the same cavity shift in a lithium-niobate Pockels modulator would require 200 to 500~V across a \(5~μ\mathrm{m}\) electrode gap. These results establish a monolithic diamond nanophotonic platform combining agile and reversible modulation with long-lived optical reconfiguration, two key ingredients in photonic technologies.

Precision in nonequilibrium processes comes at a thermodynamic cost: suppressing fluctuations generally requires increased dissipation. Thermodynamic uncertainty relations (TURs) make this trade-off quantitative by linking current fluctuations to entropy production in classical stochastic dynamics. In the decade since its discovery, the canonical steady-state TUR and its finite-time generalizations have become a cornerstone of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, constraining the performance of molecular machines and allowing heat dissipation to be inferred from observable fluctuations. Whether the canonical TUR can be violated in a controlled quantum device remains an outstanding experimental question, in part because doing so requires resolving extremely small steady-state currents as well as their fluctuations. Here we experimentally show that steady-state quantum transport can surpass the precision permitted by the canonical TUR. We observe this violation in a superconducting quantum thermal machine coupled to a microwave waveguide acting as a cold bath and to a classical noise source providing an effective infinite-temperature bath. We observe a TUR ratio $Q = 1.71 \pm 0.17$, in violation of the classical bound $Q \geq 2$. Our results demonstrate a fundamental distinction between classical and quantum thermodynamics, paving the way for quantum thermal devices that achieve enhanced precision at reduced energy cost.

Measurement incompatibility and the negativity of quasi-probability distributions both demonstrate the signature of nonclassicality. However, their relations largely remained qualitative, and no explicit operational connection has been established. We provide an operational link between measurement incompatibility and the Margenau-Hill(MH) quasi-probability distribution associated with two dichotomic observables. { We first derive the joint measurability (measurement compatibility) condition for any pair of dichotomic observables in arbitrary finite dimension $d$.} We then rigorously prove that for any pair of unsharp dichotomic measurements in dimension $d$, the positivity of the MH distribution is equivalent to joint measurability \emph{i.e.}, the MH distribution is positive \emph{if and only if} the measurements are jointly measurable. We further introduce the MH-like quasi-probability distribution for $n$ dichotomic unsharp observables in arbitrary finite dimension and derive a sufficient condition of joint-measurability when the observables are mutually anticommuting. Finally, we propose an interferometric setup, inspired by quantum-switch architectures, that directly reconstructs MH quasi-probability which in turn provides a test of incompatibility.

The first-order coherence properties of strongly coupled systems supporting polariton lasing and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) have been thoroughly studied and show consistent results. In contrast, second-order coherence properties have been found to vary for different systems, and the second-order coherence function can deviate from the value of one, typical for atomic BEC, revealing super-Poissonian fluctuations even above the BEC/polariton lasing threshold. This calls for a deeper understanding of the emission statistics and dynamics in light-based condensates, especially in the non-equilibrium regime. Here we demonstrate a coherent state of polariton emission from a plasmonic lattice measured as the second-order coherence function value separately for $\mathrmΓ$- and non-$\mathrmΓ$-point radiation (ground state and high-energy tail). We observe a high degree of coherence with the value $g^{(2)}(τ=0)-1<10^{-4}$. We also demonstrate the ultrafast ($>$1 THz) nature of the dynamics. The process can be interpreted as a BEC with ultrafast, sub-50-fs thermalization, but we also suggest an alternative explanation as superradiance in a system where the emitters have vibrational degrees of freedom.

High-dimensional quantum entanglement offers significant advantages over its two-dimensional counterparts in various quantum information processing tasks. We propose a scalable method for implementing an arbitrary high-dimensional entanglement purification protocol (HDEPP) using path superposition. By selecting appropriate single-qudit gates, qudit-flip errors and phase-flip errors can be purified. Counterintuitively, the HDEPP becomes more robust for higher-dimensional systems and exhibits enhanced purification fidelity as the dimension increases. Our HDEPP not only requires fewer operational resources but also in principle can achieve unity fidelity through multiple rounds of iteration. Furthermore, we develop feasible optical schemes to purify the frequency degree of freedom of photons suffering from qudit-flip and phase-flip errors using hyperentanglement. This work paves the way toward high-dimensional quantum communication and quantum networks.

Frozen language models (LMs) are increasingly used as fixed feature extractors for downstream reranking, scoring, and preference modeling, raising a practical question: how should a compact module represent interactions among features in a fixed low-dimensional bottleneck? Common linear and low-rank adapters remain linear at the adaptation module itself, whereas explicit second-order alternatives introduce pairwise interactions through direct parameterization or predefined factorizations. We propose SQUARE, a Structured QUAntum REpresentation adapter that amplitude-encodes the bottleneck vector, applies a parameterized quantum circuit, and measures the resulting state. We show that each basis-probability feature is exactly a normalized quadratic form in the bottleneck coordinates, while the additional Pauli-$Z$ readouts are signed linear combinations of these probabilities. The measured map can therefore parameterize interactions over $O(d^2)$ coordinate pairs through a small set of shared circuit parameters, where $d$ is the bottleneck dimension. It provides a structured parameterization within, rather than beyond, the classical normalized-quadratic feature class. In a disjoint same-pipeline evaluation over eight GLUE-derived controlled interaction tasks and five shared seeds, SQUARE achieves an average test accuracy of $0.7565$, compared with $0.7355$ for an affine normalized-quadratic predictor, $0.7271$ for the evaluated parameter-matched Givens mixing model, $0.6817$ for an MLP, and $0.6155$ for a frozen-circuit control. Under reduced supervision, it also shows consistent gains over the strongest evaluated classical comparator, with the same qualitative pattern across multiple frozen LM backbones. All circuit experiments use simulation, while the learned feature map can be evaluated exactly in batched PyTorch without quantum hardware.

We prove dimension-independent Hyers-Ulam stability for surjective approximate isometries of the positive trace-class cone in both the trace and Bures metrics. Here $\varepsilon\geq0$ is a uniform upper bound on the additive error in preserving distances. Such an approximate isometry is uniformly approximated by a Wigner symmetry (a unitary or antiunitary conjugation), with error at most $9\varepsilon/2$ in the trace metric and $2\sqrt2\varepsilon$ in the Bures metric, even if it does not fix zero. For maps fixing zero, the trace bound improves to $3\varepsilon$ even under the hypothesis of $δ$-surjectivity, independently of $δ$. In infinite dimensions, we construct bijections of the full state space, including mixed states, whose distortions tend to zero in both metrics but which stay a fixed uniform distance from every Wigner symmetry. For state spaces, stability holds in each fixed finite dimension with a dimension-dependent modulus tending to zero as $\varepsilon\to0$, but no such modulus can be chosen independently of dimension.

Preserving particle number and spin helps quantum circuits target molecular electronic states, but does not guarantee access to every state with the required quantum numbers. We determine which additional operations, combined with spin-independent orbital rotations connecting all spatial orbitals, generate every real state-space rotation within each complete subspace of fixed particle number $N$, total spin $S$, and spin projection $M_S$. We consider spin-free molecular calculations in real orbitals, without an additional spatial-symmetry restriction, and continuously tunable operations that preserve particle number, full spin symmetry, and real amplitudes. Below the maximal-spin limits set by the electron and hole numbers, repeated singlet-pair transfer between any two fixed spatial orbitals is sufficient. On nontrivial maximal-spin boundaries, pair transfer vanishes, and an additional generator built from one- and two-electron terms is sufficient exactly when its action in the target subspace is not a linear combination of orbital-rotation generators. The minimum number of spatial orbitals needed by one additional generator is two in the interior and three on nontrivial boundaries, even when terms involving more than two electrons are allowed. Both minima are attained using only one- and two-electron terms. The three-orbital optimum rotates two orbitals according to the occupation of a third, and its unitary factors exactly into eight commuting Pauli rotations. Molecular benchmarks show that this operation removes the observed boundary energy-error plateaus, while sparse interior constructions attain the prescribed energy accuracy with fewer compiled CNOT gates in selected fixed-orbital comparisons.

Partially entangled thermal states (PETS) provide semiclassical families of black-hole microstates prepared through heavy shell insertions. We extend this shell-state framework and propose three-boundary partially entangled thermal states (PETS$_3$) by replacing the two-index insertion data with a trivalent junction tensor. The corresponding bulk three-boundary booklet geometry is constrained semiclassically by the Israel junction condition, allowing us to identify candidate symmetric and mixed-orientation branches. We verify the self-consistency of this construction by counting states in the symmetric all-black-hole sector. Using a heavy-operator probe, we further estimate the detection-to-universal ratio to be $Z_D/Z_U \simeq 3$, twice the two-boundary value of $3/2$. These results suggest that a fine-tuned probe localized on one boundary can test the proposed three-boundary shell state and potentially distinguish it from its two-boundary counterpart.

Imaginary-time evolution (ITE) is a widely used technique for preparing the ground state of a target Hamiltonian. Building on the recently proposed framework of Double-Bracket quantum ITE (DB-QITE), we introduce a probabilistic variant (PDBQITE) that achieves an exponential reduction in circuit depth. Our algorithm requires only a single ancilla qubit and a quantum circuit that consists of one controlled real-time evolution and one mid-circuit measurement per iteration. The trade-off is an exponential decay of the total success probability with the number of iterations, for which we derive an analytical lower bound that is independent of system size. Our numerical simulations show that the per-step success probability remains close to unity, making it realistic to execute many iterations, thus providing a substantial improvement over prior constructions. We show that PDBQITE outperforms the near-term probabilistic algorithm PITE for ground-state preparation of molecular Hamiltonians, and that a hybrid QAOA-PDBQITE scheme achieves higher approximation ratios than QAOA at the same circuit depth on random regular graphs for the MaxCut problem.

This paper gives quantum query lower bounds for two relational graph problems, triangle listing and explicit multiplicative spanner construction, in the general graph query model, where quantum adjacency, degree and neighborhood queries are all available in arbitrary superposition. Both results are obtained by reductions via intermediate multi-block search problems. We extend the quantum query recording framework by Zhandry (CRYPTO 2019) and Hamoudi and Magniez (ToCT 2023) to handle a recording architecture for bidirectional oracles and give a generic blockwise soundness framework, which for arbitrary families of local accepting projectors, gives an exact operator-norm characterization of their maximum overlap with the subspace of bounded weight records. Using the intermediate search problems, we exhibit a family of $n$-vertex graphs with $Θ(n)$ triangles on which listing any constant fraction of the triangles requires $Ω(n^{3/2-o(1)})$ quantum queries. This is the first nontrivial quantum lower bound for triangle listing, a question raised by Jiang and Peng (ICML 2026). Further, we show that, for every fixed $k\ge 7$, constructing a multiplicative $k$-spanner requires $Ω(n^{1+\frac{1}{2μ_k}})$ quantum queries, where $μ_k=k/3+O(1)$. For $k\in\{7,8\}$ the bound is $Ω(n^{5/4})$, which matches what would be implied by an unproven instance of the Erdős girth conjecture, and for large $k$ the exponent $1+\frac{3}{2k}$ exceeds the $1+\frac{4}{3k}$ implied by the provable high girth dense graphs due to Lazebnik, Ustimenko and Woldar, 1995.

We demonstrate proximity-induced localization and re-entrant delocalization in a detuned quasiperiodic ladder. In the weak-quasiperiodic regime, where uncoupled Aubry-André chains are extended, a staggered detuning applied to only one leg induces localization in the neighboring leg through inter-leg hybridization. With further increasing detuning, the pure chain re-enters a delocalized regime, producing a delocalized-localized-delocalized sequence without directly modifying its quasiperiodic potential. We identify these regimes using static localization diagnostics and demonstrate experimentally accessible dynamical signatures on IBM Quantum hardware: strongly suppressed wavefunction spreading in the proximity-localized regime and its re-entrant recovery at larger detuning. These results establish leg-selective detuning as a programmable control knob for inducing and reversing localization in coupled quasiperiodic systems.

We theoretically investigate quantum correlations and energy storage in a single-electron silicon double quantum dot (eDQD) coupled to a single-mode microwave cavity. The charge and spin degrees of freedom are hybridized by Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC), while the cavity interacts with the eDQD through spin-photon and charge-photon couplings. Using the reduced thermal density matrix, we characterize spin-charge entanglement by concurrence and quantum coherence by the $l_1$ norm. At low temperature, the cavity strongly modifies the spin-charge correlations, producing distinct regimes of enhanced and suppressed entanglement. We identify a nonlinear crossover between an eDQD-dominated regime and a photon-dressed regime. This crossover is revealed independently by two signatures: a rapid change in the concurrence and the onset of finite photon occupation in the cavity. Its boundary exhibits a dominant $G_{\rm c}\propto\sqrtΩ$ dependence and is robust against cavity Hilbert-space truncation. Beyond the Rashba coupling studied in [Ferreira et al., Phys. Rev. A 107, 052408 (2023)], we show that the cavity provides an additional tunable means of controlling quantum correlations and energy storage. We further characterize the eDQD as a quantum battery under coherent charging and evaluate its stored energy and ergotropy. The ergotropy varies markedly across a cavity-dressing crossover resembling that identified from entanglement, connecting cavity-induced modification of the dressed states to extractable work. Optimization over the charge-photon coupling reveals parameter-dependent optimal charging regimes and enhanced maximum ergotropy with increasing Rashba coupling. Our results establish cavity coupling and SOC as complementary controls of quantum correlations and extractable energy in semiconductor eDQD-cavity systems.

This paper develops a Quantum optimisation Unit Commitment (UC) framework that benefits from Pauli Correlation Encoding (PCE) as a qubit reduction preprocessing technique and Sample-based Quantum Diagonalisation (SQD) as a hybrid post-processing refinement method. The UC problem is formulated in binary form, then transformed into a QUBO problem and mapped onto an Ising representation suitable for adiabatic quantum evolution within the Qibo framework. This study analyses how PCE and SQD techniques affect qubit scalability, computational effort, feasibility, and probability of recovering the optimal solution as the number of generators increases. The results show that PCE reduces the effective size of the encoded problem, SQD improves the concentration of probability on feasible and optimal solutions, and their combined application provides the best overall behaviour in several scalable case studies, achieving more reliable solutions with lower effective computational cost than the unreduced formulation. The repository is available open source in Github (link is not yet available until work is published. However, if requested by the reviewers, we can make it open for a scific time window, if requested).

Accurate quasiparticle electronic structures are the foundation for understanding excited-state properties of materials and explaining optoelectronic, quantum, and transport phenomena. First-principles GW calculations nevertheless remain computationally intensive for large or configurationally complex systems. Here we introduce DeepH-GW, a deep-learning framework that predicts an effective GW quasiparticle Hamiltonian directly from atomic structure. Building on the local, equivariant message-passing architecture of DeepH, DeepH-GW is trained on high-fidelity plane-wave GW calculations through a real-space Hamiltonian-reconstruction interface. This approach combines the systematic accuracy and broad chemical applicability of plane-wave methods with linear-scaling neural-network inference. Across the systems examined, DeepH-GW reproduces quasiparticle band structures with errors on the order of a few meV. Moreover, we show that, despite the intrinsic nonlocality of many-body interactions, DeepH-GW exhibits strong cross-scale transferability from relatively small training structures to substantially larger supercells. We demonstrate that the framework can accurately capture GW-level electron-phonon band-gap renormalization through predictions in supercells with thermal displacements, illustrating the power of the approach. DeepH-GW therefore provides a practical route toward large-scale many-body simulations and foundation models for excited-state electronic structure.

Solomonoff's universal inductive inference [Inf. Control. 1964] is one of the most general frameworks for learning from sequential data and predicting future observations. It provides prediction guarantees for any computable stochastic source. We ask whether an analogous universal theory of induction can be developed for quantum systems. To this end, we introduce universal quantum inductive inference, a framework for learning and predicting quantum sources that may exhibit arbitrary correlations and entanglement across time. Given the outcomes of past measurements and the corresponding post-measurement quantum systems, the learner produces a joint state that predicts the next measurement outcome and post-measurement system while preserving correlations with the past systems. We model a quantum source as a multipartite quantum state whose description is generated by an unknown $s$-bit program within a given time bound. The learner is required to produce a state that is $ε$-close in trace distance to the target with probability at least $1-δ$. We establish an information-theoretic inference algorithm with round complexity $O(sε^{-2}δ^{-1})$. We further prove a matching lower bound in the relevant parameter regime, even for classical sources. As a second result, we construct a non-i.i.d. state tomography algorithm that outputs a classical description of the conditional state of the next system given past measurement outcomes. Our information-theoretic tomography algorithm achieves round complexity $O(s\min\{2^s,2^n\}ε^{-2}δ^{-1})$, where $n$ is the number of qubits received in each round. Finally, we investigate the computational hardness of universal quantum inductive inference under quantum cryptographic assumptions.

Grover's algorithm achieves a quadratic speedup for unstructured search when a global oracle for the target set is available. However, its success probability is generally below $100\%$. To overcome this issue, Long presented a modified version of Grover's search algorithm by introducing a phase-matching condition, which can search for the target set with zero theoretical failure rate. Nevertheless, in many applications, the target set is determined by the intersection of multiple constrained sets. Most existing Grover-based methods are limited to the intersection of only two sets and are not always successful in searching for the target set. In this work, based on Long's method, we propose an algorithm for exactly searching the intersection of multiple sets. We derive and prove a phase-matching condition for searching the intersection exactly. Furthermore, we present a quantum circuit that implements exact intersection search. Finally, we support our theoretical results with numerical simulations.

Quantum steering captures the ability of one party, through local measurements on a shared entangled state, to affect the conditional states held by distant parties in a way that admits no local explanation. Its device-independent (DI) quantification -- requiring no characterization of any state or measurement -- has been developed in the bipartite setting, notably through the framework of assemblage moment matrices (AMMs) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 240401 (2016)], but has remained largely unexplored beyond it. Here, we extend the AMM framework to tripartite steering, covering both the scenario in which two parties jointly steer a third one (2-steer-1) and that in which a single party steers the remaining two (1-steer-2). For each scheme, we construct a semidefinite program that, from the observed correlations -- or merely from the violation of a Bell inequality -- yields lower bounds on the steering robustness of the underlying assemblage. As a by-product, our bounds also certify, in a DI manner, the incompatibility of the measurements performed by the steering parties.

Modeling the response of driven many-body quantum systems from input--output data is difficult: the dynamics are nonlinear, history dependent, and expensive to simulate as system size grows. A paradigmatic case is High-Harmonic Generation~(HHG), where a strong field drives a medium to emit radiation that is highly sensitive to the drive and encodes long-range temporal correlations. We introduce a dissipative quantum reservoir computing~(DQRC) framework that builds a digital twin of such a system, learning its input--output map directly from data while the reservoir---itself a small open quantum system---stays fixed and only a classical readout is trained. We show that a minimal single-qubit reservoir reproduces the HHG response of a substantially larger Ising spin chain, and on a representative benchmark matches and on several metrics surpasses previously reported temporal convolutional and Kolmogorov--Arnold-network models, while using a simpler, physically realizable system. A single fixed reservoir further generalizes across a broad range of drives, indicating that it learns a shared physical response structure rather than memorizing trajectories. These results establish dissipative quantum reservoirs as compact, physically grounded digital twins for nonlinear, memory-dependent quantum dynamics. Code is available at \href{https://github.com/AI-and-Quantum-Computing/DQuRC}{https://github.com/AI-and-Quantum-Computing/DQuRC}.

The Holevo Cramér-Rao bound sets the asymptotically attainable precision of quantum multiparameter estimation, but its attainability with finite quantum state copies remains unresolved in general. While a gap between the single-copy optimum and the Holevo bound persists at any finite copy number for two-parameter estimation models, the higher-parameter case has remained open. Here we disprove universal finite-copy gap persistence beyond two parameters by constructing a three-parameter rank-two model whose Holevo bound is unattainable with one copy but attained exactly with two. We further prove finite-copy persistence for full-rank models with any number of parameters. We then experimentally implement the two-copy collective measurement for the constructed model using superconducting qubits. We observe a two-copy estimation error below the single-copy and separate-measurement bounds determined from state tomography. By introducing controlled depolarization, we show that this precision advantage persists over a finite noise range. Our results connect the attainability of ultimate quantum precision to the structure of the multiparameter estimation model and the resources available for collective measurements.

Digital quantum simulation of the quantum Rabi model in the deep strong coupling regime motivates the need for an exact characterization of Trotterization errors, so far known only through qualitative bounds. Here we derive such a characterization in the exactly solvable degenerate limit, valid for arbitrary coupling strength. The first-order Trotter operator admits a closed expression, showing that the generated phase-space trajectory lies exactly on a circle that is rescaled and rigidly rotated with respect to the exact one, rather than merely approximating it. This geometric renormalization yields a closed form for the state fidelity, structurally identical to the physical survival probability governing revivals in the deep strong coupling regime: both are the same geometric question -- the distinguishability of a displaced Fock state -- applied to two different pairs of points in phase space. We further show that this geometric error is exactly correctable by promoting the Trotter-step coupling to a complex amplitude, at no additional circuit cost. These results, obtained in the exactly solvable degenerate limit, provide a benchmark for Trotterization errors in the general Rabi model.

We show that the measurement--feedback interval alone can induce ordering in a quantum Boltzmann sampler with fixed programmed couplings and a fixed local dissipative rule. At zero environmental dephasing, repeated projective measurements remove transverse coherence regenerated during relaxation, thereby enhancing the local longitudinal response. We derive the exact finite-interval Markov kernel for successive measurement records and obtain the ordering threshold in the Curie--Weiss limit. For couplings below the equilibrium Curie--Weiss threshold, shortening the readout interval drives a continuous transition to an ordered stationary state even though the programmed Boltzmann distribution remains disordered. The stationary response and equation of state map exactly onto those of a continuously interacting model with dephasing, while the linear relaxation rates remain distinct at matched static response. Exact finite-size stationary calculations reveal the transition through bimodal magnetization distributions and mean-field critical scaling.

We examine the spectrum and quantum states of small lattices with cylindrical and toroidal topology subject to a scalar gauge potential that introduces a position dependent phase in the inter-site coupling. Equivalency of gauges assumed in infinite lattices is generally lost due to the periodic boundary conditions, and conditions that restore it are identified. We trace the impact of various system parameters including gauge choice, boundary conditions and inter-site coupling strengths, and an additional axial field. We find gauge dependent appearance of avoided crossings and persistent degeneracies, and we show their impact on the associated eigenstates. Smaller lattices develop prominent gaps in spectral lines associated with edge states, which are suppressed in the thermodynamic limit. Toroidal lattices have counterparts of most of the features observed in cylindrical lattices, but notably they display a transition from localization to delocalization determined by the relation between the field parameter and the number of lattice sites.

Global variational quantum algorithm (VQA) frameworks for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) often rely on a single expressive ansatz over a uniform grid, which becomes structurally inefficient when solutions exhibit spatially heterogeneous complexity such as localized singularities or thin boundary layers. A localized nonsmooth feature can degrade the convergence of the entire global quantum representation, imposing unnecessary circuit depth and amplifying the risk of vanishing gradients in barren plateaus. To overcome this limitation, we propose a block-wise VQA framework for PDEs characterized by spatially heterogeneous solution complexity. The computational domain is decomposed into locally represented quantum subproblems, where grid budgets and ansatz families are dynamically assigned based on a computable difficulty indicator. Artificial block interfaces are coupled through unified jump penalties for state values, derivatives, and physical fluxes, while adaptive reblocking tracks moving rough regions to maintain local accuracy without excessive global qubit overhead. The error analysis rigorously separates spatial discretization, ansatz expressivity, optimization convergence, finite-shot sampling noise, transfer errors from reblocking, and interface-coupling contributions. Reproducible residual-based simulations on representative elliptic, advection--diffusion, and Burgers problems demonstrate lower approximation errors and reduced peak local circuit width compared to global VQA approaches. These results substantiate block-wise quantum resource localization, confirming that high-fidelity PDE solutions can be achieved on near-term quantum devices without requiring a single globally expressive ansatz.

Accurate evaluation of $π$--$π$ stacking interactions requires a description of electron correlation on a small energy scale. Direct variational quantum calculations of the benzene dimer with CAS(28e,20o) require 40 qubits and deep circuits. Here, we propose Divide-and-Conquer Quantum-Selected Configuration Interaction (Deep QSCI), combining the divide-and-conquer idea of Deep VQE with QSCI, and apply it to the sandwich benzene dimer. We perform QSCI for one monomer and construct a reduced local basis by applying particle-number-conserving one-electron excitations to its ground state. Using this basis and the intermonomer interaction Hamiltonian, we build and diagonalize an effective Hamiltonian of the dimer. Since the monomers have the same structure, the QSCI result is reused for both monomers and across intermolecular distances, reducing the required quantum register from 40 to 20 qubits for the monomer CAS(14e,10o). With 6-31G**, the model gives an attractive minimum of -0.91 kcal/mol at 4.0 $Å$, compared with the counterpoise-corrected CCSD(T) value of -1.14 kcal/mol. With cc-pVDZ, a large cancellation appears between the product-state interaction energy and the energy lowering by diagonalization. This may reflect insufficient consistency of the active orbitals and reduced local bases between monomers. Orbital consistency, reduced-space convergence across basis sets, and charge transfer remain key issues for quantitative accuracy. Deep QSCI thus provides a resource-efficient approach to constructing model interaction curves without repeating monomer quantum calculations at each separation.

Understanding and controlling interlayer coupling in van der Waals (vdW) materials is crucial for engineering novel electronic phenomena, including correlated states, topological phases, and superconductivity. Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) offers a highly tunable platform to explore how interlayer orientation and separation influence quantum transport and moiré physics. Here, we introduce a method for achieving precise, atomic-scale control of interlayer coupling in TBG using dual-gated devices separated by ultrathin, thickness-tunable hBN spacers. This approach enables systematic control of interlayer interactions, demonstrating that the critical displacement field required for electron-hole bilayer behavior decreases as the layer separation increases at a fixed twist angle. Remarkably, at small twist angles, moiré-related side peaks persist even when layers are separated by tetralayers of hBN (approximately 1.3 nm), indicating robust interlayer band hybridization. By combining atomic-layer-precise control of interlayer coupling with independent twist angle tunability, our platform opens new avenues for discovering novel moiré physics governed by engineered interlayer coupling and moiré patterns.

Quantum Generative Adversarial Networks (QGANs) have emerged as representative generative models in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era and have attracted increasing attention in quantum machine learning. However, most existing QGAN methods rely on patch-based decomposition strategies, which weaken the global consistency of generated images and increase quantum resource overhead. In this work, we investigate a simpler approach: pixel-level, end-to-end image generation using a single-quantum-circuit QGAN. By analyzing the structural matching relationship between the quantum prior and the target data distribution in Hilbert space, we provide a new theoretical perspective for understanding the training behavior of naive end-to-end QGANs. Specifically, we introduce the Quantum Fidelity Landscape (QFL), defined as the pairwise-fidelity structure induced by an ensemble of quantum states and preserved under shared unitary transformations of the quantum generation process. We show that, under a fixed Lipschitz readout, this invariant imposes a one-sided bound on decoded sample separation, motivating calibration of the prior-induced QFL before adversarial training. To validate this theoretical insight, we propose BasicQGAN, a QGAN framework incorporating quantum prior calibration. Before adversarial optimization, BasicQGAN aligns the prior-induced QFL with the data-induced QFL. Experimental results on small-scale grayscale image datasets show that BasicQGAN achieves stable and effective end-to-end pixel-level image generation while requiring fewer qubits and trainable parameters than representative patch-based quantum generators. Furthermore, experiments with different initial quantum-state ensembles show that QFL-calibrated ensembles achieve better generative performance.

Hamiltonian simulation is a central application of quantum computing. Randomized Hamiltonian simulation approximates the target dynamics by sampling quantum circuits and often allows simpler circuit implementations. We develop a framework for randomized Hamiltonian simulation in which Hamiltonian terms are sampled with arbitrary probabilities and the corresponding short-time evolutions are implemented sequentially. The leading channel error relative to ideal time evolution is governed by the variance of the sampled generators. Minimizing the variance-based upper bound on the worst-case error recovers qDRIFT, a leading randomized Hamiltonian simulation algorithm that samples terms in proportion to their operator norms. For typical input states, however, this sampling distribution need not be optimal. Minimizing Haar-averaged error bounds instead yields sampling probabilities proportional to the Hilbert-Schmidt norms of the terms. This choice can provide smaller average-error bounds than conventional qDRIFT. For Hamiltonians expressed as sums of Pauli strings, we combine this framework with commuting Pauli grouping to obtain smaller error bounds than conventional qDRIFT at fixed $R_z$ depth. Numerical benchmarks for the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model show error-bound improvement factors consistent with linear scaling in the number of qubits. For the 108-qubit FeMoco Hamiltonian, the error bounds are reduced by a factor of about 5.65. These results establish average-error optimization as a practical design principle for randomized Hamiltonian simulation.

Topological nodal-line semimetals are three-dimensional quantum materials characterized by band crossings that form closed loops in momentum space. In $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric realizations, these nodal rings are stabilized in the absence of spin-orbit coupling, giving rise to drumhead surface states and unconventional transport responses. In this work, we study charge transport across a nodal-line semimetal containing a finite electrostatic barrier, with both leads described by the same equilibrium material. By solving the corresponding scattering problem, we show that the transmission across the barrier exhibits {Klein-tunneling behavior protected at normal incidence by the nodal topology}, despite the extended nodal-line dispersion, which can be traced back to Berry-curvature-induced momentum locking. Using the Landauer-Büttiker formalism, we derive general expressions for the linear and nonlinear conductances, including both longitudinal and Hall components, and evaluate them at zero and finite temperature. Our analytical and numerical results elucidate the dependence of the conductance on barrier height and width, as well as on a $\mathcal{PT}$-breaking mass term. We identify distinct transport regimes in which nonlinear contributions are strongly enhanced and transverse Hall currents emerge, providing clear transport signatures of nodal-line topology and suggesting potential routes toward device applications.

An efficient single-photon nonlinearity is a key resource for photonic quantum technologies. Single-photon nonlinearities have been demonstrated with quantum dots (QDs) across a range of cavity and waveguide geometries. However, none of these realizations simultaneously provide high-efficiency direct fiber coupling and compatibility with scalable on-chip integration. The nanobeam cavity addresses these limitations through its in-plane geometry, which enables highly efficient, direct fiber coupling alongside scalable homogeneous and heterogeneous on-chip integration. Here, we report a single-photon nonlinearity from a nanobeam cavity coupled to a single quantum dot. The nanobeam interfaces directly with a single-mode fiber with an efficiency of 60%. Driven by resonant picosecond pulses, the platform achieves a single-photon nonlinearity with a low threshold of 0.24 incident photons per pulse. The system operates in the strong-coupling regime, exhibiting a coupling rate of g/2π = 29.1 GHz and a cooperativity of C = 3.98. These results establish the nanobeam cavity-QD system as a compact, chip-integrable, and fiber-compatible building block for scalable photonic quantum technologies.

Due to their tight temporal coupling, entangled photon pairs produced by spontaneous parametric down-conversion offer a new route to improved network synchronization among quantum-enabled devices. In the emerging space-based quantum internet, such synchronization will be pivotal to operational success. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a new polarization-assisted protocol that allows quantum-enabled devices to remain synchronized under the high loss conditions anticipated for satellite-to-ground quantum channels. Our experimental results show that polarization assistance extends reliable synchronization acquisition to higher channel losses and an increase of up to 40$\%$ in satellite-to-ground distance. Supporting Monte Carlo simulations show that this performance improvement extends over a wide range of photon-starved conditions. Collectively, these results not only provide a proof of concept for polarization-assisted network synchronization but also demonstrate its pragmatic importance in significantly extending the range under which quantum-enabled devices forming the backbone of the quantum internet can remain highly synchronized.

Passive transformations of an $n$-mode squeezed probe become locally unidentifiable when the quantum Fisher matrix loses rank. For pure zero-mean Gaussian probes, we show that the $C_{n}$ restricted-root system of $\mathrm{Sp}(2n,\mathbb{R})/\mathrm{U}(n)$ governs this exact sloppiness. For squeezing magnitudes $r_{1},\ldots,r_{n}$ in the canonical basis, the roots $2r_{j}$ and $r_{j}\pm r_{k}$ label the local phase rotations and two beam-splitter quadratures, and their vanishing identifies every Fisher-null direction. The associated Fisher weights quantify the approach to each singular wall. At fixed positive mean photon number, we solve the E-optimal probe-design problem of maximizing the smallest passive Fisher eigenvalue in two explicit generator normalizations. In the canonical phase and beam-splitter angle convention, the unique optimum in the fundamental Weyl chamber is an arithmetic progression approaching the consecutive-odd-integer dual-Weyl direction at large resource. With an invariant generator norm, the smallest eigenvalue is independent of the passive frame and the optimum lies exactly on that ray at every resource. Uniform squeezing instead minimizes the local-phase A-optimal cost while leaving one beam-splitter quadrature unidentifiable for every mode pair. Finally, the two quadratures of each identifiable mode pair saturate the quantum-geometric incompatibility bound, and the largest compatible passive submodel has $n(n+1)/2$ parameters at a regular spectrum. The resulting classification separates local identifiability, sensitivity optimization, and simultaneous attainability.

A layer of diagonal quantum gates can be specified by an integer-valued function on computational basis states. This description suggests implementing the layer by evaluating that function reversibly and translating its value into a phase using a shared quantum register. We develop this viewpoint for parallel phase kickback (PPK): the weighted sum of several rotation parameters is computed coherently, added once to a phase-gradient state, and then uncomputed. The construction separates the cost of representing a phase function from the cost of applying it. We prove correctness, give explicit error bounds, and analyze logical gate counts for general weights, pairs of rotations, and weights with disjoint binary support. With Clifford-only encoding, a batch uses at most $4(b-1)$ T gates at $b$-bit phase resolution, excluding initialization. The first phase reference is prepared with independent rotations synthesized by Gridsynth; additional phase-gradient states then follow from the disjoint-support construction with $O(b)$ T gates each. The resulting bounds identify when shared phase arithmetic reduces amortized rotation cost and when encoding overhead limits that advantage.

Quantum Fisher information (QFI) quantifies the sensitivity of a quantum state to a parameter change and plays a key role in quantum metrology. Meanwhile, quantum coherence is a crucial resource for quantum information processing. However, despite extensive studies on various aspects of quantum metrology, the interplay between the dynamics of the QFI and quantum coherence remains unexplored. Here, we explore the factorization relationship between the QFI and quantum coherence, both theoretically and experimentally. We prepare pure states in qubit and qutrit systems and apply unitary evolution to investigate this relationship. Our results confirm the factorization law, offering strong evidence for this relationship. Furthermore, we establish a lower bound on the variance of the estimated parameter that does not require the final state information. This approach reveals a deep connection between the QFI and quantum coherence, providing insights into quantum parameter estimation. These findings have potential applications in quantum sensing and quantum metrology.

We develop a generalized effective spin-chain (GESC) formalism for strongly interacting multicomponent anyons in a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice. By mapping particle motion onto spinless fermions and spin states onto an ordered chain, this framework provides a spin--charge-separated perspective on the physical effects of fractional exchange statistics. In the strong-interaction regime, the leading-order charge Hamiltonian becomes independent of the statistical phase; instead, virtual tunneling through doubly occupied states directly imprints this phase on the spin-exchange coefficients. The GESC formalism captures ground-state properties of the full Anyon--Hubbard model reported in S.~Basak, X.-W.~Guan, and H.~Pu, unpublished manuscript (2026), and reveals that their statistical dependence is predominantly encoded in the explicit anyonic structure of the observables rather than the underlying spin ground state. This formalism uncovers that, out of equilibrium, successive spin exchanges accumulate direction-dependent phases; the resulting interference drives crossover from dispersive to localized impurity transport and generates inversion-asymmetric propagation at intermediate statistics. Suppressed expansion persists for identical and distinguishable impurities, with differences in propagation governed by the interplay between impurity identity and interaction anisotropy. Ultimately, GESC offers a versatile, computationally efficient theoretical framework that connects macroscopic dynamics to microscopic virtual exchange processes, conferring a unique spin--charge-separated vantage for resolving how fractional exchange statistics survives strong interactions and manifests distinctly across static and dynamical regimes.

We investigate the ground-state and dynamical properties of multicomponent interacting anyons confined in a one-dimensional (1D) optical lattice. Adopting the Anyon--Hubbard model, we explore spin and charge correlations as functions of interaction strength and the anyonic statistical parameter. Our results demonstrate that multicomponent effects combined with fractional exchange statistics substantially reshape both charge and spin correlations. For fractional exchange statistics, the canonical symmetric shell structure with prominent singularities in the spinor fermionic momentum distribution undergoes notable structural reconstruction, exhibiting emergent asymmetry, new spectral peaks, and broadened singular features. Unlike the Tonks--Girardeau bosonic gas, pseudobosons, representing a limiting case of anyons, cease to display a dominant zero-momentum peak. Instead, a quasi-fermionic shell structure emerges with finite-momentum peaks, whose locations are modulated by lattice site occupancy and interaction strength. The structure factor of spin correlations uncovers antiferromagnetic ordering in spinor anyon systems, with correlation magnitudes tunable by anyonic exchange statistics. Furthermore, quench dynamics analysis reveals the statistical phase parameter as an effective tuning knob. It enables the switching of dipole oscillations between underdamped and overdamped relaxation regimes and governs overall cloud expansion dynamics. Our findings pave the way for exploring statistics-driven ground-state and dynamical phase transitions in spinor anyon systems.

It is widely believed that there are no exact global symmetries in quantum gravity. We review recent works showing that global symmetries can nevertheless emerge after ensemble averages of theories, as encountered in holography. As a precision case study, we discuss the ensemble average of two-dimensional Narain-type conformal field theories associated with an even quadratic form of general signature, which is computed by the Siegel-Weil formula and interpreted as a sum over geometries in a three-dimensional Abelian Chern-Simons theory. Global symmetries of the bulk anyons can emerge after the average, as T-dualities relating different theories in the ensemble are "folded" into symmetries of a single theory (duality origami). We discuss the relation to the Swampland program, including the emergence of global symmetries at infinite distance. Finally, we recast strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking (SWSSB) of mixed states as an emergence of symmetries in ensemble averages; in holography, wormholes connecting the two sides of a thermofield-double construction provide its bulk realization. This motivates a new Swampland conjecture.

Leakage from a known encoding subspace can be detected by projection. However, the corresponding projector is unavailable when the encoding subspace is not classically specified. Here we show how independent quantum references prepared by the same encoder enable leakage detection without a classical description of the encoding. A coherent measurement on the references and a single message leaves every state within the two-dimensional encoding subspace, including its entanglement with a remote system, exactly unchanged. We derive the exact detection law for $M$ ideal references and prove optimality among tests with zero false alarm for every encoding. For orthogonal leakage, the miss probability is asymptotic to $4/M$, independent of the ambient dimension $d$. Measuring all references first, even collectively, gives zero detection at every finite budget under the same zero-false-alarm requirement. For a fixed detection target between zero and one, the optimal measurement-first cost is $Θ(d/ε)$ at sufficiently small tolerance $ε$ on normal false alarm and conditional disturbance; a dimension-independent coherent budget suffices. For one logical qubit encoded in three physical qubits, seven coherent references achieve at least $50\%$ orthogonal-leakage detection, whereas any measurement-first receiver needs at least $588$ under the same $1\%$ normal tolerances. Quantum references thus support leakage checks without classical reconstruction, with a sample advantage exponential in the number of physical qubits.

We construct a supersymmetric factorization for generalized driven anisotropic Rabi--Stark Hamiltonians using an affine factor $\hat{A}=\hat{C}+\hat{a}\hat{D}$ in an inhomogeneous orthosymplectic superalgebra, with two real invertible spin matrices $\hat{C}$ and $\hat{D}$. The six real pencil parameters constrain nine Hamiltonian frequencies and one energy offset up to an overall frequency scale. The normal product $\hat{A}^{\dagger}\hat{A}$ has an exact zero-energy ground doublet and, with its antinormal partner $\hat{A}\hat{A}^{\dagger}$, gives a Witten index of two. For distinct pencil roots with finite baseline slopes, coherent gauges define a Bargmann hierarchy and endpoint conditions for exceptional finite-polynomial states. The spin grading organizes four limiting cases, comprising two driven-oscillator families with every baseline exact and the constrained anisotropic-Rabi and Rabi--Stark sheets, which meet at the degenerate-qubit isotropic Rabi model. An aligned interior example adds direct and longitudinal drives, Stark deformation, and intensity-dependent coupling while retaining the factorization.

We compute the evanescent-wave Johnson noise (EWJN) in the vacuum half-space above a superconductor, and the resulting relaxation time ($T_1$) of spin and charge qubits placed at nanometer distances from the surface. The electromagnetic response is described by a single microscopic transverse current-response kernel $Q(q, ω)$ for a BCS superconductor. This is computed for varying densities of both non-magnetic impurities and magnetic impurities, for arbitrary frequency and temperature and for wave vectors $q \ll k_F$ (the Fermi wavevector). When combined with the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and the nonlocal surface impedances of the half-space, this yields the magnetic and electric field noise at any distance $z \gg k_F^{-1}$ from the surface, from which we obtain $T_1$. Just below $T_c$ the magnetic noise is enhanced relative to the normal state by the coherence (Hebel-Slichter-type) peak of the dissipative conductivity and drops exponentially at lower temperatures; the electric noise shows no coherence peak. The theory predicts that there is a zero-temperature noise floor induced by magnetic impurities. In the gapless regime produced by pair breaking, the finite subgap density of states $ν(0)$ yields a temperature-independent noise spectral density and a relaxation rate bounded by $T_1^{-1}(T)\le[ν(0)/ν_F]^{2}\,T_{1,N}^{-1}(T)$ for $T\ll T_c$, with equality in the extreme nonlocal regime. Here $ν(0)$ and $ν_F$ are the superconducting and normal-state densities of states at the Fermi energy, and $T_{1,N}(T)$ is the relaxation time the same electrode would produce in its normal state at the same temperature.

Decomposing finite Abelian black-box groups into cyclic factors is a basic problem in quantum computation. We give a quantum algorithm for decomposing finite Abelian black-box groups by adapting the quantum sampling and classical lattice-reduction method of Regev's factoring algorithm. The algorithm computes an invariant-factor decomposition and corresponding cyclic generators with high probability. For a group G of order at most 2^n with unique encodings and reversible group-operation cost T_op = Omega(sqrt(n)), our algorithm uses O(sqrt(n)) quantum circuits, each with O~(n T_op) gates and executed at most O(n) times. For comparison, we consider the Cheung-Mosca algorithm, which decomposes the Sylow p-subgroups separately. We also consider the common-modulus implementation of the extended Cheung-Mosca algorithm. Our algorithm reduces the sum of the circuit gate counts from O~(n^2 T_op) to O~(n^(3/2) T_op). The total quantum time bound decreases from O~(n^3 T_op) to O~(n^(5/2) T_op), and the quantum space bound decreases from O(n^2) to O(n) qubits. The classical computation uses polynomially many bit operations and group-operation queries. These improvements rely on two technical ingredients. We prove that the integer relation lattices used in our algorithm admit, with high probability, integral bases whose vectors have Euclidean norm at most exp(O(sqrt(n))). We preserve the circuit-size advantage of Regev's algorithm for group decomposition by incorporating all O(n) sampled generators while keeping the lattice-reduction dimension at O(sqrt(n)).

Quantum computing has already been explored in several network-security applications. However, how quantum computing may contribute to network-security classification in both the near term and the longer term has not been systematically discussed. This paper studies this question through two complementary experiments. First, we evaluate near-term quantum-kernel support vector machines (SVMs) on practical network-security classification tasks and compare them with classical SVM baselines on KDD Cup 1999, CICIDS2017, and BoT-IoT. Across these runs, quantum kernels are competitive. They can match or improve classical baselines in some settings, while classical RBF kernels remain stronger in others. This suggests that near-term quantum-kernel methods should be evaluated as practical, dataset-dependent alternatives to classical kernels rather than as uniformly superior replacements. Second, we use quantum oracle sketching (QOS) to study a longer-term memory advantage for classification with streaming classical samples. In QOS, samples are processed online and used to incrementally construct an approximate quantum oracle, which provides coherent query access for downstream quantum algorithms without retaining the entire dataset. Under the QOS-inspired machine-size estimate, comparable accuracy corresponds to a substantially smaller effective memory-size proxy than explicit sparse/QRAM-style storage. Compared with a simple streaming proxy, the result is more nuanced because aggressive feature filtering can make the streaming dimension small. This suggests that the long-term value of quantum computing for network-security classification may lie in memory-efficient data access rather than immediate runtime speedup. Together, these experiments show how quantum computing may contribute to network-security classification from near-term classification performance and longer-term memory efficiency.

We derive the finite-temperature characteristic function of work (CFW) for a driven $O(N)$ Gaussian field theory and obtain closed-form expressions for all zero-temperature excess-work cumulants. For gapped protocols, we use adiabatic perturbation theory (APT) to derive the $τ_Q^{-2}$ scaling for protocols with a nonzero first derivative at either boundary, where $τ_Q$ is the protocol duration; smoother boundaries lead to faster decay. For power-law protocols approaching the critical point with exponent $p$, we determine the competition between critical excitations and the regular contribution. The $n$th cumulant's critical contribution follows Kibble--Zurek (KZ) scaling $τ_Q^{-p(d+n)/(p+2)}$ for $d+n<2p+4$, acquires a logarithmic correction $τ_Q^{-2p}\logτ_Q$ at $d+n=2p+4$, and scales as $τ_Q^{-2p}$ above this condition, where $d$ is the spatial dimension. This analytical study of the APT--KZ crossover in a solvable model provides a basis for studying their competition in interacting field theories.

The local Hamiltonian problem is the canonical $\mathsf{QMA}$-complete problem, and $O(2^n)$ time classical algorithms and $O(2^{n/2})$ time quantum algorithms are known to solve the problem in the worst case. It is not clear how to improve these brute force strategies for a broad class of the problem because ground states are highly entangled in general, and we cannot directly apply known strategies for classical CSPs. In this work, we present exponentially faster classical and quantum algorithms under two mild assumptions: (1) the Hamiltonian is frustration-free on YES instances, and (2) it is approximately regular, meaning that every qubit is acted upon by approximately the same number of constraints. We complement these upper bounds by showing that, assuming (Q)SETH, quantum 5-SAT admits no non-trivial worst-case speedup. Our lower bound further demonstrates that the dependence of our algorithms on regularity is in some sense nearly optimal. Specifically, quantum 5-SAT remains (Q)SETH-hard even for Hamiltonians in which all but $O(\sqrt{n})$ qubits participate in only constantly many constraints, while the remaining $O(\sqrt{n})$ qubits each participate in $O(\sqrt{n})$ constraints. By contrast, if either the size of this high-degree subset or the degrees of its qubits is reduced by a factor of $n^δ$, for any $δ>0$, our algorithm solves the problem in time $O(2^{(1- \varepsilon)n})$ for some $\varepsilon>0$. Together, our upper and lower bounds establish a fine-grained complexity dichotomy for quantum satisfiability.

Bending the axis of a mode-evolution coupler suppresses the nonadiabatic coupling between its supermodes, and bent couplers of this kind were recently shown to realize the counter-diabatic (CD) protocol. Here we identify the operator responsible. Rigid lateral displacement of a waveguide structure is generated by the transverse momentum $\hat p_x$, whose diagonal matrix elements vanish in a real supermode basis and whose off-diagonal element is purely imaginary; in a two-mode system such an operator is proportional to $\sy$. The CD term of a two-waveguide coupler is itself proportional to $\sy$, while the detuning and the coupling, the two parameters set by the waveguide widths and spacing, lie in the $σ_z$--$σ_x$ plane and cannot produce it. The transverse momentum is therefore the CD generator of the bent coupler, by necessity rather than by design. Equating the term it supplies to the nonadiabatic coupling gives the axis slope in closed form as a ratio of two matrix elements of the unperturbed supermodes at a single cross section, which a commutator identity recasts in coupled-mode variables as $\dot{\xo}=\dotθ/(γ\dbeta^{2})$. The expression agrees with the numerical offset search to $0.3\%$ and requires no search. Beam propagation simulations confirm the design and compare it, for the first time, with the CD protocol realized by unitary transformation in a straight coupler built from the same reference structure. The two devices reach $0.994$ and $1.000$ supermode fidelity where the untreated coupler reaches $0.886$, and agree in bandwidth and fabrication tolerance, while their internal trajectories differ by exactly the frame transformation that relates them.

Time-reversal symmetry and its violation (T-violation) are fundamental across diverse physics domains, from particle physics to fluctuation theorems and reciprocity. While time-reversal symmetry for isolated systems is simply determined by the Hamiltonian, quantifying the magnitude of T-violation, especially in noisy quantum processes, has been a subject of ongoing debate. Here, we propose an operationally meaningful framework to quantify the intrinsic T-violation of quantum channels. We integrate operationally defined time-reversal transformations into dynamical resource theory to formulate T-violation as a resource. T-violation decomposes into two distinct components: kinematic T-violation originating from antiunitary motion-reversal, and nonunitality driven purely by thermodynamics. This decomposition resolves the longstanding confusion between broken time-reversal symmetry and non-invertibility. Finally, we analyze the resulting resource theory of kinematic T-violation, showing that it is neither quality-like nor quantity-like, and proving the existence of a universal golden unit even within classical channels.

A new graph-theoretic framework provides a unified description of atom-light interactions across regimes ranging from weak to deep-strong coupling.

Insider Brief Quobly is expanding its collaboration with CEA-Leti through access to the FAMES Pilot Line to develop technologies for future silicon quantum processors. FAMES provides semiconductor equipment to test manufacturing processes, complementing Quobly’s work with STMicroelectronics to industrialize its silicon spin-qubit architecture. Quobly plans to commercialize its first quantum computer, Alloy Pioneer, by the end of 2026 and targets one million qubits by 2032. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Quobly, a French company developing silicon-based quantum computers, and CEA-Leti, a leading research institute in microelectronics and information technologies, are strengthening their long-standing collaboration through access to the FAMES Pilot Line, which complements Quobly’s industrial collaboration with STMicroelectronics and supports its technology roadmap. At FAMES, a pioneering initiative promoting semiconductor technologies in Europe by supporting the emergence of higher-performance, more energy-efficient, and more sustainable chip designs, Quobly can access advanced semiconductor equipment and process modules to develop and evaluate new process flows and patterning approaches for later processor generations. A Long-Standing Collaboration on Silicon Quantum Technology Founded in 2022 on more than 15 years of research at CEA-Leti and CNRS, Quobly builds on a long-standing collaboration in silicon spin-qubit technology. In 2016, CEA-Leti and its research partners demonstrated a silicon spin qubit fabricated using an industrial CMOS process based on FD-SOI technology on a 300 mm wafer. Since its creation, Quobly and CEA-Leti have continued to collaborate on silicon spin-qubit technologies and the technology building blocks underlying Quobly’s QSOI® architecture. QSOI® combines silicon spin qubits with an FD-SOI semiconductor platform and is being industrialized with STMicroelectronics using their 300 mm manufacturing infrastructure. This collaboration supports the deve

Insider Brief Quandela plans to spend the next two years developing strategic partnerships in South Korea covering quantum manufacturing, system integration and operations. The company wants to work with Korean partners on photonic module manufacturing, advanced packaging, wafer-level inspection, optical alignment and integrated quantum control systems. Quandela is also considering a Korean quantum manufacturing consortium and potential cooperation across Seoul, Jeonnam-Gwangju and southeastern regional quantum clusters. French photonic quantum computing company Quandela intends to spend the next two years lining up strategic partners in South Korea, with joint work expected to cover quantum chip manufacturing, system integration, demonstration, and real-world operation, Seoul Economic Daily reported . CEO Niccolo Somaschi presented the company&#8217;s Korea strategy and a medium- to long-term roadmap toward fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) at a press conference held at Centropolis in Seoul&#8217;s Jongno district on the 28th. Quandela &#8216;s quantum computers run on photons. The company has recently worked with NVIDIA to connect quantum processing units (QPUs) with graphics processing units (GPUs), part of an effort to pair quantum machines with existing computing infrastructure. Mass-producing photonic quantum computers and scaling their performance over time depends on semiconductor-grade precision manufacturing and inspection, which is why the company wants to deepen technical ties with Korea&#8217;s manufacturing base. &#8220;Combining Quandela &#8216;s quantum computing expertise with Korea&#8217;s semiconductor manufacturing technology would make a perfect match,&#8221; Somaschi said. &#8220;Over the next two years, we will identify partners in Korea, review whether photonic modules are suitable for mass production, and reflect the results in our technology roadmap toward FTQC.&#8221; Three Areas of Planned Cooperation Quandela plans to work with Kor

To build the ultrafast computers of the future, scientists are looking beyond the electrical charge of electrons to another property: their spin. While conventional hardware relies on the movement of charge to process data, tapping into this intrinsic quantum property could enable researchers to reinvent how information travels through a circuit.

Quantum computers promise to solve problems beyond the reach of classical machines, but they share a stubborn adversary: noise. Quantum bits (qubits) are exquisitely sensitive to their environment, gates are imperfect, measurements introduce bias, and these errors accumulate as circuits grow. Learning to combat noise is one of the central scientific and engineering challenges standing between today’s devices and practical quantum computing. To study complex quantum phenomena like decoherence induced by noise requires both advanced tools and skilled practitioners. To train the next generation of quantum technologists, the Accelerating Quantum-Enabled Technologies (AQET) program at the University of Washington (UW) offers a multidisciplinary curriculum spanning physics, chemistry, materials science, engineering, and computer science. As part of the program, students complete a 10-week industry mentorship project. Last year, students working with AWS mentors modeled a nitrogen-vacancy center with NVIDIA CUDA-Q ; this year’s team turned the spotlight onto noise itself. In this post, we’re excited to share the results of the 2026 AQET capstone project, sponsored by AWS. Working on Amazon Braket and scaling through AWS infrastructure, the students built a hands-on laboratory for combating quantum noise. It progresses through three complementary strategies: suppressing noise at the source, mitigating its effects in post-processing, and correcting it with encoded logical qubits. They further showed how each stage maps naturally onto AWS services. Project Implementation The team began with noise suppression, characterizing how quickly qubits decay through their T1 and T2 (coherence) times. They then applied dynamical decoupling, timed pulse sequences that average away environmental noise, to keep qubits coherent for longer. These experiments were carried out on both a noisy simulator and the Rigetti Cepheus-1 superconducting quantum processing unit (QPU), accessed through Am

Insider Brief KIST led four South Korean quantum startups at Quantum World Congress 2026, facilitating discussions with U.S. companies, research institutions and investors. The delegation explored potential collaborations with D-Wave , Microsoft , Japan’s Q-STAR and AIST, including access to quantum computing systems and enterprise partnerships. OptiQ-Labs plans to establish a U.S. East Coast office in November, becoming the first quantum startup supported through the Deeptech Incubator Project to establish a physical presence in the eastern United States. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has successfully led a delegation of South Korean quantum deep-tech startups at Quantum World Congress (QWC) 2026, establishing key international partnerships and expanding their footprint into the U.S. market. Serving as the lead organization for the quantum technology sector under South Korea &#8216;s Deeptech Incubator Project for Startups—overseen by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups and administered by the Korea Institute of Startup &amp; Entrepreneurship Development—KIST spearheaded the initiative through its Global Bridge Program. The program connects Korean startups with overseas research institutions, enterprise partners, and investors to drive global commercialization beyond initial technology development. For this U.S. program, KIST jointly planned and implemented the Global Bridge Program with the U.S. Embassy in Korea , supporting Korean quantum technology startups in connecting with overseas research institutions, enterprise partners, and investors. During the event, KIST and participating startups initiated strategic discussions to utilize D-Wave &#8216;s quantum computing systems, providing Korean startups direct access to advanced quantum infrastructure for technology development and practical application testing. KIST also met with Japan&#8217;s Q-STAR and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technolog

Quantum batteries are an emerging area of research, with progress coming from theoretical studies and proof-of-principle experiments in small quantum systems. Unlike conventional chemical batteries used in everyday life, they use quantum systems to store and transfer energy. Researchers are exploring them as potential future energy sources for quantum processors and other quantum technologies.

Yuval Boger's guest is Steve Gibson, President of Americas at JIJ, a Japan-based optimization company whose founders came from Professor Nishimori’s lab. Steve shared how JIJ spans the spectrum from classical to quantum-inspired to quantum computing, and discussed how the company is now using AI to make its optimization tools more accessible to customers who lack in-house quantum expertise. The post Podcast with Steve Gibson, President of Americas at JIJ appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers have shown that magnetic order can survive weak quantum fluctuations in disordered magnets that lack an energy gap. The work establishes robust ferromagnetism in the two-dimensional random-bond quantum Ising model, confirming a longstanding conjecture in quantum statistical mechanics.

Quobly and CEA-Leti are strengthening their collaboration through the FAMES Pilot Line, providing Quobly access to advanced processing tools for prototyping 3D integration and RF control layers for next-generation quantum processing units (QPUs). This partnership, alongside STMicroelectronics, aims to scale Quobly's QSOI® architecture, which integrates silicon spin qubits directly onto a 300 mm FD-SOI CMOS substrate. Quobly plans to offer initial cloud availability for its Alloy Pioneer processor family by late 2026, targeting large-scale, fault-tolerant silicon architectures by 2032. The post Quobly and CEA-Leti Strengthen Collaboration via FAMES Pilot Line to Scale 300 mm Silicon Spin-Qubit Platform appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Insider Brief UCL researchers are partnering with Bristol-based Siloton to adapt its quantum-enabled OCT eye-imaging system for use by children with potentially sight-threatening conditions. The NIHR-funded project will modify Siloton’s compact Akepa device for paediatric use, including adjustments to its lenses and physical design. The project aims to support eye monitoring in community or home settings, potentially reducing hospital visits while enabling clinicians to assess children remotely. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Researchers at the University College London (UCL) Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health are teaming up with Bristol-based start-up Siloton on a project that could help prevent sight loss in children by adapting a groundbreaking new eye imaging technology. With funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health has secured one of Siloton’s pioneering optical coherence tomography (OCT) systems, which will be modified for use by children. OCT is a safe imaging method that uses light to create detailed pictures of the inside of the eye, helping clinicians identify a range of health conditions and monitor their progress. However, its use is limited because existing systems are large, expensive, and typically only available in hospitals and optometry centres. Through the project, Professor Ameenat Lola Solebo and Professor Marinko Sarunic, both from UCL, will co-develop a new version of the compact, quantum-enabled anterior segment OCT device with Siloton, allowing children with potentially blinding disorders to be monitored in the community or even from home. Lola Solebo, Professor at UCL and Consultant Ophthalmologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said : “The work we have done at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and at Great Ormond Street Hospital has shown how transformational imaging can be, improving patient outcomes, and patient and family experi

Insider Brief Researchers identified fundamental limits on quantum-battery reliability, showing how charging strategies can balance high power with more stable energy delivery. The theoretical study found that quantum uncertainty prevents fluctuations in delivered energy and power from both being made arbitrarily small simultaneously. Charging cells collectively increased power but also power fluctuations, while charging interacting groups of cells offered a compromise between higher power and stable operation. Image: Power and work vs their reliability in the charging process of quantum batteries. Schematic illustration of the reliability of a quantum battery during the charging process. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; New research identifies fundamental limits on the reliability of quantum batteries and shows how charging strategies can balance high power with stable energy and power delivery. The findings represent an important step toward the future development of practical and useful quantum energy-storage devices. Quantum uncertainty sets a fundamental trade-off in quantum batteries, limiting their ability to deliver both stable power and reliable energy at the same time. Quantum batteries are an emerging area of research, with progress being made through theoretical studies and proof-of-principle experiments in small quantum systems. Unlike conventional chemical batteries used in everyday life, they use quantum systems to store and transfer energy. They are being explored as potential future energy sources for quantum processors and other quantum technologies. Previous research has focused mainly on how fast and powerfully quantum batteries can be charged. In the new research, the researchers establish fundamental limits on fluctuations in both the energy delivered by a quantum battery and the rate at which it is delivered. The work,&nbsp; Fundamental Limitations on the Reliabilities of Power and Work in Quantum Batteries , was newly published in PRX Quantum. “A quantu

Insider Brief Quantum Cyber is narrowing its autonomous defense strategy to attack drones and interceptors, quantum antenna technology and swarm-control software for operations where GPS is unavailable. The company says its licensed quantum antenna is intended to support navigation, communications and power, while maritime programs and other exploratory initiatives receive less emphasis. Quantum Cyber says an 80-unit 3D printing production farm is operational at its Bridgeport, Connecticut, facility, with annual output of 100,000 drones remaining a target rather than current capacity. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Quantum Cyber N.V. (Nasdaq: QUCY) (&#8220;Quantum Cyber&#8221; or the &#8220;Company&#8221;), a Nasdaq-listed autonomous defense technology company assembling an AI-powered System-of-Systems platform for drone warfare, counter-UAS, and border security applications, today announced a sharpened strategic focus, reframing the Company&#8217;s thesis for the era of GPS-deficient, autonomous warfare, and presented its updated Corporate Investor Presentation. The full presentation is available at&nbsp; https://quantum-cyber.ai/investors/presentations . The presentation consolidates the Company&#8217;s refocused strategy, technology portfolio, and manufacturing footprint into a single investor-facing document. Key sections include: Warfare, Reimagined for the Quantum Era.&nbsp; Quantum Cyber&#8217;s strategy is now organized around a single thesis: the next war will be fought in environments where GPS fails, where electronic warfare dominates, and where mass-produced attritable autonomy decides the outcome. The Company&#8217;s exclusively-licensed quantum antenna technology, executed with Project LightShift, Inc. on June 11, 2026, is positioned as the differentiating layer of the platform — an unjammable, magnetic-field-based navigation, communications and energy-capture reference for autonomous systems operating in contested environments where satellite-guided precision

There's big news from the quantum world. A quantum computer has been used in space for the first time. The device was aboard a spacecraft in low Earth orbit and demonstrated technology that could eventually help solve a problem that has been bugging satellites for years.

Guest contributor Areeha Tunio describes how quantum is fundamentally different from all previous computing frameworks and mentions some of the engineering activities taking place to move the field from demonstration to disciplined systems engineering. The post The Two-Century Path That Made Quantum Computing Inevitable appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Insider Brief Pasqal is shifting its collaboration with French public authorities toward commercial applications and away from its participation in the LSQUARE/PROQCIMA defense program. The company completed the technological objectives of the first phase of PROQCIMA and has been invited to participate in civil public support programs now being defined. French authorities have asked Pasqal to submit an FTQC research and development program based on neutral atoms to support its commercial technology roadmap. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Pasqal (NASDAQ: PSQL) is announcing an evolution of the areas of its collaboration with the French public authorities to now focus on commercial applications, in line with the company’s growth strategy and innovation priorities. This evolution includes the termination of Pasqal ’s participation in the defense program LSQUARE (otherwise known as PROQCIMA), to which Pasqal participated in its first phase and successfully completed all the technological objectives. Pasqal thanks the French Direction générale de l’armement (DGA) of the Ministry of the Armed Forces for having supported it during the first phase of the defense program LSQUARE. Pasqal is now invited to participate in the civil public support programs currently being defined. As a first step in this civil collaboration, the company has been requested by the French Secrétariat général pour l’investissement (SGPI) and the French Direction générale des entreprises (DGE) to submit a specific research and development program for fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) based on neutral atoms, and consistent with Pasqal’s advanced technology level and commercial maturity. This focus on commercial-led development will provide further support to Pasqal to accelerate the implementation of its FTQC roadmap beyond the scope of the PROQCIMA program. In just seven years, Pasqal has established itself as one of the global leaders in quantum computing, thus demonstrating the ability of French deept

Abstract Automated construction of variational quantum circuits remains a major bottleneck in quantum chemistry, largely because adaptive VQE methods repeatedly screen large operator pools using quantum-gradient criteria. For a canonical Hartree--Fock reference and normalized double-excitation generators, the initial ADAPT gradient magnitude is exactly the corresponding antisymmetrized two-electron Hamiltonian coupling. We encode this static signal as an excitation-edge feature of a heterogeneous graph, enabling a training-free classical ranking without current-state candidate-gradient measurements. Across statevector benchmarks from eight to twenty qubits, incremental construction reaches chemical accuracy with operator counts close to full gradient-based selection while avoiding repeated quantum screening. Supervised and residual models are used as controls to test whether learned corrections improve this low-cost rule. Static learned readouts provide no consistent held-out advantage, whereas state-conditioned features improve selected teacher-forced ranking metrics but require additional information and do not establish a closed-loop reduction in operator count. As a complementary higher-rank contribution, we derive an exact shared-residual formulation that reduces Hamiltonian applications for triple- and quadruple-excitation screening from $2C$ or $C+1$ to one while preserving all scores and rankings. Results on stretched H$_6$ and N$_2$ benchmarks show that these higher-rank operators can repair a singles-and-doubles expressivity limit.

Abstract We investigate qubits coupled to the boundary of a two-dimensional photonic lattice that supports dispersionless edge modes—unlike conventional edge modes that sustain propagating photons. As a case study, we consider a honeycomb lattice ( photonic graphene ) of coupled resonators with a zigzag edge, where the edge modes form a flat band defined only over a restricted region of momentum space. We show that light–matter interactions are effectively captured by a dissipative cavity-QED model, wherein the emitter coherently couples to a localized mode emerging as a superposition of edge modes. This mode has support on only one sublattice and displays an unconventional power-law localization around the qubit—yet remaining normalizable in the thermodynamic limit—with a spatial range that can be tuned by introducing lattice anisotropy. We predict the occurrence of vacuum Rabi oscillations and state transfer between distant emitters. An experimental demonstration using superconducting circuits is proposed.

Abstract Weak values provide a powerful framework for characterizing quantum systems. Their experimental extraction conventionally relies on weak conditioned von Neumann measurements, involving weak interactions and meter states that increase experimental complexity and often limit measurement efficiency. Here we introduce a method to fully characterize weak values in a generalized Mach–Zehnder interferometer employing neither meter states nor weak interactions. We experimentally demonstrate the technique in matter-wave interferometry. We identify anomalous weak values and, equivalently, negative quasiprobability distributions, which reflect the nonclassical behavior of the quantum system. The approach relies uniquely on intensity measurements at the output ports of the interferometer combined with controlled relative phase shifts between the paths. The absence of meter states enables considerable simplification of the setup and shorter measurement times, while preserving full access to weak values with comparable or increased accuracy. The scheme is directly applicable to a broad class of experiments involving two-level quantum systems.

Abstract Solid-state spin defects are a promising platform for quantum networks. A key requirement is to combine long ground-state spin-coherence times with a coherent optical transition for spin-photon entanglement. Here, we investigate the spin and optical coherence of single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres in (111)-grown isotopically engineered diamond. Our diamond-growth process yields a precisely controlled 13 C concentration and low-ppb nitrogen concentrations. Combined with the mitigation of 50 Hz noise using a real-time feedforward scheme and tailored decoupling sequences, this enables record defect-electron-spin coherence times of T 2 = 6.8(1) ms for a Hahn echo and of $${T}_{2}^{DD}=11.2(8)$$ T 2 D D = 11.2 ( 8 ) s under dynamical decoupling. In addition, we observe coherent optical transitions with a near-lifetime-limited homogeneous linewidth of 16.9(4) MHz (222(3) MHz inhomogeneous broadening under 515nm illumination) and characterize the spectral diffusion dynamics. These results provide new avenues to investigate the incorporation of impurities in diamond and new opportunities for improved spin-qubit control for quantum networks and other quantum technologies.

Non-uniform security allows an adversary to receive bounded advice about an oracle before attempting a fresh challenge. This captures the most realistic attacks and has already been studied extensively in prior work. In this work, we introduce an operator-norm approach for non-uniform security in the quantum random oracle and random permutation models. This new approach yields a unified reduction for both search success probability and distinguishing advantage. Previously, the reduction only worked with success probability even in the decision games, yielding a worse bound. Our framework enables tight bounds for Yao's box, both with and without salting, and improved bounds for pseudorandom generators. We also prove an optimal generic salting theorem for decision games. By defining a property of a game, which separates the contributions of the existing queries in the offline stage and subsequent online queries, we obtain stronger bounds for specific salted constructions. These include salted permutation inversion, tight up to logarithmic factors, and salted random-function inversion, tight up to logarithmic factors and the gap already present in classical function inversion.

We prove a separability rigidity theorem for finite-mode Gaussian states. Let $ρ_G$ be Gaussian and let $\mathcal I$ be a fixed partition of the modes. If $ρ_G$ dominates a nonzero positive operator $T$ that is separable across $\mathcal I$, $0\neq T\preccurlyeq ρ_G$, then $ρ_G$ itself is separable across $\mathcal I$. The dominated operator is arbitrary and need not be Gaussian. As consequences, convex mixing among finitely many separability partitions creates no new Gaussian states: a Gaussian state belonging to such a convex class is already separable across one fixed partition. In particular, full inseparability and genuine multipartite entanglement coincide for finite-mode Gaussian states, and identical copies of a biseparable Gaussian state cannot activate genuine multipartite entanglement. We also show that the implication cannot be reversed by constructing a fully separable Gaussian state that dominates a positive multiple of a genuine multipartite entangled state.

Quantum fire consists of quantum states that can be efficiently functionally cloned but cannot be transmitted using one-way classical communication. Whereas all previous quantum-fire constructions with proven untelegraphability are relative to an oracle, ours, based on one-shot signatures, is in the standard model. Our construction achieves two further notions that we introduce: (a) keyless untelegraphability, a strengthening of untelegraphability; and (b) conversability, meaning that a flame, though not telegraphable via one-way classical communication, can be transmitted via classical interaction. Hence one-way and two-way classical communication differ qualitatively in their power to transmit this quantum fire. We use these two novel properties of quantum fire, along with its clonability, to give one of the first cryptographic applications of quantum fire. Keyless untelegraphability forces the distribution of serial numbers of valid flames to have high min-entropy, while conversability and clonability allow the corresponding flame to be cloned and transferred using only classical communication. We present two variants of our conversable quantum-fire construction. The first, based on one-shot signatures (instantiable from subexponential iO, subexponentially secure one-way functions, and LWE), supports polynomially many flames, and super-logarithmic min-entropy of the serial-number distribution. The second, under the stronger assumption of exponentially unforgeable one-shot signatures (instantiable relative to a classical oracle), supports exponentially many flames, and linear min-entropy.

Quantum error-correcting codes are essential for reliable quantum communication. The achievable parameters can be improved by using entanglement-assisted stabilizers at the cost of consuming pre-shared Bell pairs. If the availability of such Bell pairs is intermittent, the ability to adapt the code to available resources is beneficial. That is, to pick a single mother code that can be adapted to different entanglement budgets. To achieve this, we extend an existing puncturing construction for standard/unassisted stabilizers to the entanglement-assisted setting through a three-step procedure: Interpreting the code as an unassisted stabilizer, puncturing a receiver-side qubit, and recovering an entanglement-assisted representation. This procedure reduces the number of required Bell pairs by one while preserving the number of transmitted and logical qubits. We derive a bound on the resulting distance loss and establish conditions for preserving the original code distance. Finally, we analyse distinct, randomly generated, entanglement-assisted stabilizers with five to eight transmitted qubits. Of these codes, 14.75% have a greater distance than their associated unassisted representations. Among this subset, 81.4% admit at least one puncturing choice that preserves the original entanglement-assisted distance. These results illustrate how puncturing can reduce entanglement requirements while maintaining code distance.

Distributed quantum computing (DQC) has been proposed as a way to scale quantum algorithms for practical applications beyond monolithic quantum processor architectures. Among these applications, quantum chemistry is widely regarded as one of the most promising use cases for quantum computing. In this work, we estimate the distributed-resource requirements of unitary coupled-cluster (UCC) ansätze for quantum chemistry, focusing on unitary coupled-cluster singles and doubles (UCCSD), unitary pair coupled-cluster doubles (UpCCD), and unitary pair coupled-cluster with generalized singles and doubles (UpCCGSD) circuits for hydrogen chains. We focus on a teleportation-based approach to DQC, quantitatively comparing a naive distribution method to the output of the TeleSABRE algorithm. For both approaches, we estimate the cost of handling nonlocal two-qubit gates across a fixed midpoint or quarter-point partition, reporting Bell-pair/classical-communication costs in teleportation. Across Jordan-Wigner and Bravyi-Kitaev, we find that UpCCD with spin-blocked Jordan-Wigner ordering gives the most favorable scaling, while UCCSD incurs substantially larger distributed-resource requirements.

We study a weighted-shift formulation of bivariate bicycle group-algebra (BBGA) codes over finite group algebras. One binary shift acts by right multiplication and the other by left multiplication; associativity ensures that these shifts commute even for a nonabelian seed group. Bivariate polynomials in the shifts, including mixed monomials, therefore define CSS codes. We give explicit sparsity bounds and distinguish nonabelian seed groups from codes that are intrinsically inequivalent to abelian realizations. For $D_3$, a pair of weighted permutation shifts generates a regular $C_6\times C_{12}$ action and recovers the known $[[144,12,12]]$ and $[[144,14,14]]$ bivariate bicycle codes. We also present a computer-verified $[[144,16,12]]$ code over $A_4\times C_6$, with every check of weight eight. This example belongs to the established nonabelian two-block group-algebra family. Exhaustive low-weight enumeration and an intrinsic stabilizer-support invariant certify that it is inequivalent to any ordinary abelian BB or two-block group-algebra realization, even under qubit permutations combined with local Clifford operations. Finally, a nonuniform weighted-shift construction over $\mathbb{F}_2[C_3]$ yields a $[[18,4,3]]$ code with check weights six and eight. An exact enumeration of its minimum stabilizer supports rules out every ordinary binary 2BGA realization at that length, under the same equivalence. This establishes that the unrestricted weighted-shift formulation extends beyond the ordinary 2BGA class, even with an abelian seed group.

Quantum mechanics is justifiably held to be the most successful physical theory ever created; yet no universally accepted interpretation of its mathematical formalism exists after a century of debate. We examine the specific claim that classical physics stands as the low-action limit of quantum mechanics, arguing that the deep interpretive difficulties exposed by the quantum formalism, the measurement problem, the subject-object divide, and the nature of scientific representation, were already latent in classical physics, constituting what we call a blind spot of objectivity. Taking quantum theory as an invitation to re-examine the implicit metaphysical commitments bundled with 'classical physics', we explore two key issues-the objective/subjective split and the nature of theoretical representation-and argue that quantum mechanics does not represent a break with classical physics per se but rather brings previously unacknowledged philosophical assumptions into the limelight. We discuss the London-Bauer interpretation and QBism as exemplars of interpretations that embrace this broader reconceptualisation.

We consider the problem of simulating dynamics under geometrically local Lindbladians acting on a lattice of qudits. We present an algorithm to approximate the time evolution under these Lindbladians for evolution time $t$ and on $N$ qudits to diamond norm error $\varepsilon$ using geometrically local circuits of depth $O(t \ \polylog(Nt/\varepsilon))$. Our results thus achieve a performance comparable to that of the Haah-Hastings-Kothari-Low (HHKL) algorithm for lattice Hamiltonian simulation.

We derive a partially linearized version of the mapping approach to surface hopping (MASH) that provides a new method for simulating nonadiabatic dynamics in molecular systems. As in the original MASH formalism, trajectories travel on adiabatic surfaces with hops determined by the dynamics of a spin vector on the Bloch sphere. However, because the new approach is based on the partially linearized density matrix (PLDM), it has two spin vectors, which may be in the same or different hemispheres of the Bloch sphere. The former scenario describes an electronic population moving on a single adiabatic surface, whereas the latter describes a coherence moving on the average surface. We show that this new method, called MASH-PLDM, leads to improved results over the original MASH dynamics for a variety of scattering problems and spin-boson models, especially in cases where coherences play an important role. A further benefit of the new methodology is that it can treat multi-time correlation functions such as those required for nonlinear spectroscopy. We demonstrate this capability with a proof-of-principle simulation of time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy.

In this paper, we study the conditions under which covert communication at positive rates is feasible over discrete memoryless classical, classical-quantum, and quantum channels. For classical point-to-point channels, we show that if the dimension of the channel input probability simplex exceeds that of the channel output probability simplex, equivalently, if the input alphabet has larger cardinality than the output alphabet, then positive covert rates are achievable for certain classes of Discrete Memoryless Channels (DMCs). We further show that allowing the innocent symbol (i.e., the symbol transmitted in the no-communication mode) to be chosen appropriately can enlarge the class of DMCs for which positive covert rates are achievable. We also study covert communication over classical Multiple-Access Channels (MACs), where the additional transmitter effectively enlarges the set of available channel input pairs, and we show that the conditions required to satisfy the covertness constraint are less restrictive for MACs than for point-to-point channels. We extend these results to classical-quantum DMCs by showing that if the dimension of the input probability simplex exceeds the affine dimension of the set of output states that can be induced at the channel output, then positive covert rates are achievable for certain classes of classical-quantum DMCs. Finally, for quantum channels, we show that if the innocent state (i.e., the state transmitted in the no-communication mode) is mixed, then the covertness constraint can always be satisfied by a non-trivial input ensemble. Consequently, positive covert rates are achievable whenever the legitimate receiver can distinguish at least two states in a suitable such ensemble.

Unitary process tomography is the act of learning how an unknown unitary gate acts on a quantum system. It is an essential procedure for realizing a functioning quantum computer. As quantum technologies develop, it is important to understand the computational resources needed to conduct unitary process tomography using a variety of types of circuits. In particular, when measuring error in diamond distance, it is known how to achieve optimal query complexity using a sequential circuit architecture, but it had not been known whether a parallel circuit architecture could achieve the same optimal query complexity. In this work, we prove that unitary process tomography with near-optimal query complexity is indeed possible using a parallel circuit by introducing an explicit, novel parallel procedure. This closes the gap between sequential and parallel circuits up to a logarithmic factor, showing that parallel and sequential strategies are nearly equally capable for this task.

Understanding what limits many-body quantum entanglement is a central problem in physics. Spatial locality has long provided a fundamental mechanism: correlations between a region and its complement must be mediated through a small spatial interface, thereby constraining their entanglement. Here we show that universal constraints on entanglement can persist even when interactions are strongly nonlocal, through collectivity: many weak interactions suppress collective quantum fluctuations while retaining a finite overall interaction scale. We establish this mechanism rigorously for generic gapped Hamiltonians with Kac-normalized power-law interactions $r^{-α}$ on a $D$-dimensional lattice. For arbitrary bipartitions, we prove that the ground-state entanglement scales at most logarithmically with system size for $α<D/2$ and subextensively for $D/2<α<D$, due to suppressed collective fluctuations around individual sites. For spatially regular bipartitions with codimension-one boundaries, we show that collective suppression can be propagated to successively larger length scales through a renormalization-group construction. As a result, we prove that the entanglement bound improves to polylogarithmic scaling for $D/2<α<(D+1)/2$, and remains parametrically stronger than the arbitrary-bipartition bound for $(D+1)/2<α<D$. Together, these results reveal collectivity as a fundamental mechanism for constraining many-body entanglement alongside spatial locality.

Quantifying non-Markovianity is a fundamental problem in the theory of open quantum systems, as it is essential for exploiting environmental memory as a resource in quantum technologies. Existing resource-theoretic and operational quantifiers, however, generally require complete knowledge of the intermediate dynamical map and are therefore experimentally demanding. Here, we develop a witness-based framework for the quantification of non-Markovianity that bypasses complete reconstruction of the Choi state associated with the intermediate dynamical map. We first show that every non-Markovianity witness provides a certifiable lower bound on the geometric resource measure of non-Markovianity and identify the necessary and sufficient conditions under which this bound is tight. Motivated by the fact that non-positive-semidefinite witnesses are generally difficult to measure in real experimental scenario, we then focus on positive-semidefinite witnesses, which admit a natural implementation as positive operator valued measure (POVM) elements. We prove that every positive witness yields a certified lower bound on the Rivas--Huelga--Plenio (RHP) measure, thereby establishing a complete hierarchy connecting witness-based quantification, the RHP measure, and the geometric distance measure. Applying our framework to amplitude-damping and general Pauli dynamics, we find that the optimal positive witnesses reduce to simple Bell-parity projectors. Furthermore, we show that the resulting witness values can be obtained directly from a small number of experimentally accessible correlation measurements, thereby eliminating the need for complete Choi-state reconstruction and providing an efficient and experimentally feasible approach for the quantification of non-Markovianity in open quantum systems.

A variational state optimized in a symmetry-projected space need not be the state prepared by exponentiating the corresponding unprojected parent generators. For an orthogonal target-space projector $P$, $Q=I-P$, and an anti-Hermitian generator $A$, exact equivalence for all amplitudes requires target-space invariance, $QAP=0$. We formulate this condition as a representation-equivalence audit for open-shell ADAPT-VQE. For a canonical CAS(15e,9o) type-1 Cu(II) Hamiltonian, 274 of 323 bare Hartree--Fock-origin single, double, and triple excitations violate this condition. Projected-doublet ADAPT reaches 1.5719 m$E_h$ with 121 operators, whereas the same amplitudes in the corresponding full-space sequence give 464.730 m$E_h$ error, 0.07343 fidelity with the projected state, and 54.45\% quartet weight. Reoptimizing the same 121 parent generators in the same order under the hard constraint $p_D\ge0.999$ reduces the best converged error to 8.482 m$E_h$, showing that the catastrophic same-angle failure is primarily a representation/parameter-transfer failure but is not completely repaired by full-space reoptimization of the fixed sequence. An independent 12-qubit NO benchmark exhibits the same mechanism more mildly. A spin-preserving generalized full-space construction removes the representation ambiguity and reaches 1.493 and 1.181 m$E_h$ at 18 and 24 qubits. For the 18-qubit positive control, selectively refining only four Suzuki-2 factors and re-transpiling with a fixed compiler seed passes the predeclared circuit-equivalence gate at 19,660 controlled-X (CX) gates and depth 23,016. Circuit synthesis and final-energy measurement therefore constitute separate validation layers. The contribution is a validation framework, not a new spin-adapted ADAPT algorithm.

Neutrino oscillations offer an interferometric setting for open-system dynamics, quantum resources, and parameter estimation. We distinguish two often-conflated statistical families: propagation-basis dephasing uses a survival factor $η_p$ to damp interference before flavor projection, changing flavor probabilities; effective flavor-mode dephasing suppresses only off-diagonal coherence of a single-particle, two-mode state while fixing its populations. For the two-flavor mode state, we derive exact concurrence, entanglement of formation, and local quantum uncertainty, and reduce one-sided projective discord to a one-parameter optimization. For $0<P<1$ and $0<η_m<1$, the QFIM in $(P,χ,η_m)$ is diagonal, with $\mathcal{H}^{\rm mode}_{χχ}=C_{η_m}^2$ and $\mathcal{H}^{\rm mode}_{ξ_mξ_m}=C_{η_m}^2/(1-η_m^2)$, where $ξ_m=-\lnη_m$. For propagation-basis dephasing, basis-matched QFI and flavor FI separate dynamical information loss from measurement inaccessibility for the mixing angle, mass-squared splitting, and dephasing rate. A monochromatic three-flavor benchmark evaluates the mixed-state QFIM, flavor FIM, and SLD incompatibility for $(θ_{23},δ_{\rm CP},ξ_{31},g)$ at DUNE-like, T2HK-like, and ESSnuSB-inspired points. At $Γ_0=10^{-23}\,\mathrm{GeV}$, the fixed-coordinate ratio $\mathcal{F}^{\rm flav}_{δδ}/\mathcal{H}_{δδ}$ is approximately $0.010$, $0.013$, and $0.105$, respectively; all three points show strong $θ_{23}$--$ξ_{31}$ incompatibility. A single-energy flavor measurement supplies only two independent probabilities, so its four-parameter FIM is rank deficient: these diagonal ratios are conditional diagnostics, not joint four-parameter sensitivities. These are state-level information-geometric benchmarks, not event-level sensitivity forecasts.

Out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) provide a powerful probe of quantum chaos and scrambling. While the Lindblad formalism is often used to describe OTOCs in open systems, microscopic mechanisms that give rise to the Lindblad equation at the level of time-ordered correlation functions do not necessarily justify this approach at the level of OTOCs. Starting from a microscopic model of a subsystem coupled to a random bath, we show that the resulting OTOC dynamics contains an additional contribution compared to the standard Lindblad approach. This contribution, induced by correlations between different replicas, allows key properties of the underlying unitary dynamics such as long-time freeness to be retained and information scrambling to be captured more faithfully. As an application, we show that this extended formalism can be used to numerically study OTOCs in large closed systems by replacing part of the system with a dissipative boundary, offering a way to study operator spreading and higher-order correlations beyond directly accessible system sizes.

Adaptive circuits use measurements and outcome-conditioned feedback to implement nonreciprocal dynamics without postselection. We show that fermion circuits host independently tunable density and coherence skin effects. The stationary state has an exact density tilt set only by measurement strength and feedback displacement: conditioned-gate details cancel, yielding an exponential one-particle profile and, at any filling, a tilted ensemble of configuration weights. Decaying coherences instead obey, in the bulk, an effective Hatano-Nelson generator controlled by the conditioned gates through a relative occupation phase. Tuning this phase drives a point-gap topological transition and reverses coherence localization at fixed density, allowing density and coherence to localize at opposite edges. We derive both exponents for conditioned $U(2)$ gates and propose a correlator-ratio probe using ensemble-averaged observables.

Several physically interesting Lindbladians, such as those describing generic open quantum system models as well as engineered state preparation processes, are often rapidly mixing, that is, they relax to steady states in time scaling polylogarithmically with the system size. Owing to the short mixing times, it is physically expected that local perturbations do not substantially increase the mixing time. In this work we question this expectation and ask whether rapid mixing survives. We provide counterexamples showing that rapid mixing is not stable in general, even when the perturbation does not change the steady state. We also show that arbitrarily weak local Hamiltonian perturbations can destroy rapid mixing. Complementing these results, we develop an array of sufficient conditions which imply stable rapid mixing, including several classes of quasifree fermionic systems, commuting Lindbladians, and local spin systems. We also identify conditions under which modified logarithmic Sobolev inequalities (MLSIs), a stronger form of convergence, lead to stable rapid mixing. As a further implication of our results, we show that rapid mixing does not imply a positive MLSI constant.

We study fermionic non-local magic in higher-dimensional free-fermion systems through the lens of the entanglement spectrum. For translationally invariant Gaussian states in strip geometries, dimensional reduction maps the problem to independent lower-dimensional momentum sectors, leading in two dimensions to a multiplicative logarithmic violation of the boundary law analogous to Gioev-Klich-Widom scaling. We further show that the second Rényi fermionic non-local magic is bounded by the capacity of entanglement and introduce an entanglement-temperature deformation that probes the low-energy structure of the entanglement Hamiltonian. Applied to the matter-Majorana sector of the Kitaev model, this response is exponentially suppressed in the Abelian phase and algebraic in the non-Abelian phase, where its ratio with the capacity approaches a universal constant. Out of equilibrium, we extend the quasi-particle description to fermionic non-local magic in higher-dimensional quenches and show that random Gaussian circuits exhibit diffusive spreading in two spatial dimensions.

Hamiltonian engineering (HE) simulates quantum dynamics under a target Hamiltonian using a native entangling system Hamiltonian and restricted control, with applications from quantum gate design to analog quantum simulation. Observing that, for many systems, formulating HE as a linear program only requires specific commutation relations between the control pulses and the system Hamiltonian, we provide a unified framework for broad classes of $2$-local qubit, qudit, and fermionic systems. We reformulate time-optimal HE as a complex $k$-cut polytope problem, with $k$ the number of distinct phases in these commutation relations, and prove it NP-complete for every finite $k$. We therefore relax the polytope to the elliptope and apply a Krivine-type rounding, yielding pulses informed by the system and target Hamiltonians, which we then use in a linear program. We derive how many informed pulses are necessary and sufficient for the linear program to be reliably feasible. Additionally mixing in uniformly sampled pulses guarantees a solution close to the relaxation value from $\mathrm{O}(m)$ pulses, with $m$ the number of interaction terms. Together with upper and lower bounds on the optimal quantum run time, this yields an $\mathrm{O}(\sqrt{m})$ approximation ratio. In benchmarks on a fully connected Ising model, a chiral clock model for qudits, and the fermionic Harper-Hofstadter model, our approach attains near-optimal quantum run times wherever the optimum is computable, reaches run times that saturate with the lattice size in the fermionic case, and outperforms state-of-the-art methods with $\mathrm{O}(m)$ pulses. This establishes a unified approach with provable guarantees to the automatic programming of analog quantum simulators.

Spin squeezed states (SSSs) are conventionally viewed as analog resources for quantum metrology. Here we develop algorithms to efficiently generate and exploit SSSs on a digital quantum computer. We introduce an adaptive local-circuit protocol that prepares SSSs with squeezing parameter $ξ$ in depth $\mathrm{O}\left(\log{1/ξ}\right)$, yielding an exponential improvement over non-adaptive approaches. We prove that this depth is optimal for permutation symmetric SSSs by deriving a matching lower bound on entanglement entropy. We further leverage the squeezing paradigm to deterministically prepare the Dicke states using asymptotically fewer resources than prior methods. Remarkably, classical simulations of our preparation protocols under realistic noise models predicts a metrological gain of 4.2 dB beyond the standard quantum limit with 55 superconducting qubits in total including ancillae. Our work paves the way for performing quantum metrology on near-term digital quantum devices.

The out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) has emerged as an important diagnostic for quantum information scrambling and a key signature of quantum chaos. In this work, we discuss out-of-time-order correlators, analytically and numerically, for the so-called Volcano potentials. This family of potentials parametrically interpolates between bounded wells and confining walls, and includes Pöschl-Teller as a specific case. Through a combination of numerical diagonalization and semiclassical analysis, we investigate various regimes of the potential parameter regimes containing regions of both positive and negative curvatures. Moreover, we demonstrate in this case that short-time exponential growth of the OTOC does not necessarily signal global quantum chaos; instead, it correlates with the sampling of negative curvature regions by excited states.

We determine asymptotic global fidelities of cloning generic mixed states with simple (non-degenerate) full-rank spectra. In fixed dimension $d$, let $n$ inputs and $m_n$ outputs satisfy $m_n/n\toγ>1$. For a known simple full-rank spectrum $p_1>\cdots>p_d>0$, we prove that the optimal root fidelity between the entire output and the product target state is $$ F_\rm{orb}(γ,p) =\prod_{i<j} \frac{\sqrtγ+\sqrt{q_{ij}(γ-1+q_{ij})}} {γ+q_{ij}}, \qquad q_{ij}=\frac{p_j}{p_i}. $$ When the spectrum is unknown, one spectrum-independent cloner attains $$ F_\rm{univ}(γ,p) =\left(\frac{2\sqrtγ}{1+γ}\right)^{(d-1)/2} F_\rm{orb}(γ,p), $$ uniformly on compact subsets of the simple full-rank chamber and is minimax optimal. The two factors quantify spectral and eigenbasis uncertainty. Our channels combine classical processing of Schur--Weyl labels with a covariant Cartan-sector channel. Local asymptotic normality and a Gaussian fidelity bound against arbitrary channels yield the converses. For flat projector states $ρ=P/r$, with $P$ a rank-$r$ orthogonal projector, we separately prove the optimum $γ^{-r(d-r)/2}$. Furthermore, we estimate the exact asymptotic fidelity of purify--clone--trace (PCT), and show that our cloners strictly outperform PCT at every fixed gain for simple full-rank spectra and rank-$r$ projector states with $1<r<d$.

The kinetic uncertainty relation (KUR) constrains fluctuations of individual currents in classical nonequilibrium systems in terms of the dynamical activity, which quantifies the average number of transitions per unit of time. Here, we derive a multi-current KUR (MKUR) establishing the precision limit for multiple currents generated in classical stochastic processes in the nonequilibrium steady state. We then apply our theory to identify quantum devices whose correlated current fluctuations surpass this classical limit by comparing the quantum system to a classical emulator with the same average currents in the steady state. In this way, violations of the emulator's MKUR have a clear physical meaning, i.e., that the quantum-coherent evolution reduces joint current fluctuations below what is possible for a classical Markovian system with the same energy-level structure and incoherent resources. Since the MKUR incorporates correlations between currents, its violation pinpoints nonclassical fluctuations in parameter regimes where the single-current KUR is satisfied. We illustrate the essential and complementary role of these bounds for characterizing joint current precision with two examples: a coherently driven two-level system and an experimentally motivated model of a three-level heat engine subject to parasitic environmental couplings.

Topological phases of matter are characterized by global properties of quantum states beyond conventional local order parameters. The Chern number is a central invariant in this characterization, linking the geometry of quantum states to robust physical observables and making its determination key to understanding quantum matter. We construct a nearly optimal quantum algorithm for estimating the Chern number of a smooth Hamiltonian family over a two-dimensional parameter torus with a unique, gapped ground state, including interacting many-body systems. The algorithm transports and reuses two ground-state copies prepared at a single reference point and uses generalized quantum signal processing to coherently accumulate geometric phases. It achieves a Hamiltonian-oracle evolution time of $\tilde{O}(L_xL_y/Δ_{\min}^3)$, where $L_x,L_y$ bound the parameter derivatives of the Hamiltonian and $Δ_{\min}$ is a known spectral-gap lower bound. We prove a matching worst-case oracle lower bound, even when the Chern number is promised to be zero or one, establishing optimality up to polylogarithmic factors. For local Hamiltonian families with an inverse-polynomial gap and a supplied guiding state, exact Chern-number computation is in $\mathsf{FBQP}$ and is $\mathsf{BQP}$-hard, and merely deciding whether the Chern number is zero or one is already $\mathsf{BQP}$-complete. These results establish how efficiently quantum computers can estimate a quantized topological invariant and provide evidence for quantum advantage in characterizing topological phases.

We study the topological band theory of quantum Hall systems in which the adiabatic flux parameters of an external gauge potential form a high-dimensional manifold. This situation arises both for strongly correlated matter on spatial Riemann surfaces of genus $g > 1$, as well as in the formal study of matter on compact oriented manifolds of dimension $4\ell+2 = 2p$ coupled to $p$-form gauge potentials. In these cases, the underlying topological invariants defined over the parameter space are significantly richer than the low-dimensional (i.e., two-dimensional) case and involve both the curvature (i.e., first Chern class) as well as higher order curvature invariants. These higher curvature invariants correspond to topologically protected contributions to Kubo-like formulae, constructed from correlation functions of the physical current operators. We illustrate these general considerations with an explicit example from hyperbolic band theory based on the genus-two Bolza Riemann surface, a case which has recently been simulated on a synthetic-dimension platform.

The quantum Fisher information (QFI) sets a fundamental bound on the attainable precision when estimating multiple parameters simultaneously. Incompatibility among the individually optimal measurements can, in some cases, imply that the precision limit set by the QFI is not attainable. In certain special cases, including pure states and full-rank states, the exact conditions for when the precision limit set by the QFI can be saturated are known. However, general conditions for the attainability of the QFI with measurements on individual copies of the quantum state have long been sought. Indeed, this was recently stated as one of the five problems in quantum information theory highlighted by [P. Horodecki et al, PRX Quantum 3, 010101 (2022)]. In this work we prove that exact attainability with individual measurements is NP-hard to decide, even for a restricted set of real, constant-rank quantum models. The source problem for our proof is the NP-hard problem of deciding whether a given bipartite density matrix is separable or not. Our result shows that the longstanding difficulty in obtaining general conditions for QFI attainability reflects a fundamental computational obstruction, rather than merely a limitation of existing mathematical techniques: unless P=NP, no efficiently computable necessary-and-sufficient criterion can exist in general.

We prove that the Gibbs state of any spin chain can be exactly decomposed into a mixture of product states over contiguous blocks of qubits with bounded length, at any constant temperature. As a consequence, any such Gibbs state can be prepared by local unitary circuits of constant depth, with efficient classical preprocessing. We place strong limits on the spatial structure of thermal entanglement: both the entanglement depth and entanglement width (measures of multiparticle entanglement) are bounded by constants, while the localizable entanglement (the bipartite entanglement that can be generated with the aid of local measurements and classical communication) vanishes exactly beyond a constant threshold distance. Our result also has implications for quantum thermalization: for any translation-invariant spin-chain Hamiltonian with nondegenerate spectral gaps, typical low-complexity pure states drawn from a maximally entropic ensemble at any constant effective temperature become locally indistinguishable from the Gibbs state upon unitary evolution. Additionally, we obtain an analogous decomposition for fermionic systems: the Gibbs state of any 1D local fermionic Hamiltonian is exactly a mixture of constant-depth local fermionic circuits acting on Gaussian states.

The detection of gravitational waves in the low-frequency band (10 nHz to 1 micro-Hz) using inner solar system proof masses is severely limited by Newtonian gravity gradient noise (GGN) sourced by the asteroid belt. In this paper, we propose a novel detection concept that exploits the relativistic nature of gravitational waves to break the degeneracy between the signal and the asteroid GGN background. The non-relativistic motion of asteroids dominantly sources gravito-electric fields, with velocity suppressed gravito-magnetic components. Relativistic gravitational waves produce gravito-electric and gravito-magnetic components of equal magnitude. We propose detecting the gravito-magnetic component of low frequency gravitational waves using the Lorentz acceleration of test bodies. The measurement of this Lorentz acceleration is metrologically possible due to the fact that expected astrophysical sources of low frequency gravitational waves have considerably higher characteristic strains than the strains typically expected at higher frequencies. We show that this measurement allows for unambiguous extraction of the gravitational wave signal from the gravity gradient noise in a three satellite constellation. The gravito-magnetic measurement still requires a proof mass that is well isolated from non-gravitational noise. We propose the use of atom interferometers to serve as such a pristine inertial reference.

Fuzzy-sphere regularization has recently emerged as a powerful framework for studying three-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs). In this work, we exploit symmetry and Hilbert-space structures to substantially advance this framework. We develop an exact-diagonalization algorithm that resolves the full $\mathrm{SO}(3)$ rotational symmetry, reducing computational costs by factors of several hundred. For the three-dimensional Ising CFT, we identify around 100 primary operators, including a large number of previously unknown heavy scalar primaries up to scaling dimension $Δ\approx16.5$. We also resolve the tension between previous fuzzy-sphere and bootstrap results regarding the parity-odd scalar primary. Furthermore, we identify a branch of scalar primaries associated with $φ^n$ operators in the $φ^4$ Lagrangian description, beginning with the identity, $σ$, $ε$, $ε'$, and $σ'$. Their wave functions exhibit a semi-classical structure closely related to states invariant under area-preserving diffeomorphisms of the sphere. Finally, we show that critical points involving fractional quantum Hall states can be studied within a substantially reduced Hilbert space spanned by quasi-hole states of the corresponding model quantum Hall wave functions like the Laughlin state. This suggests a general strategy for exploring CFTs intertwined with topologically ordered phases.

Lattice gauge theories are an important class of physical models with high-dimensional structured distributions that underpin first-principles calculations in particle, nuclear, and condensed-matter physics. Recent advances in generative modeling have opened new avenues for sampling Boltzmann distributions in lattice gauge theories, offering the potential to alleviate limitations of traditional Monte Carlo methods, including critical slowing down and topological freezing. However, generative samplers for lattice gauge theories are typically constructed in link space, where correlations become increasingly long-ranged toward weak coupling, posing a challenge for learning. Plaquettes provide a more natural representation, as the action is local in these variables. However, exact Bianchi constraints restrict them to a lower-dimensional manifold, complicating direct generative modeling. We introduce a multilevel normalizing-flow construction that samples directly in plaquette space while satisfying these constraints exactly. The key idea is a coarse-to fine factorization that transforms a globally coupled constraint problem into a sequence of local solves: at each refinement, every determined plaquette depends on at most four newly generated variables, while the size of the constraint problem remains independent of the lattice size. We validate the construction for $U(1)$ in two and four dimensions and for $SU(2)$ in two dimensions. Our multilevel Plaquette-Space Sampler (PSS) substantially outperforms link-space baselines, with the advantage increasing toward weak coupling, where the gauge coupling becomes small. This regime is particularly challenging for generative sampling and, in asymptotically free gauge theories, is relevant to continuum studies.

Vanadium color centers in silicon carbide (SiC) offer telecom O-band emission, sub-microsecond optical lifetimes, and second-scale spin relaxation times, rendering them promising candidates for quantum network nodes. However, efficient photon extraction from the high-refractive-index SiC host remains challenging. Here, we introduce a silicon-on-SiC heterogeneous photonic platform in which silicon nanocavities evanescently couple to shallow vanadium dopants in commercial 4H-SiC, enabling efficient zero-phonon line (ZPL) collection under resonant excitation. In as-grown ensembles, we observe Purcell-enhanced photoluminescence with transient spectral hole burning linewidths of 50 MHz on microsecond timescales. In dilute implanted samples, we isolate individual vanadium centers with high-purity single photon emission and a Purcell-enhanced lifetime of 109 ns. The entire optical interface operates through a single lensed fiber, including a 905 nm repump laser that recovers the vanadium charge state with 95% efficiency. These results establish Si-on-SiC as a scalable, foundry-compatible platform for telecom-wavelength spin-photon interfaces.

We propose a unified perspective on classical and quantum chaos based on the sensitivity of a system's stationary states to slow driving. We probe this sensitivity via the system's susceptibility to the average protocol speed, which we call the ``speed-Fisher information," and relate it to irreversible entropy production in the system. We show that chaotic dynamics manifests as a divergence of the speed-Fisher information with the protocol time, and that this response is controlled by the perturbation's low-frequency spectral weight. This approach to chaos applies to both classical and quantum Hamiltonian systems, and naturally extends to non-Hamiltonian classical flows. Additionally, we identify a quantum regime at times shorter than the Planckian timescale, in which the speed-Fisher information exhibits a uniquely quantum scaling. We illustrate this framework with simple classical and quantum examples

We determine the optimal query complexity of ground-state preparation to trace-distance error $\varepsilon$ when an energy threshold in the spectral gap is known. Let $U_H$ be an $α$-block-encoding of a Hamiltonian with unique ground state $|ψ_0\rangle$, and suppose $|\langleψ_0|U_I|0\rangle|\geγ$ for a state-preparation oracle $U_I$. The threshold lies at least $Δ/2$ above the ground-state energy and at least $Δ/2$ below every excited-state energy. We give two algorithms that prepare a state within trace distance $\varepsilon$ of the ground state. One uses $O((α/Δ)(γ^{-1}+\log(1/\varepsilon)))$ calls to $U_H$ in expectation; the other uses $O((α/(γΔ))\log(1/\varepsilon))$ calls to $U_H$ in the worst case. We prove a lower bound matching the expected query count; the corresponding worst-case lower bound follows from Somma and de Wolf [SdW26]. The respective bounds on calls to $U_I$ are $O(1/γ)$ in expectation and $O(γ^{-1}\log(1/\varepsilon))$ in the worst case. On $(N+1)$-dimensional systems, these $U_I$ bounds are also optimal when the expected or worst-case count of $U_H$ calls, respectively, is $o((α/Δ)\sqrt N)$. Both algorithms use a constant-accuracy spectral filter to construct a purifier, which we then sequentially compose during amplitude amplification to prepare a state with constant overlap with the ground state. The expected-query algorithm repeats the preparation followed by one high-accuracy spectral filter until success. The worst-case algorithm uses filters of increasing accuracy and limits the total number of queries.

In the quantum linear systems problem (QLSP), we are given query access to a $d$-sparse $N\times N$ matrix $A$ with condition number $κ$, and the ability to prepare a quantum state proportional to a vector $\vec b$. The goal is to output an $ε$-approximation to the quantum state proportional to the solution $\vec x$ of $A\vec{x}=\vec{b}$. Following a long line of work, the best previously known quantum algorithms for the QLSP had query complexities $O(κd\log(1/ε))$ and $κ\sqrt d(κd/ε)^{o(1)}$, while the best known lower bounds were $Ω(κ\log(1/ε))$ and $Ω(κ\sqrt d)$. We improve these bounds and show that the complexity of the QLSP is $Θ(κ\sqrt d\log(1/ε))$. We also resolve an open problem of Berry and Childs by showing that any $N\times N$ unitary can be implemented with bounded error using $O(\sqrt N)$ queries to its matrix entries.

In the quest to identify further quantum algorithms exhibiting superpolynomial speed-ups, a recurring theme is that the complexity of a problem is largely shaped by the input access model. Here, we study this phenomenon for the state hidden subgroup problem (StateHSP), a quantum generalization of the hidden subgroup problem in which the goal is to identify the symmetries of an unknown quantum state. For finite abelian groups, existing Fourier-sampling algorithms use $O(\log(|G|)/ε)$ copies of the state, but whether this scaling is optimal has remained open. We settle the complexity of the abelian StateHSP in both the previously studied sample model and a new query model, which is a stronger and operationally natural generalization that provides access to the state-preparation unitary and its inverse. In the query model, we give a time-efficient quantum algorithm using $O(\log(|G/H|)/\sqrtε)$ forward and inverse queries, and prove a matching $Ω(\log(|G/H|)/\sqrtε)$ lower bound which holds even in the stronger conjugate-query and controlled-query settings. By contrast, we show that in the sample model, $Θ(\log(|G/H|)/ε)$ copies are both sufficient and information-theoretically necessary, even if one allows for arbitrary collective measurements. Thus, the quadratic improvement in $ε$ genuinely arises from coherent access to the preparation circuit. As applications, we obtain faster algorithms for learning stabilizer groups, locating unentanglement, and identifying hidden translation symmetries.

We study a quantum battery consisting of $N$ qubits interacting uniformly with each other. Starting from its ground state, the battery is charged by introducing periodic kicks in the transverse direction along with adding disorder in the interaction direction. Although the battery Hamiltonian along with the initial state preserves the permutation symmetry, the dynamics in presence of disorder during the charging phase takes the system out of the permutation symmetric subspace, resulting to a larger amount of stored energy as compared to that without disorder. In the limit of large disorder, this interplay brings in a possibility of a chaotic charging phase when stored energy can be exactly calculated using random matrix theory. More importantly, we also find that the energy fluctuations decrease and become negligible in the limit of large disorder, which is also when the energy stored is maximum, a condition highly desirable for the optimum functioning of the battery. We complete the battery cycle by considering the storage phase in the presence of dephasing noise. We find that for larger disorder strengths, the ergotropy remains close to the stored energy, indicating nearly complete energy extractability with an efficiency approaching unity.

We study the problem of learning a sparse quantum state, an $n$-qubit quantum state whose density matrix has at most $s$ nonzero matrix entries in an unknown product basis. While such states admit compact classical descriptions, they can carry long-range entanglement that prevents reconstruction from local reduced density matrices alone. Therefore, previous learning approaches addressed such long-range-entangled states using many entangling gates to extract the necessary information. In this work, we show that sparse states can nevertheless be efficiently learned using only single-qubit measurements. Specifically, when the sparsity $s$ is constant, our algorithm can learn sparse states from single-qubit measurements with polynomial sample complexity and classical computational complexity. When $s$ grows polynomially with $n$, sparse states can still be learned from single-qubit measurements with polynomial sample complexity, although efficient classical computation is not guaranteed in general. In this regime, however, the classical computational complexity becomes quasipolynomial when the state is sparse in an unknown basis that is a product of a known fixed finite set of single-qubit bases (e.g., eigenbases of Pauli operators). These results establish efficient learning of sparse states with long-range entanglement without entangling gates, and the single-qubit measurement requirements make our algorithms compatible with current quantum devices.

In materials machine learning, closely related retained structures can sustain accurate property predictions even after removing a specific record, rendering post-deletion prediction error an ambiguous metric for machine unlearning. To resolve this ambiguity, we define the deletion floor as the expected target loss under a specified retraining procedure at the deleted request. Standard indistinguishability constraints yield a sharp interval bounding an update's target loss around this baseline reference. Theoretically, a conditional neighbor bound links a low deletion floor directly to retained fit, prediction regularity, and local label agreement, while an exact ridge identity isolates residual fit from the prediction change induced by record deletion. Empirically, controlled redundancy sweeps show an $\approx 8\times$ drop in median normalized retraining loss when one retained relative remains after deletion. Across two distinct fitting regimes in a paired Materials Project study, the lower-floor regime also exhibits a larger prediction change on more than 50% of the shared requests. Systematic comparisons against approximate updates and the original model decouple deliberate target suppression from preserved overall model utility. Consequently, request-level unlearning evaluations should report reference loss, prediction change, and retained utility together, interpreting post-deletion accuracy against what retraining itself leaves behind.

We prove the existence of succinct arguments for QMA, assuming only the existence of collapsing hash functions. This is the first scheme that relies only on unstructured ``Minicrypt'' assumptions, which are not known to imply public-key encryption. Our main technical contribution is a quantum-succinct \emph{claw-state generation} protocol that allows us to bootstrap a small number of quantum correlations into an arbitrarily large number of claw-state correlations, using classical communication only. This improves upon the work of [Zhang, STOC 2021], having better round complexity, a proof in the standard model, and being overall much simpler. This yields a quantum-succinct blind delegation of quantum computation protocol from one-way functions, which we plug into the communication-compression compiler of [Bartusek, Liu, and Malavolta, EUROCRYPT 2026] to obtain succinct arguments for QMA.

Superconducting films native to a commercial CMOS process enable co-integration of superconducting devices (high-kinetic-inductance elements and nanowire detectors) with cryogenic CMOS on one monolithic die. Such films are buried in the front-end-of-line, beneath the back-end-of-line metal stack, an environment that might quench a self-heated hot spot. Current-voltage characteristics are reported for titanium nitride (TiN) nanowires in the polycrystalline-silicon resistor layer of a 22 nm FD-SOI process, and measured retrapping currents are compared with thermal models for longitudinal conduction to the contacts and interfacial phonon cooling into the stack. The wires are strongly hysteretic, with switching-to-retrapping current ratios I_sw/I_r of 7.4-9.8, sustaining a normal hot spot. For two wires of length ell = 50 micrometers and widths W = 0.50 and 1.00 micrometers, over bath temperatures T_b = 0.15-1.19 K, I_r follows the interfacial form (T_hs^n - T_b^n)^(1/2) with n = 4 (T_hs, the effective hot-spot temperature), and is strongly inconsistent with the (T_hs - T_b)^(1/2) constant-kappa longitudinal-conduction limit; free-exponent fits give n = approximately 4.8-5.0. An effective cooling coefficient Sigma_K = 7.9(3) W/(m^2 K^4) describes the data: 31(21) times below the acoustic- (diffuse-) mismatch value for a single clean interface, and approximately 12 times below the lowest previously reported comparable nanowire coefficient. The model-based film thermal conductivity is kappa = approximately 20 mW/(m K). Across lengths ell = 1-50 micrometers, I_r matches neither ell^(-1) of pure longitudinal conduction nor ell^0 of pure interfacial cooling; a two-channel model reproduces I_r(ell) with crossover length ell* = approximately 3.5 micrometers predicted, to an O(1) prefactor, from Sigma_K and kappa.

We construct complete canonical logical bases for qubit CSS codes by assigning quaternary coefficients to binary circulant permutation matrix pair-partition (CPM-PP) checks, constructing and normalizing logical representatives, and expanding the result into binary matrices. When the two check systems have invertible submatrices on disjoint column sets, cofactor representatives are canonically paired by the inverse of a single pairing polynomial. The resulting pairs span the entire logical space. When the pairing polynomial is a cyclic-shift monomial with coefficient one, normalization preserves the binary weights of the representatives. We state the construction for general block dimensions and CPM size, work through a corresponding example, and report the parameters, check ranks, and basis weights of seven binary codes. Representative examples have parameters $[[320,80,14]]$, $[[448,112,18]]$, and $[[2048,512,24]]$. All three have maximum check weight 10 on both the X and Z sides. Their canonical logical representatives have binary weights 25, 27, and 27, respectively, on both the X and Z sides.

Non-local quantum computation (NLQC) consists on the implementation of a bipartite unitary $U_{AB}$ by two cooperating distant players by means of a two-round protocol with a single intermediate round of simultaneous communication. It is a major open question to know whether there exists a unitary $U_{AB}$ whose implementation in NLQC requires extra quantum systems with dimensions ${\rm exp}(n^{Ω(1)})$, where $n$ is the dimension of systems $A$ and $B$. This type of exponential lower bound is essential for security of position-based quantum cryptography, since the capabilities of the adversaries are precisely described by NLQC. It has also been connected to many other problems, such as the optimality of universal quantum simulators, or the expected properties of holographic quantum gravity. Currently the best lower bounds are only sublinear in $n$. In this paper we consider the family of diagonal ${\pm 1}$ valued unitaries $U_{\varepsilon}$, indexed by an element of the Boolean hypercube $\varepsilon \in \{\pm 1\}^{n^2}$, i.e. $U_{\varepsilon}|i\rangle_A|j\rangle_B =\varepsilon_{ij} |i\rangle_A|j\rangle_B$. We show that if $U_{\varepsilon}$ can be implemented in NLQC with constant accuracy for all $\varepsilon$, and the dependency on $\varepsilon$ in the first round of the associated strategy is a polynomial of degree $O(n^{\frac{1}{4}-δ})$, then the implementation of at least one $U_{\varepsilon}$ in NLQC requires resources scaling as $\exp\left(Ω\left(\frac{n^{2δ}}{(\log n)^2}\right)\right)$. The proof is based on geometric properties of particular Banach spaces, namely their type constants, together with random estimates of Boolean functions valued on them.

We introduce QC-Stark, a benchmark for evaluating large language models (LLMs) on 11 quantum computing (QC) tasks, spanning circuit construction, debugging, compilation, error correction, and simulation. Across 2,750 evaluations (10 models $\times$ 11 tasks x 5 difficulty levels x 5 seeds), we find that overall rankings mask substantial per-task variation. The Spearman correlation between overall and per-task rankings is statistically insignificant for 4 out of the 11 tasks included in this benchmark. A 2-parameter Item Response Theory (IRT) model validates measurement quality, and prompt sensitivity analysis confirms ranking robustness across prompt conditions. All tasks are auto-verifiable via execution, thus not requiring any manual evaluation. We make the code and data publicly available on Huggingface.

Smoothed analysis is a central framework in classical algorithms for explaining the performance of algorithms beyond the worst case, often explaining why algorithms perform well in practice. We initiate a systematic study of its quantum counterpart and show the following results. $(1)$ We show that there is a total function whose smoothed quantum query complexity is exponentially smaller than its classical query complexity. $(2)$ We give near-tight characterizations of smoothed randomized and quantum query complexities for symmetric Boolean functions, unifying the worst-case complexity results of [Beals et al, FOCS'98] and average-case complexity results of [Ambainis and de Wolf, STACS'00]. $(3)$ We study string problems such as pattern matching and edit distance and, in various regimes, give polynomial to superpolynomial quantum speedups. Our main technical ingredients include a near-tight quantum algorithm for $\varepsilon$-approximating the number of collisions between two non-repetitive strings, improving the result of Le Gall and Ng [QIC'22]. Together, our results show that smoothing can reveal larger quantum speedups than worst-case analysis suggests, opening a path towards quantum advantage on more realistic inputs.

We present a protocol that estimates the quantum fidelity, up to precision $\varepsilon$, between a known target state and unknown lab-prepared state with sublinear, $o(d^{0.9908}/\varepsilon^2)$, number of Pauli basis measurements.

This paper continues our analysis of NISQ experiments and especially the Google 2019 ``quantum supremacy" experiment. In arXiv:2008.05177 we proposed statistical tools to analyze symmetric and asymmetric readout errors, and the symmetric case was extensively developed and studied in arXiv:2404.00935, where we used Fourier methods combined with statistical tools. Here we extend and complement our earlier study and analyze asymmetric readout errors for data from experiments and simulations. Our study was further motivated by a paper by Fefferman et al. arXiv:2306.16659, who showed that the effect of amplitude damping gate errors is to have larger fractions of zeroes in the samples produced by the quantum computer. We show that this effect of gate errors is not observed in the Google experimental data, where, for the entire range of the number of qubits, $12 \le n \le 53$, the fraction of zeroes and ones reflects only the asymmetry of reported readout errors, and report on simulations with $n=12,14$ using IBM's and Google's simulators.

The wave-particle duality that manifests in the Young's double-slit interferometry satisfying the well known Englert-Greenberger-Yasin inequality has recently been shown to obey a universal triality relation involving coherence, predictability and rather surprisingly entanglement. In the present work, we explicitly demonstrate the persistence of the triality relation in the quantum induced coherence interferometer and the classical configuration recovers the well known duality inequality. Furthermore, we explore the origin of coherence and entanglement, in the induced coherence interferometer, and means to control them. We show that path indistinguishability (or intrinsic indistinguishability of the sources) in our setup plays a complementary role in influencing both interference and entanglement. We bring out manifestly the nature of coherence in both classical and quantum versions of induced coherence interferometers.

We give a quantum algorithm for stochastic $2$-player games. Their game trees are the expectiminimax trees of classical game search: $m$ adversarial layers alternate with $m$ chance layers, every node has $deg$ children, and the leaf values lie in an interval of length $N$. The algorithm estimates the value of the game to root mean square error $ε$ with \[ O\!\left( K^{D}\, deg^{\frac{D}{4}} \, \frac{N}ε \, D^{4D} \log\left( \frac{deg N}ε \right)^{4D} \right), \qquad D = 2m \] queries to the leaf values, where $K$ is an absolute constant. If we treat the depth $D$ as a constant as is sometimes done in the literature, the bound is $\widetilde O(deg^{m/2}ε^{-1})$ against the classical $\widetilde O(deg^{m}ε^{-2})$. So the quadratic speedup in the branching factor known for adversarial trees and the quadratic speedup in the accuracy known for a single expectation both survive when we nest one inside the other. We use a derandomised multilevel Monte Carlo estimator for chance layers and a coherent binary search for adversarial layers. The composition is done by introducing a conversion between root-mean-square and uniform error guarantees, and a composition to nest it with quantum mean estimation. We state the algorithm for stochastic games, but it is valid for the following conditions: the value of a parent is a Lipschitz function of the values of its children and the value at a chance vertex is linear in its children, however the speedup is preserved only if the deterministic step has a quantum subroutine with sublinear query complexity.

The coherence of free electrons sets fundamental limits on the resolution and contrast of phase-sensitive electron microscopy because coherence is lost whenever the electron leaves a distinguishing excitation in its environment. We develop a quantitative theory of fast-electron decoherence in two canonical geometries: a cylindrical hole drilled through a realistic metal and a circular aperture in a thin perfectly conducting film. By combining an electromagnetic Green-tensor formulation with the fluctuation--dissipation theorem while fully retaining retardation, we obtain the decoherence probability and elastic phase as functions of the electron trajectory, temperature, and material response. For the cylindrical hole, we obtain a closed-form, azimuthally resolved expression that separates the dependences on path position, temperature, and conductivity. In the high-conductivity and high-temperature limits, this result reduces to a universal expression that is linear in temperature and independent of both conductivity and electron velocity. For the circular aperture, which we solve using a cylindrical-wave modal expansion, the energy-loss probability diverges as $1/ω$ at low frequency, whereas the decoherence probability remains finite and reaches a maximum when the aperture radius is comparable to the relevant electromagnetic wavelength. Because the interaction is spatially localized, aperture-induced decoherence is generally weaker than that produced by a cylindrical hole, except for sufficiently large apertures at high temperature. Finally, we show that, for sufficiently large holes, decoherence can dominate the spatial broadening of a focused electron probe and must therefore be incorporated into the design of coherent electron-beam instruments.

The output of a parameterized quantum circuit (PQC) can be expressed as a finite Fourier series whose accessible frequencies are fixed by the data-encoding gates. While the encoder determines which frequencies can appear, the corresponding Fourier coefficients depend on how the trainable and entangling gates are arranged. Although existing studies provide metrics for characterizing how gate structure affects Fourier coefficients, they do not translate these analyses into an explicit design criterion specifying how gates should be arranged to make a target coefficient reachable. In this paper, we provide such a criterion. Using the adjoint action of the encoding generator, we decompose operator space into two-dimensional invariant planes indexed by frequency and show that each Fourier coefficient is exactly a sum of bilinear projections of the effective state and observable onto the planes at that frequency. Because, for Pauli encodings, high-frequency planes are spanned by mixed multi-qubit Pauli strings, a target coefficient can contribute to the output only when local rotations and entangling layers are arranged so that both the effective state and observable acquire support on one of its planes. For Pauli readouts and commuting two-qubit entanglers, this yields a circuit design rule that specifies, for a given interaction graph, a placement of local rotations and entangling layers that makes a target Fourier coefficient reachable. Using a single encoding layer, we validate the proposed design through a placement ablation, regression tasks from PDEBench and physics-informed Maxwell field modeling, and further demonstrate its robustness to moderate simulated gate noise and damping.

High-dimensional time-bin entanglement is known for having high potential for quantum key distribution (QKD) applications, being easily implementable, robust and may offer better keyrates than simple qubit protocols. The temporal encoding, combined with limited clock resolution, however, implies a trade-off: Is it better to send more low-dimensionally encoded photons or few high-dimensional ones? Answering this question presents a hard challenge as it depends on the entire context of the protocol, including the production rates, losses, dark counts, timing jitters and many more. We answer this question for single Franson based interferometers and asymptotic key rate and shared entanglement as main figures of merit. We present a flexible noise model incorporating all relevant parameters and find that there are indeed regions where high-dimensional encoding still outperforms any qubit based version when the pair arrival rate is limited, for instance through loss or limited pump power.

The hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) approach is one of the most powerful methods avail- able to simulate the dynamics of open quantum systems. Although the HEOM approach has been shown to be stable and efficient in many parameter regimes and physical scenarios, it is also well known that the unavoidable finite truncation of the hierarchy can lead to fundamental numeri- cal instabilities for bosonic environments. In this work, we apply recently developed techniques to analyze these issues. We use an auxiliary Fock-space picture of the hierarchy to first identify the unbalanced hierarchy-raising terms responsible for the strong transient amplification associated with the non-normal algebraic structure of the HEOM generator. We then apply a non-unitary similarity transformation that converts these terms into balanced combinations of hierarchy-raising and hierarchy-lowering terms, thereby suppressing their numerical impact. We first demonstrate the efficacy of this approach via a spin-boson model with a simple Brownian oscillator spectral den- sity and subsequently extend the analysis to a structured spectral density, showing for both cases that the transformed HEOM approach allows simulations of much larger system-bath coupling than would otherwise be possible.

The elementary excitations of fractional quantum Hall states obey anyonic statistics, described by an exchange phase $θ$ intermediate between the bosonic and fermionic values. We study an interferometer in which three chiral edge segments are pairwise connected by three quantum point contacts, so that, depending on the applied voltages, one of the segments acts as an open quantum dot: its spectrum is continuous, and tunneling through it is resonant without any gate tuning. This setup realizes the co-tunneling mechanism of a recently proposed antidot interferometer in a particularly simple setting. Using a non-equilibrium Keldysh calculation to third order in the tunneling amplitudes, we show that the interference current contains a co-tunneling contribution in which two quasiparticles are exchanged, so that for Laughlin states the exchange phase $θ=πν$ appears as the phase shift between the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations measured in two voltage configurations. We obtain a closed analytic expression for the interference current at finite temperature and finite separation between the quantum point contacts and show that, provided voltage-induced changes of the enclosed area are sufficiently screened, the exchange phase can be extracted from a robust phase-plateau difference. Alternatively, simultaneous measurements of the interference currents at two drains avoid this screening assumption and time-of-flight phases can be quantified analytically, allowing the exchange phase to be extracted by a controlled extrapolation with a few-percent systematic error.

The intrinsically weak nonlinear optical response of existing materials, further constrained by symmetry-forbidden second-order processes in centrosymmetric media, severely limits efficient frequency conversion in deeply subwavelength, ultrathin volumes. Addressing this challenge is crucial for the development of nonlinear nanophotonics. Here, we show that atomically thin, epitaxially grown crystalline silver films circumvent these restrictions through the interplay of vertical electronic quantum confinement and lateral plasmonic enhancement. We fabricate atomically thin films that exhibit an enhanced nonlinear response associated with electronic quantum wells, and subsequently pattern them into periodic nanoribbon and nanotriangle arrays sustaining infrared localized surface plasmon resonances. Strong near-field confinement in these structures further boosts second-harmonic generation compared to unpatterned films. Precise control over nanostructure geometry enables spectral tuning of the plasmonic resonance, and consequently, the enhanced harmonic frequency. Our findings establish an approach for activating robust second-order nonlinearities in quantum-confined metals, where intrinsic size effects and plasmonic resonances act synergistically. The compatibility of high-quality epitaxial growth with microchip fabrication technology offers a scalable route toward ultracompact nonlinear optical components for on-chip frequency conversion, sensing, and quantum photonic applications.

Boson Sampling is a prominent candidate for the demonstration of quantum computational advantage but it remains unclear whether a large-scale boson sampler can find useful computational applications. The challenge is that to use a boson sampler to estimate, for example, a physical observable, it is necessary to coarse grain the outcome distribution, owing to the exponential size of the outcome space and the anti-concentration properties of the Boson Sampling distribution. In this work, we analyse the complexity of a specific type of coarse-graining of Boson Sampling distributions based on linear functions of the output photon occupation numbers, which we refer to as linear statistics. We present an efficient classical algorithm for approximating linear statistics of boson samplers within additive error for different kinds of input states, such as Fock states and squeezed states. This allows us to unify in the same framework recent results on efficient quantum-inspired classical algorithms for simulating molecular vibronic spectra, or efficient classical approximations of coarse-grained distributions based on detector binning. Additionally, we show how our algorithm can be used to classically evaluate a proposed one-way function based on Boson Sampling, while other proposals for cryptographic applications escape our classical simulation techniques. We leave open the question of classical simulability of non-linear statistics and connect it to the problem of computing transition amplitudes of linear-optical circuits with one layer of interactions.

We establish a fully static, dissipation-only primitive for Gaussian state transfer in which collective coupling to a shared environment fixes a single transfer time without coherent transport or time-dependent control. The dynamics close in a bright--dark decomposition, yielding an analytic transfer time $t^{*} = π/ g_{a}$ and a real interference factor that eliminates dynamical phase accumulation, so that all phase sensitivity arises solely from the Gaussian fidelity metric. This defines a fixed-time Gaussian communication channel in which dissipation mediates information transfer without active control. Ensemble analysis shows that channel performance remains robust to amplitude-level asymmetries, which act as uniform-rate dressing, whereas phase-level system detuning disrupts the fixed-time mechanism via dynamical phase winding and produces revival behavior. Incorporating finite Ornstein--Uhlenbeck memory via a zeroth-order O-operator expansion yields only rate and phase renormalization without introducing new dynamical pathways. In the fast-memory regime, environmental correlations are rapidly suppressed, rendering the channel insensitive to environmental detuning and restoring the Markovian limit. These results show that collective dissipation alone is sufficient to support fixed-time Gaussian state transfer, challenging the assumption that coherent transport or active control are required for continuous-variable communication.

Connecting mathematical formalism in open quantum systems to its underlying physics necessitates the notion of a dilation, a way to bridge stochastic dynamics with deterministic Schrödinger evolution on a larger space. Although dilations are well known in the literature for states, channels, and quantum combs, there is a substantial gap when it comes to the fully general setting of non-Markovian dynamics on a continuous interval. In an accompanying work, we introduce a continuous process tensor (cPT) framework wherein these processes are represented by vectors in multi-species bosonic Fock spaces of $L^2$ functions. This accommodates all multi-time statistics of a quantum system on an interval. Here, we present a corresponding dilation theorem and show that all cPTs can be approximated arbitrarily well by an explicit closed description with system and environment coupled by a bounded Hamiltonian. As well as its physical appeal and demonstrating completeness of the framework, we show that such regular representations actually underpin the formalism, defining a dense subspace of all cPTs that is easy to handle. This leads to a continuum-suitable version of Choi duality, and permits the rigorous treatment of continuum controls.

We propose candidate lower bounds on the real Grothendieck constants $K_{\mathrm G}(d)$ and their infinite-dimensional limit $K_{\mathrm G}$ using rotationally invariant cubic kernels. For the continuous construction, we identify an explicit threshold above which hemispherical binary strategies are unstable under cubic boundary deformations. Supported by numerical evidence, we conjecture that hemispherical strategies are globally optimal at this threshold. This conjecture would imply $K_{\mathrm G}\geq9π/16\simeq1.767146$, improving the rigorous lower bound $6π/11\simeq1.713596$. We also construct finite symmetric coefficient matrices from unit vectors in dimensions up to $24$. Large-scale see-saw optimization supports the continuous predictions and suggests improved lower bounds on $K_{\mathrm G}(d)$ in the studied dimensions from $4$ to $24$, conditional on the conjectured binary optima being exact. Selected matrices also yield finite-setting candidate dimension witnesses when interpreted as bipartite correlation Bell functionals. If the corresponding binary upper bounds hold, these witnesses would certify a local Hilbert-space dimension of at least five for each party.

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) enable the verification of a statement without revealing any information beyond its validity and constitute a fundamental primitive in cryptography and information theory. However, existing constructions rely on computational assumptions and are predominantly confined to bipartite settings, leaving their information-theoretic realization in bipartite or network scenarios largely unexplored. Here we develop a framework for zero-knowledge verification based on the indistinguishability of quantum states under operational constraints. Exploiting the fundamental limitations imposed by local operations, we show that a verifier is inherently restricted from extracting information about the underlying state while retaining the ability to verify correctness. We construct explicit protocols for multiparty quantum networks that achieve information-theoretic security, ensuring that no subset of collaborating parties can gain knowledge beyond the validity of the statement, independent of their joint computational power.

A longstanding conjecture in quantum complexity theory asserts that, under the uniform input distribution, quantum query algorithms can be polynomially simulated by classical query algorithms. More precisely, the acceptance probability of any quantum query algorithm can be approximated, on average over uniformly random inputs, by a classical query algorithm, with only polynomial query overhead. The conjecture is central to understanding whether exponential quantum advantages for decision problems necessarily rely on additional structure. We study analogues of this conjecture under other natural input distributions and prove that they are all equivalent to the original uniform-distribution conjecture. We first consider the product distribution $μ_p$, where the input bits are independent Bernoulli variables with fixed bias $p$. We show that for every fixed $p \in (0, 1)$, quantum query algorithms under the $μ_p$ distribution admit polynomial-overhead classical simulations if and only if the same holds under the uniform distribution. Second, we consider the distribution $ν_p$ that is uniform over the slice of strings with Hamming weight $\lfloor pn \rfloor$ and prove a similar equivalence for the $ν_p$ distribution and the uniform distribution. The Aaronson-Ambainis conjecture is a stronger statement that implies the above-mentioned conjecture and is formulated in terms of bounded low-degree polynomials on the Boolean hypercube. It asserts that under the uniform distribution, any such polynomial with nonnegligible variance must have an influential variable. We formulate analogues of this conjecture, where the underlying distribution is a biased product distribution or a uniform distribution over a slice, and prove that all these variants are equivalent to the original Aaronson-Ambainis conjecture.

Scalable fault-tolerant quantum error correction based on Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) codes requires finite-rate outer codes that can exploit analog GKP information under realistic circuit noise. However, quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) outer codes have not been systematically compared as candidates for circuit-level GKP concatenation. Here, we benchmark BB and tricycle codes using a unified simulation framework that progresses from code-capacity noise to repeated noisy syndrome extraction and schedule-resolved displacement propagation. Across all three noise models, analog-informed belief-propagation with ordered-statistics decoding (BP-OSD) yields higher finite-size crossing estimates than hard-decision decoding. In the full circuit model, the analog-informed crossings are \(σ_{\mathrm{th}}\simeq0.212\) for the selected BB sequence and \(0.142\) for the tricycle sequence, corresponding to squeezing requirements of approximately \(10.46\,\mathrm{dB}\) and \(13.94\,\mathrm{dB}\), respectively. These results show that analog GKP information continues to improve decoding under circuit-level noise. Under the common simulation assumptions used here, the selected BB sequence also yields a higher finite-size crossing estimate than the selected tricycle sequence.

A reduced ordered decision diagram is the minimal automaton of a function on words of fixed length: its nodes are the residuals, and reduction is the Myhill--Nerode quotient. We study what happens when that quotient is coarsened by a group. Fix a group $G$ acting on residuals, merge two nodes when their residuals lie in one $G$-orbit, and record the group element on the edge. For functions $\{0,1\}^n\to\mathbb{C}$ and $G$ the Pauli group this is the Local Invertible Map Decision Diagram. We take $G$ from the two-parameter family generated by $C^{\leq k}R_q$, the phase rotation of order $q$ with up to $k$ control qubits, with and without the bit flip $X$. We show that this gives exponential succinctness improvements compared to Pauli-LIMDD, and we determine the succinctness order of the family completely. The separating objects are hypergraph states, which can always be efficiently represented by some member of the family. We settle the tractability of five queries and eight transformations, which is invariant across the family, and shows the same behavior as Pauli-LIMDD. We give a five-rule reduction system whose normal forms are unique for every member of the family, and we show that this canonical form is computable in polynomial time in the size of the LIMDD. We show that, when coarsening beyond the (anti-)diagonal groups, the calculation of a minimal sized normal form turns out to be non-local and it might to rebuild the whole diagram.

We study the problem of learning a local Lindbladian in the presence of state-preparation-and-measurement (SPAM) noise. Although recent work has developed scalable learning algorithms under idealized access assumptions, SPAM can make distinct Lindbladians experimentally indistinguishable, thus making part of the Lindbladian fundamentally unlearnable. We give a sharp characterization of this obstruction for bounded-degree local Lindbladians. We identify a family of locality-preserving gauge transformations that commutes with trusted single-qubit control, and use it to classify Lindbladian components. For the generically gauge dependent components, we construct Lindbladians to show that they can have $Ω(1)$ uncertainty independent of system size, even after imposing complete positivity. We complement this characterization with SPAM-robust algorithms for learning every universally gauge-invariant component. Our algorithms use only trusted single-qubit operations, require neither ancillas nor entangling control, and use $\widetilde{\mathcal O}\left(ε^{-2}\log(N/δ)\right)$ experiments and total evolution time for constant locality and degree. Our guarantees allow global SPAM to become arbitrarily far from ideal as $N$ grows, requiring only nonvanishing local visibility. We also establish sufficient conditions for boundary-induced gauge invariance of additional Hamiltonian coefficients under physical positivity constraints, though learning these additional parameters in general remains an open problem. More broadly, our gauge-aware framework and SPAM-cancellation techniques offer a practical toolkit for the scalable characterization of open quantum systems.

Time-multiplexed (TDM) photonic reservoirs are usually judged by their scores on a few datasets, which say little about a chip's overall performance, and designed by enumerating candidate circuits and simulating each one, which is inefficient and gives no guarantee of finding a good structure. For a time-unrolled passive linear network with data-modulated gates or sources and a ridge readout, we derive an exact bridge from the task to the prediction risk in three steps. (i) Task features: the finite-shot risk depends on the time series only through finitely many statistics of its training windows and their correlations with the target, selected by the encoding and the optical paths. (ii) Encoding: every output moment is a polynomial in the features of the data-modulated sites, with degree and support bounded by tuples of optical paths. Gate encoding reads the characteristic function and creates interactions across time lags; squeezing encoding reads the moment-generating function and displacement encoding low-order moments, and with quadrature receivers they yield only additive and linear models, respectively, for every topology. (iii) Readout: for homodyne, heterodyne and photon-number receivers the risk closes exactly, and its dependence on the number of shots is an explicit sum over signal-to-noise modes; threshold clicks admit finite-dictionary approximations with certified error. Parts of the network that share no light carry independent states, which a receiver combines only through measurement events that join them. Checks on seven datasets confirm every exact statement to machine precision. The three steps thus yield a useful space of candidate TDM architectures, pruned by exact statements rather than by trial simulation, which can in future guide the selection of TDM chips for target requirements.

A Clifford template is a finite ordered family of repeatable Clifford operations, and an instantiation specifies how many times each operation is applied. The Clifford template compilation problem asks how to choose these repetition numbers so that the template realizes a target transformation of Pauli operators. This problem arises, for example, when searching for logical operations in quantum error correction using only Clifford operations permitted by physical or fault-tolerance constraints. Although forward Clifford dynamics is efficiently classically simulable, this inverse problem has sharp complexity transitions. For commuting templates with unrestricted integer exponents, feasibility lies in $\mathrm{NP}\cap\mathrm{BQP}$ and a constructive quantum algorithm returns a particular solution together with the full exponent-relation lattice; already at $k=1$, recovering the repetition number contains finite-field discrete logarithm over $\mathbb{F}_{2^r}^{\times}$. In general, restricting every exponent to $\{0,1\}$ removes the Abelian-group closure and makes feasibility NP-complete for variable $k$, even for exactly commuting CNOT-only operations and X-type Paulis. For commuting self-inverse Clifford actions, both binary feasibility and recovery of one solution are classically polynomial-time solvable, but imposing a bound on the total repetition count is NP-complete, even for CNOT-only operations. These results reveal a rich complexity landscape within Clifford template compilation, spanning classically tractable cases, problems admitting quantum polynomial-time algorithms, and NP-complete variants.

We introduce a technological capability scale that ranks civilizations by the control operations they can perform per second. A control operation is defined as setting one binary degree of freedom of matter to a specified value, whatever its previous state. Building on constructor theory, we sort them into construction and its special cases on information media, namely processing, storage and transfer. The index $Ξ= K + B$ adds to the Kardashev index $K$ an efficiency index $B$ of energy per operation, measured from the thermal floor at the microwave background temperature. The Kardashev scale gives the ceiling for resets of thermally random bits with heat radiated into the present sky, and the Barrow scale gives the floor, which for such a reset is the thermal floor at the heat-rejection temperature at every level. Since 1950 the energy per logic operation has fallen 11.7 orders of magnitude, around 5 through miniaturization. Humanity, at $K = 0.73$, computes with CMOS logic gates at $B = -0.78$ in primary energy. We describe the ultimate technology, at $Ξ= 7.58$, which would dissipate the conjectured largest power $c^5/4G$ into an uncharged, non-rotating black hole near its largest mass in de Sitter space.

The complex spacing ratio is the complex displacement from a reference eigenvalue to its nearest neighbor divided by the corresponding displacement to its next-to-nearest neighbor. Its statistics provide a useful diagnostic of spectral correlations and nonintegrability in open quantum systems. Here, starting from the exact joint eigenvalue probability densities, we derive finite-$N$ complex-spacing-ratio distributions for the Gaussian ensembles of non-Hermitian random matrices in classes AI$^†$ and AII$^†$, realized by complex symmetric and complex self-dual random matrices, respectively. In class AII$^†$, we obtain an exact algebraic expression for arbitrary $N$ and explicitly evaluate the distributions and representative moments for $N=3, 4, 5, 6$. In class AI$^†$, although the joint density retains a noncompact integral over nonunitary eigenvector degrees of freedom, we analytically derive a normalized one-dimensional integral representation for $N=3$ and determine the asymptotic behavior, including a logarithmic correction to the cubic level repulsion and a nonanalytic contribution to the angular density. We further confirm these analytical results through direct numerical diagonalization of non-Hermitian random matrices.

Vector-vortex photons, characterized by a nonseparable coupling between polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM), offer opportunities for optical manipulation, quantum communication, nuclear photonics, etc. However, their generation in the $γ$-ray regime remains challenging. Here, we put forward a novel method to generate vector-vortex $γ$ photons via nonlinear Compton scattering in elliptically polarized laser pulses. We reveal that tailoring laser ellipticity directs the multiphoton absorption to coherently populate OAM modes with opposite winding numbers, $\pm \ell$, tied to orthogonal circular polarizations, producing nonseparable spin-OAM photon states. For a linearly polarized laser of moderate intensity (dimensionless amplitude $a_0 \sim 1$), the mode-pair concurrence--a 0-to-1 measure of spin-OAM entanglement--reaches unity for MeV $γ$ photons, realizing maximally nonseparable radial- or azimuthal-type vector-vortex states. The laser amplitude further controls the accessible OAM spectrum. Our method offers a route to MeV vector-vortex photons, opening a new avenue for nuclear-scale structured photonics and high-energy quantum information.

We numerically study laser deceleration, cooling and trapping of host fast ortho-positronium (Ps) bunches as produced in silica microchannel targets using positron bunches from a Surko trap. While Doppler laser cooling routinely allows to cool neutral atom species below milli-Kelvin kinetic temperatures, the fast ground state annihilation and the high recoil shift to line-width ratio in Ps pose new challenging limitations on timing and the required laser power. Earlier theoretical work and first experiments already exhibit viable prospects for radiation pressure cooling to create unprecedented cold and dense Ps ensembles. Our extended numerical studies confirm very good prospects to simultaneously decelerate, cool and optically trap Ps atoms in a standard Doppler cooling geometry on the $1^3\mathrm{S}$--$2^3\mathrm{P}$ transition. Including the full Zeeman state manifolds and adding additional transverse lasers on the $2^3\mathrm{P}$--$3^3\mathrm{D}$ transition improves timing and final temperature to allow for optical trapping at the end. The required laser powers and geometry parameters to implement effective slowing and trapping within a time frame, where the majority of atoms is not annihilated, is in reach of current technology of $\mathrm{mJ}$ energy pulses of approximately $100\ \mathrm{ns}$ duration. Future extensions to collectively enhance cooling and trapping in optical cavities or hollow-core fibres should finally allow fast preparation of ultra-cold Ps systems as future basis of superradiant lasing and Bose--Einstein condensates.

Quantum circuit Born machines (QCBMs) built with instantaneous quantum polynomial (IQP) circuits have loss functions that can be efficiently estimated classically, but require quantum computers during inference. Thus, classical computers can train large IQP QCBMs that exceed the qubit numbers of available quantum hardware. This motivates research into how qubit-limited quantum computers can be used to sample from larger IQP QCBMs. Leveraging insights from classical simulation of noisy IQP circuits, we propose a deployment protocol for IQP QCBMs that injects noise at the logical level to probabilistically decompose the original circuit into smaller clusters that can be sampled on qubit-limited quantum processors. We also apply lightweight resampling of known noisy qubits to mitigate the impact of the introduced error. Numerical simulations of our protocol applied to shallow IQP QCBMs and IBM Heron experiments deploying a 316-qubit IQP circuit onto 156-qubit hardware show that mitigation improves the similarity of the empirical distribution to the target distribution. The proposed deployment protocol also crucially preserves correlation structures more accurately than a classical baseline that has accurate single-qubit marginals.

Identifying regimes in which interacting fermionic systems admit efficient classical simulation is a crucial task in quantum many-body physics. In this work, we rigorously establish the Gaussianity and classical simulability of sufficiently weakly interacting fermions. For the Gibbs state of a local interacting fermionic Hamiltonian $H=H_0+V$ at any finite temperature and in any spatial dimension, where $H_0$ is quadratic and $V$ is the interaction term, we show that there exists a positive interaction strength below which the Gibbs state is a convex mixture of fermionic Gaussian states. Moreover, based on this structure, we construct a polynomial-time classical sampler for the Gibbs state via Metropolis updates on a tree whose leaves are Gaussian states.

In this paper, we prove that the Mean-Field Approximate Optimization Algorithm (MF-AOA), a quantum-inspired classical algorithm of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA), is unable to give arbitrary near optimal solution for problems exhibiting the Overlap Gap Property (OGP). We show this by relating the MF-AOA to finite-memory Approximate Message Passing (AMP) algorithms, which are known to be limited in performance by the OGP. Thus, our paper argues that problems exhibiting the OGP are one such instance where the QAOA can outperform the MF-AOA and AMP algorithms in general. We supplement this by numerically simulating the performance of the QAOA on instances of Max-$4$-XORSAT that exhibit the OGP and find that the QAOA is able to surpass the barrier, while our finite-size scaling analysis favors a super-polynomial over a polynomial depth dependence. In addition, we observe a non-differentiable point in the performance of the QAOA near by the OGP barrier, where the optimal QAOA parameters change from an adiabatic to a non-adiabatic schedule.

Designing quantum codes with both transversal non-Clifford gates and good error-correcting parameters is an important goal in fault-tolerant quantum computation. Here, we construct an explicit family of binary CSS codes with constant rate and linear distance that admit fully addressable transversal $T$ gates. Specifically, any prescribed tensor product of logical powers of $T$ is implemented by a tensor product of physical powers of $T$, without any subsequent correction. Our construction combines algebraic-geometry codes with suitable binary embedding to obtain generalized divisibility of binary codes. This divisibility then enables fully addressable transversal $T$ gates. Furthermore, we formulate the minimum binary embedding length problem as a minimum-weight problem over an affine space and numerically improve the constants in the asymptotic rate and relative-distance bounds.

The exact classical simulation of non-integrable quantum systems rapidly becomes intractable beyond small system sizes, yet its role is central to predicting many-body dynamics. Approximate methods alleviate this cost but typically lack rigorous guarantees on their deviation from the exact result. For the infinite-temperature correlation function, we derive a rigorous error bound for approximating the full dynamics within a computable finite-sized region. Applied to autocorrelations, this finite-region approach is especially accurate across one-dimensional systems and beyond, and can further provide rigorous error bounds for other approximate methods, demonstrated here for matrix-product-operator simulations.

The Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation provides the fundamental description of dissipative magnetization dynamics. A recently proposed quantum analog, the quantum Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (QLLG) equation, extends this framework to quantum spin systems. However, whether the QLLG equation recovers the LLG equation in the classical large-spin limit for interacting spin systems remains an open question. Here, we demonstrate this connection by deriving the LLG equation as the classical large-spin limit of the QLLG equation. We establish this correspondence analytically and verify it numerically for an interacting spin system. These results provide a quantum-to-classical description of dissipative spin dynamics, offering a microscopic foundation for the LLG equation. From numerical calculations provided here, we also conclude that quantum effects become much less noticeable for systems with larger number of spins in the Hamiltonian.

Decoded quantum interferometry (DQI) and its Hamiltonian extension (HDQI) prepare states whose amplitudes are low-degree polynomials of an objective, using Fourier transforms and coherent decoding. We recast this approach as quantum state transduction through algebra homomorphisms. We transfer an efficiently preparable operator state of a degree-$D$ polynomial in a source Hamiltonian $H_A$ to the corresponding polynomial state of a target Hamiltonian $H_B=π(H_A)$, where $π$ is a unital $*$-homomorphism between the finite-dimensional source and target $C^*$-algebras. The transduction uses operator Fourier transforms and relative decoding to recover source operators rather than individual term-selection labels. The relative distance $d_{\mathrm{rel}}$ is the first degree at which source and target traces disagree. We prove that $2D<d_{\mathrm{rel}}$ is equivalent to preserving all inner products between degree-$D$ polynomials. Moreover, $d_{\mathrm{rel}}\ge d_{\mathrm{ord}}$, where $d_{\mathrm{ord}}$ is the ordinary distance used in (H)DQI, and we give families with $d_{\mathrm{ord}}=O(1)$ but $d_{\mathrm{rel}}=Θ(n)$ and efficient decoders. Our framework replaces the complicated pilot state preparation by the more modular task of preparing a source polynomial state. DQI and HDQI arise as relation-free special cases. The framework accommodates nonuniform coefficients and noncommuting interactions and extends to fermionic, qudit, and bosonic systems, with applications to approximate optimization and Gibbs sampling. As evidence of advantages, for a nonlinear pairwise variant of optimal polynomial intersection where constant $d_{\mathrm{ord}}$ limits DQI-style preparations, relative decoding yields an ideal quantum score of 0.643 versus 0.606 for the best tested classical heuristic, a gap exceeding 3 percentage points.

Dephasing can sharpen the activation of a dissipative quantum neuron, but a stationary response does not determine how much input information its output delivers per unit time. For a single qubit with partial-reset updates at rate $ν$, we derive the threshold response bandwidth and the exact local Fisher information rate of the complete record from repeated projective readouts, including their backaction. Near the activation threshold, the rate obeys $\mathcal R\leqν(1-s)(1+s)^2/2\leq16ν/27$, where $s$ is the retained amplitude of each update. For every fixed finite Markovian dephasing rate, optimization over the readout interval and $s$ gives the same supremum, approached at $s=1/3$ with arbitrarily rapid ideal readout. A finite measurement dead time instead selects a finite optimal interval, which we obtain by a dimensionless two-parameter optimization. The ideal bound is saturated by a classical two-state jump process: quantum coherence changes finite-cadence performance but cannot raise the optimized bound. These results separate noise-enhanced activation from the operational information throughput of a quantum neuron and provide a hardware-aware benchmark for finite-time quantum neural processing.

The combination of quantum sensing with quantum computing to provide an enhancement over conventional quantum sensing has recently emerged as a promising potential application of quantum computing that could give advantages without needing large-scale or fault-tolerant hardware. In this work, we report an experimental demonstration of a recent theoretical proposal to repurpose Grover's search algorithm to improve the ability to detect signals with unknown frequency within a large detection bandwidth. Our experiments were based on a system comprising a single superconducting qubit coupled to a single superconducting cavity, highlighting the modest hardware requirements for realizing the protocol. We found that Grover-based sensing was able to outperform the natural non-Grover baseline for our experimental platform for detection bandwidths $>$10~MHz, with an advantage that empirically grew superlinearly with the bandwidth beyond that break-even point. The use of the Grover-based protocol reduced the amount of signal that needed to be sensed to make an accurate detection decision by more than 10$\times$ for choices of larger detection bandwidth and higher desired detection accuracy. Our results provide a proof-of-principle validation that Grover-based quantum computational sensing can be realized in near-term hardware and provide a metrological advantage well beyond break-even in spite of the additional protocol complexity.

Enantiomer-specific state transfer (ESST) based on electric-dipole transitions has attracted considerable interest in the studies of manipulating molecules with electromagnetic fields. It also holds promise as a powerful tool for enantiomer detection and separation. To date, experimental demonstrations of ESST have focused mainly on molecules in the lowest rotational angular-momentum states, namely, $J=0$ and $J=1$. Realistic molecular samples, however, may contain appreciable populations in higher-$J$ rotational states, making it desirable to develop ESST schemes applicable to such states. Nevertheless, one cannot derive such schemes via a simple and straightforward extension of existing low-$J$ schemes, because higher-$J$ manifolds contain more magnetic sub-levels and involve more complicated networks of electric-dipole transitions. Here, we propose an ESST scheme for chiral molecules involving the $J=1$ and $J=2$ rotational states. Specifically, our scheme is based on enantiomer-specific pumping driven by three linearly polarized microwave fields and one laser beam. Under this scheme, one enantiomer is pumped into an enantiomer-specific dark state within a sub manifold with $J=1,2$, whereas the other enantiomer is dissipatively pumped out of this manifold. Our strategy can be extended to systems involving rotational states with even higher angular momenta.

The Learning With Errors (LWE) problem is a fundamental assumption in post-quantum cryptography. Regev established a quantum reduction from LWE to the Dihedral Coset Problem (DCP). Later, Brakerski et al. introduced the Extrapolated Dihedral Coset Problem (EDCP), proving its equivalence to LWE. However, unlike DCP, EDCP no longer admits a coset structure. This limits the direct application of techniques for hidden subgroup problems. In this work, we introduce the Cyclotomic Coset Problem (CCP), a cyclotomic generalization of DCP that preserves an exact hidden-subgroup structure. Let $ζ_p$ be a primitive $p$-th root of unity, let $π=ζ_p-1$, and write $q=p^t$ and $L=t(p-1)$. We work over $R_q=\mathbb Z_q[ζ_p] \cong \mathbb Z[ζ_p]/(π^L)$, where the isomorphism follows from the total ramification identity $(p)=(π)^{p-1}$. We exploit the resulting $π$-adic ideal chain to construct a quantum sieve that successively reduces phase states modulo $π^{L},π^{L-1},\ldots,π$. For every fixed prime $p$ and modulus $q=p^t$, our algorithm solves the CCP in time and sample complexity $2^{O_p(\log n\log q)}$, using polynomial quantum space. The sieve also applies to uniform EDCP and Gaussian S|LWE>, yielding quasi-polynomial time algorithms for all the above problems when $q=\text{poly}(n)$. This extends the power-of-two EDCP sieve of Bai et al. (CRYPTO 2025) to a cyclotomic setting. However, we emphasize that our result does not, by itself, yield a quasi-polynomial-time algorithm for standard LWE, because the currently known reduction produces only a limited number of approximate CCP states.

Models of quantum systems faithfully map system parameters to observations, but the inverse problem of parameter inference from measurement data presents a fundamental challenge: computationally intractable likelihoods due to an exponentially large Hilbert space. Here, we introduce simulation-based quantum system inference, a unified, likelihood-free framework that learns parameter posteriors directly from classical simulation data. The central idea is to pair polynomial-cost classical simulators, such as Pauli propagation and tensor networks, with normalizing flows or other neural density estimators for accurate, reusable inference. A single model, trained once, maps any new measurement record to its posterior in one forward pass---turning per-experiment inference into a fixed, up-front cost. We numerically demonstrate the framework's versatility across Pauli noise learning, quantum error mitigation, quantum state tomography, and Hamiltonian learning, with examples involving 81-qubit shallow circuits and 735-parameter inference. In each case, the approach yields accurate estimates of identifiable parameters, while posterior uncertainty provides additional diagnostics of non-identifiability and indicates where further characterization is needed. Our framework reduces data-acquisition requirements in quantum experiments and accelerates parameter inference, providing a practical route to characterizing and improving large-scale quantum systems.

Preparation contextuality is often manifested operationally through a quantitative advantage over preparation-noncontextual models in information-processing tasks, yet quantum theory typically falls short of perfect success. Here we introduce a parity-oblivious Hidden Matching task that instead yields an all-vs-nothing manifestation of preparation contextuality. Alice encodes an $n$-bit string so that her message reveals no information about any input parity other than the two-bit parities. Bob, given a perfect matching on the input positions, must output an edge of the matching together with the parity of its two bits. A quantum protocol using a single $\lceil\log_2 n\rceil$-qubit message satisfies the parity-obliviousness constraint and succeeds with certainty. We prove that no preparation-noncontextual model achieves perfect success for any even $n\ge6$. The result holds for arbitrary ontic state spaces and assumes neither outcome determinism nor measurement noncontextuality. For $n=6$ and $n=8$, the optimal noncontextual success probabilities are $4/5$ and $3/4$, respectively, while asymptotically the optimal noncontextual success probability is $1/2+Θ(1/\sqrt n)$. Our asymptotic upper bound follows from a Fourier-analytic sum rule derived via hypercontractivity on the Boolean hypercube. The resulting separation is qualitative rather than merely quantitative: quantum theory achieves perfect success, whereas preparation-noncontextual models cannot. We aslo show that at $n=8$ the noncontextual bound remains $3/4$ even when Bob is restricted to just suitable $4$ of the $105$ possible perfect matchings, bringing the effect within experimental reach.

Even-layer topological antiferromagnetic thin films such as MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ exhibit an unconventional layer Hall effect (LHE) arising from a layer-locked Berry curvature. This effect manifests as a layer-polarized anomalous Hall effect that can be controlled by a vertical displacement field. However, achieving a quantized version of the LHE remains experimentally challenging. In this work, we propose that moiré engineering, using an electrostatic superlattice potential from control layers, can realize the quantum layer Hall effect (QLHE). Specifically, by placing moiré control layers in close proximity to the surfaces of a MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ thin film without breaking $PT$ symmetry, the resulting system exhibits a vanishing net Hall conductance but a quantized layer Hall conductance of $e^2/h$. A weak gate electric field then breaks $PT$ symmetry and drives the system into a layer-polarized quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) phase. Furthermore, when a single control layer is introduced on only one surface, the layer-polarized QAH emerges even in the absence of an external electric field. We identify the microscopic origin of the QLHE as an emergent layer-$U(1)$ gauge field generated by the scalar moiré potential, which in turn produces opposite periodic pseudomagnetic fields on the top and bottom layers. Our work provides a feasible pathway toward realizing the QLHE in antiferromagnetic thin films.

Classical simulation of quantum random access memory (QRAM) under noise can be accelerated dramatically by branch pruning: noise histories are sampled as trajectory ensembles, and good branches, whose routing paths avoid every sampled fault, need not be evolved because their final states are analytically predictable. Under amplitude damping this predictability is not automatic, because the no-jump operator $K_0$ acts on every branch at every time slice. Here we give a complete account of damping-channel predictability in bucket-brigade QRAM simulation, for both qutrit and qubit encodings. For the qutrit encoding, $K_0$ is diagonal in the node basis, and the wait state $|W\rangle$ is its fixed point, so a good branch follows the noiseless orbit up to a scalar attenuation. In the qubit encoding, phase-kickback memory fetching between two Hadamard walls makes $K_0$ no longer diagonal, yet the resulting structure is exactly solvable in closed form. Conditional on no jump, the in-branch infidelity of a good branch is second order in the damping rate $γ$, with coherent leakage $\sim n^2γ^2/4$ per data qubit, and the closed form captures it without approximation. We also revise the pruning criterion for the qubit encoding. The resulting algorithm evolves only the bad branches plus one reference branch and shares every other cost with the full evolution it replaces. It is validated by end-to-end benchmarks with pruned-over-full speedups up to $285\times$ and by trajectory-level tests confirming every closed form to machine precision.

A resonant classical field drives a two-level system coherently and, with ordinary relaxation, produces saturation rather than directional population transfer. Here we show that directionality emerges when the excitation source is retained as a quantum subsystem and subsequently traced out. We model the source as a single-excitation degree of freedom, or equivalently a stream of two-level ancillas, exchange-coupled to a target two-level system. The source first moment generates the usual coherent drive, while its second moments produce upward and downward dissipative channels. For a number-diagonal, fully excited source, the first moment vanishes and only the upward channel remains, yielding monotonic pumping of the target. The same structure follows from both an exact collision map and a fluctuation-regulated second-order quantum master equation. For exponentially decaying source correlations, the pumping rate shows a Lorentzian detuning dependence governed by the correlation time $τ_c$, accompanied by a dispersive frequency shift. In the presence of thermal relaxation, the steady-state excited-state population can exceed the resonantly driven optical-Bloch limit of one half. Within the fluctuation-regulated master equation, this directional pumping arises as a drive-induced dissipative contribution whose strength and spectral response are controlled by $τ_c$.

The O-band telecommunication spectral range combines minimal chromatic dispersion with low transmission loss, making it highly suitable for optical communications. Semiconductor telecom lasers utilizing low-dimensional active regions, such as quantum dots, offer low threshold power and high thermal stability. However, long-wavelength quantum dot emitters often suffer from thermal carrier escape through excited states when the energy separation between the ground and excited states is insufficient. Here we demonstrate the optimization of InAs quantum dot emitters grown on InP by molecular-beam epitaxy for O-band laser active regions. By optimizing the design for better carrier capture efficiency and tuning the emission wavelength to the O-band, we show ways of improving the carrier confinement. Absorption spectroscopy on the finalized structure confirms substantial energy separation between the quantum dot ground and excited states, effectively suppressing thermal carrier escape even at elevated temperatures. These results highlight critical design for improving carrier capture and retention in long-wavelength quantum dot lasers.

A measure of correlations for statistical systems is advanced, called correlation index. The measure is general, being applicable to quantum and classical, equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical systems. After formulating the general notion of correlation indices for arbitrary trace-class operators, the calculation of the correlation indices are illustrated by several examples of density operators and reduced density matrices. The computation of the correlation indices for equilibrium systems is exemplified for bosonic systems with the Bose-Einstein condensate, superconducting systems, and for spin systems. Correlation indices for nonequilibrium systems are considered for nonlinear dynamics of spin and pseudospin systems.

A near-deterministic source of non-Gaussianity is the missing piece to reach universal and fault-tolerant quantum computing with continuous-variable optics. Due to a lack of strong non-linearities, the probabilistic photon-subtracted Gaussian states remain the most promising contender. In combination with Gaussian measurements and single-mode feed-forward operations, they have been shown to provide sufficient non-Gaussianity at high rates. However, these existing breeding protocols lack the necessary loss tolerance to be experimentally feasible. In this work, we introduce a mathematical formalism based on the application of a Gaussian blur and filter on the measured Fock Wigner function to describe general photon-subtracted Gaussian states. Within our representation, the initial squeezing, Gaussian measurements, and photon loss can all be understood as contributions to the total blurring and interchanged accordingly. We find that this intuitive approach can be used to find improvements to cat, cubic phase, and GKP state generation by compromising between success rates, feed-forward compatibility, and loss tolerance. In the case of multiple photon subtractions, this is achieved by introducing a hybrid setup variant bridging the gap between protocols based on breeding and post-selection. Finally, we establish a general lower bound on the resources needed to generate a given target state near-deterministically by introducing the expected Wigner logarithmic negativity as an additive monotone of non-Gaussianity.

Hybrid quantum systems combining discrete-variable (DV) and continuous-variable (CV) subsystems arise across a broad range of physical platforms and enable quantum information processing beyond purely qubit-based designs. Their classical simulation, however, is challenging since computational costs of both CV and DV systems exponentially increase. In this paper, we introduce a simulation framework for CV--DV hybrid systems based on linear combination of Gaussian (LCoG) decomposition. We decompose the hybrid density matrix into blocks in a DV basis and represent each block as an LCoG expansion. Within the representation, Gaussian operations on the bosonic subsystem independently act on each Gaussian function. We derive analytic formulas describing how complex Gaussian functions transform under controlled Gaussian operations. We further extend the framework to controlled Gaussian channels with state-dependent Gaussian noise. The method avoids a Fock-space truncation for the CV subsystem, and the cost of updating each Gaussian term scales polynomially with the number of modes. The framework provides a general computational tool for analyzing hybrid quantum algorithms, quantum simulation protocols, and non-Gaussian state generation schemes. As an example, we simulate Gottesman--Kitaev--Preskill (GKP) state generation based on a cavity-QED system.

The motional modes of trapped ions are promising candidates for continuous-variable (CV) quantum computation and simulation. However, to achieve a universal gate set for CV quantum computation, anharmonic nonlinear unitaries are required. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a protocol that allows us to approximate the cubic phase gate. By numerically optimizing the phase angles and amplitudes of a set of state-dependent force pulses, we demonstrate the cubic phase gate for both vacuum and low-$α$ coherent state inputs and verify its performance. Our protocol can also be extended to approximate other nonlinear unitaries.

Quantum conditional mutual information (QCMI) is a fundamental measure of conditional independence, with central applications throughout quantum information theory and many-body physics. Despite its importance, finding a fully quantum Rényi generalization that satisfies all desirable structural properties has remained an open question. In this work, we introduce a quantum Rényi conditional mutual information possessing these desirable properties: it is monotone under local quantum channels, additive under tensor products, monotone in the Rényi parameter, and converges to the QCMI in the limit $α\to 1$. We establish bounds on this quantity in terms of relative entropies to the Petz-recovered state, showing that it provides a distinct measure of approximate conditional independence. As a consequence, we derive recovery-based upper and lower bounds on the QCMI in terms of quantum generalizations of the Kullback-Leibler divergence, improving upon the best known results in certain regimes. Finally, we establish bounds in terms of relative entropies to the sets of Markov and separable states and derive Rényi chain rules, which appear to be novel even in the classical setting.

We achieve the first constant-depth circuit for arbitrary single-qubit gate synthesis. Unlike prior approaches, the construction is fully unitary and requires no pre-supplied catalyst. For any constant $δ>0$, it $\varepsilon$-approximates an arbitrary single-qubit gate using $O(\log^{1+δ}(1/\varepsilon))$ clean ancillae, Hadamard and $T$ single-qubit gates, $O(\log(1/\varepsilon))$-width generalized Toffoli gates, and sublogarithmic-width Fan-Out gates. We further eliminate Fan-Out entirely, showing that Hadamard, $T$, and generalized Toffoli gates alone suffice for constant-depth synthesis. When restricted to the standard bounded-width gate model, our construction has depth $O(\log\log(1/\varepsilon))$, and we prove a matching $Ω(\log\log(1/\varepsilon))$-depth lower bound. Overall, we establish that $Θ(\log\log(1/\varepsilon))$-depth is unavoidable with only bounded-width gates, yet allowing even logarithmic-width multi-qubit gates suffices to achieve constant-depth synthesis. These results also reveal new structure in shallow quantum circuit complexity. We give a depth-preserving real simulation of bounded-error decision computation, showing that every depth-$d$ QAC circuit can be simulated in depth $O(d)$ using only Hadamard, $X$, and generalized Toffoli gates. Thus arbitrary single-qubit rotations and complex amplitudes do not increase the bounded-error decision power of QAC, even at constant depth. In particular, this reduces the long-standing conjecture Parity$\notin$QAC$^0$ to proving a Parity lower bound against circuits consisting only of Hadamard, $X$, and generalized Toffoli gates. More generally, this real normal form exposes a direct correspondence between the standard shallow-depth quantum circuit hierarchy and a hierarchy of Forrelation circuits with restricted oracle families.

Digital quantum simulation (DQS) is one of the most promising applications of quantum computing. Trotterised DQS models quantum dynamics by decomposing the evolution into a sequence of gate-based Trotter steps. Using larger Trotter steps reduces the required gate count, but it is now understood that the Trotterisation step size cannot be increased beyond a certain threshold value, beyond which there is a sudden breakdown in simulation accuracy, due to the onset of quantum chaos. To date, this behaviour has only been studied for closed systems not subjected to the environmental noise and decoherence to which real-world quantum computers are highly sensitive. In this work, we study a range of experimentally relevant open-system quantum simulator models and show that Trotterisation thresholds persist even when open-system effects are included, even in the long-time, steady-state limit, once all coherence has been lost. We show that open DQS can accurately reproduce the dynamics of open target systems prior to the threshold, but still exhibits a sudden performance breakdown beyond it. We introduce new, statistical techniques to rigorously characterise the onset of quantum chaos beyond the Trotterisation threshold for both approximately unitary and genuine dissipative quantum chaos, based on random matrix theory (RMT), building on techniques developed for closed systems. Finally, we demonstrate that dissipative quantum chaos emerges when the dissipation is in balance with the presence of underlying unitary quantum chaos; the dissipation must be strong enough to induce genuinely dissipative behaviour, yet not so strong as to suppress the underlying chaotic structure.

This study looks at how the entangling structure of a variational quantum classifier (VQC) relates to its performance in breast cancer diagnosis, using the Wisconsin Diagnostic Breast Cancer (WDBC) dataset. We tested three three-qubit configurations that share the same EfficientSU2 ansatz, COBYLA optimizer, and stratified five-fold cross-validation, but differ in their entangling structure: a single- repetition Ising-type coupling (A), a two-repetition linear Ising-type coupling (B), and a fully connected Heisenberg-type coupling (C). Entanglement was measured with the von Neumann entropy and the Wootters concurrence. From A to C, the mean entropy rose from 0.40 to 0.71, accuracy rose from 92.98% to 93.68%, and F1-score rose from 90.32% to 91.28%. Configuration C was also the most stable across folds. However, the fold-level correlations between entanglement and performance were weak and not significant. Richer topologies also increase circuit expressivity, so the two effects cannot be fully separated. These results show an association, not a proven causal link, between entangling structure and VQC performance.

Generating macroscopic quantum entanglement is central to quantum metrology. While traversing a quantum critical point yields Heisenberg-limited precision, adiabatic schemes are restricted by slow dynamics and decoherence. Here, we propose a non-adiabatic Floquet protocol in a single-cavity Bose-Einstein condensate to circumvent these limitations. By applying rapid rotations and phase jumps, we dynamically synthesize effective Two-Axis Twisting (TAT) interactions from native longitudinal couplings. To evaluate this beyond mean-field limits, we develop an exact finite-state automaton Matrix Product Operator (MPO) encoding that strictly bounds the virtual dimension to $\mathcal{O}(1)$, enabling exact DMRG and TDVP simulations for large systems. Tracking non-equilibrium Floquet TAT dynamics and environmental decoherence for $N=10^3$ ensembles, we demonstrate that the quench rapidly generates Heisenberg-limited spin squeezing ($ξ_R^2 \sim 1/N$). The microsecond timescale of this protocol decouples the generation process from typical millisecond decoherence, with phenomenological models revealing an optimal extraction time near $t \approx 3.26~μs$. This work establishes a feasible route for realizing Heisenberg-limited metrology in current cavity-QED platforms.

We investigate the Seebeck coefficient as a probe of collective transport behavior in graphene and quark-gluon plasma using a kinetic-theory approach in the hydrodynamic regime. The Seebeck coefficient is obtained by solving the Boltzmann transport equation in the relaxation-time approximation. At high-charge-carrier density, corresponding to the Fermi-liquid domain, our result approaches the behavior expected from the conventional Mott relation. In contrast, significant deviations from the Mott relation are observed in the low-carrier-density regime, corresponding to the Dirac fluid domain. These facts are in good agreement with experimental Seebeck coefficient data for graphene. This behavior indicates the emergence of collective hydrodynamic transport in graphene. The enthalpy per particle plays a key role for the Seebeck coefficient in the Dirac fluid regime. We extend our formalism to the ultra-relativistic quark-gluon plasma. A similar deviation from the Mott relation is observed, supporting a similar fluid response in the Seebeck coefficient across two markedly different strongly correlated quantum systems - graphene and quark matter.

Low-energy estimation and state preparation for general $k$-local Hamiltonians are fundamental challenges in quantum complexity theory. Buhrman et al.~ [BGLGST, PRL 2025] recently broke the natural Grover bound $O^\ast(2^{n/2})$ for both problems, with the improvement depending on the relative accuracy $\varepsilon$ and the locality $k$. In this work, we present faster exponential quantum algorithms for these problems, where the binary entropy function governs the runtime exponent. For sufficiently small $\varepsilon/k$, our algorithms improve the exponent by a factor of $\log(k/\varepsilon)$ over [BGLGST, PRL 2025]. Our main technical result is an entropy-governed lower bound on the dimension of the Hamiltonian's low-energy subspace, obtained by depolarizing its ground state. For fixed $k$, this bound is optimal up to constant factors in the exponent. The same framework yields tighter bounds for Heisenberg, $XY$, and Ising models on arbitrary interaction graphs.

Where uniform and chiral superradiant boundaries meet in a quantum Rabi ring, the quadratic theory leaves a degenerate chiral ladder with finite radial width. We show that adding one chiral quantum widens the ladder's radial wave function; the quartic coupling then raises the uniform quadratic coefficient. The resulting gap is proportional to the uniform zero-point variance divided by the atomic-to-cavity frequency ratio $η$: it closes as $η^{-2/3}$ while the variance grows as $η^{1/3}$. A quartic Schrödinger equation fixes both observables and the first correction to their ratio, as confirmed by full spin-photon diagonalization. A triangle of collective spins with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya exchange obeys the same relation, with a different coefficient and a correction of opposite sign. The ring's three-coordinate spectrum connects this gap to the neighboring $η^{-1}$ and $η^{-1/3}$ laws and to photon-number saturation.

The XOR of two or more independent random permutations (XoP) is the prototypical pseudorandom function built from permutations achieving security beyond the birthday bound. The classical security of the XoP construction is well established, but its security against quantum attacks that query XoP in superposition has remained widely open. We prove that the XOR of $r\ge 2$ random permutations over $\{0,1\}^n$ is indistinguishable from a random function by any $q$-query quantum algorithm with advantage \[O\left(\min\left\{\frac{q^3}{2^{rn}},\frac{q^{1.5}}{2^{(r-0.5)n}},\frac{1}{2^{(r-1.5)n}}\right\}\right)\] for all $q\ll 2^n$. In particular, XoP remains secure throughout the entire query range, far beyond the $2^{n/3}$ bound due to quantum collision finding attacks. This is the first construction from permutations that achieves the quantum version of the beyond birthday bound security. We also present several heuristic attacks suggesting the tightness of our bounds in ranges $q\le 2^{n/2}$ and $\approx 2^n$. We use a Fourier-analytic variant of the polynomial method: the advantage of any $q$-query quantum algorithm is controlled by the Fourier components of degree at most $2q$, or by $2q$ input-output data of the construction. The norms of most components are bounded well, proving the bound $2^{-(r-3/2)n}$. The norm of low-degree components turn out to be too large for the bounds $q^3/2^{rn}$ and $q^{1.5}/2^{(r-0.5)n}$. We reinterpret these low-degree components as (sums of) advantages of the other problems. For example, the degree-2 and degree-4 terms are interpreted as the advantages against random functions with and without \emph{planted collisions}, which in turn are bounded using Zhandry's small-range distributions. Along the way, we prove a new bound for the small-range indistinguishability for (ironically) large ranges, which is of independent interest.

Multi-tenant computing enables providers of commercial cloud quantum processors to rent disjoint sectors of a device to independent users. Average gate error, which cloud quantum computing providers report, does not determine how much one tenant learns about another. We propose an information-theoretic notion of information leakage across co-tenancy boundaries stemming from quantum state distinguishability. We measure this leakage on commercially-available 156-qubit (IBM Kingston) and 20-qubit (IQM Garnet) devices. Boundaries with identical benchmarked error can offer significantly different amount of information leakage because standard reported measures of error are blind to coherent-versus-stochastic nature of the error while the proposed notion of information leakage is not. A uniform Pauli randomisation implemented over the victim's whole register is used as a defence mechanism to reduce the information leakage to zero. The defence theoretically does not incur a fidelity cost, but the experiments show a non-trivial degradation caused by accumulation of errors. We provide a specific call-for-action to the providers of quantum cloud computing to report information leakage in addition to standard error rates in their device datasheet to enable users to compute privacy and security risks prior to engagement with the device.

We study the Heisenberg dynamics of continuum fermions in $\IR^d$ interacting through a pair potential. For a large class of nonconstant pair potentials and under suitable assumptions on the dispersion relation and external potential, we prove that the dynamics fails to be pointwise-norm continuous even on the gauge-invariant CAR algebra. An automatic-continuity argument then shows that neither the CAR algebra nor its gauge-invariant subalgebra is invariant under the dynamics, with non-invariance occurring for almost all times.

We experimentally realize a topological defect state of the quantum Rabi model in a single trapped $^{171}\mathrm{Yb}^{+}$ ion. The state is supported by a tunable interface arising from the oscillator's intrinsic number-dependent coupling in the Fock-state-lattice representation. We independently prepare the state at each sideband-phase setting and reconstruct its motional phase-space distribution using characteristic-function tomography. The resulting Wigner-centroid trajectories exhibit winding numbers of one and zero in the two coupling regimes. Changing the carrier amplitude rescales the trajectories while preserving their windings. Carrier-amplitude modulation provides a complementary dynamical probe, yielding a spin response consistent with the excitation gaps and accessible transition channels from the defect state. The experiment connects topological defect-state physics in a nonuniform synthetic lattice to the measurable phase-space geometry of a hybrid spin-boson system.

In distributed quantum circuit simulation, a poorly shaped partition can halve performance before computation begins. Evaluation on Fugaku across 764 validated configurations (twelve algorithms, thirteen torus partition geometries, and six rank densities for 39-qubit simulations on 1,024 nodes) shows that partition geometry dominates runtime. All twelve algorithms run 1.73-2.31x slower on flat partitions than on near-cubic ones despite identical data transfer, proving the slowdown stems from network delivery rather than communication volume. This penalty scales with the 3D torus partition aspect ratio (runtime $\propto a^{0.39}$, $r = 0.72$). Rank density is secondary, cutting runtime by 11% at 16 ranks per node only on compact geometries. Ultimately, requesting a near-cubic partition with 16 ranks per node roughly halves time-to-solution relative to flat partitions, which also consume 1.82x more energy. A simulator-free all-to-all microbenchmark confirms a similar geometry penalty for collective-dominated workloads.

A periodic resonant emitter array coupled to a one-dimensional waveguide can act as a mirror. A typical example is a Bragg mirror, where emitters are spaced by multiples of half wavelengths and collectively enhance light reflection. Two such mirrors form an effective cavity that hosts bound states in the continuum (BICs). However, generating and detecting the spatial profiles of such BICs has proven challenging. Here, we experimentally demonstrate BICs in cavity magnonics using two periodic ferrimagnetic-sphere arrays and a probe sphere in a dual-open-waveguide architecture. We realize both Bragg and anti-Bragg cavities, whose mirrors have different lattice constants. In the Bragg cavity, there are degenerate supermodes formed by mirror spheres. We show that a single dark supermode coherently couples to the probe magnon in the cavity region, forming two polaritons whose splitting scales with both the probe-sphere size and the number of mirror spheres. By contrast, the anti-Bragg cavity has bright and dark supermodes in a bandgap, substantially changing the magnon-cavity interaction. Moreover, by moving the probe sphere, we perform position-dependent detection of the cavity field, highlighting the role of BICs in these cavities. Our flexible experimental setup with a scanning probe opens possibilities to detect other exotic states created by light-matter interaction, to interface with superconducting circuits in hybrid quantum networks, and to study non-Hermitian physics with Bragg and anti-Bragg cavities.

Topological phases are governed by discrete symmetries that protect boundary modes against local perturbations. When translational periodicity is absent, the bulk states also become localized, so that a topological edge state can no longer be distinguished from them by spatial localization alone. Here, we investigate the topological edge state (TES) and bulk eigenstates of the anisotropic quantum Rabi model (AQRM) in a trapped-ion quantum simulator. The AQRM hosts a topological phase in a one-dimensional synthetic lattice, whose translational symmetry is broken by the non-uniform couplings scaling with the site index. While both the TES and bulk states show localized distributions, we find that the TES exhibits well-defined chirality and near-complete spin--boson separability as signatures of the topological phase, in contrast to the bulk states. Phase-space tomography further reveals that the bosonic component of the TES is a squeezed vacuum state, with squeezing up to 6.45 dB. These results identify the TES through its intrinsic topological signatures and establish eigenstate-level characterization as a route to probing topological phenomena.

We reconstruct elastic $s$-wave neutron-proton ($np$) phase shifts from trapped spectra measured on IBM Aachen using a compressed RODEO circuit. For a schematic square-well interaction represented by classically constructed four-dimensional effective Hamiltonians, four positive-energy levels at five trap strengths supply twenty inputs to classical modified effective range expansion (MERE) extrapolation to free space. The six-cycle factorized geometric-time RODEO implementation (FG-R6) combines ancilla reuse, exact query-phase separation, post-compilation binding, and six numerically optimized geometric evolution times. Numerical cycle-count tests support this choice within the adopted local spectral tolerances. At the same three-qubit width and equal shot budgets, FG-R6 reduces median compiled depth and two-qubit-gate count by 33.1% and 37.2% relative to ten-cycle dynamic direct RODEO (direct R10), increases the median fitted amplitude, and lowers median finite-shot energy uncertainty from 0.610 to 0.534 keV. For this dataset's primary fit on the 0.1-30.0 MeV grid, the maximum central phase-shift deviation from exact-energy MERE decreases from $0.842^\circ$ to $0.163^\circ$, despite a larger root-mean-square (RMS) trapped-energy deviation. The full-grid gain arises mainly in the low-energy extrapolation region; direct R10 has slightly smaller residuals relative to the same reference on the 10.0-30.0 MeV common energy-interpolation subset. The FG-R6 central curve differs from the analytical square-well solution by at most $0.156^\circ$. Fit-form sensitivity remains appreciable and is assessed separately from finite-shot uncertainty. This reduced-space benchmark connects RODEO circuit compression to nuclear continuum observables and shows why circuit performance must be assessed through the scattering reconstruction and its energy range, not spectral RMS errors alone.

Ordered search is the problem of locating a target element in a sorted list of size $n$ using comparison queries. Classically, binary search requires $\lceil \log_2 n\rceil$ queries, which is optimal. Quantum algorithms offer a constant-factor speedup, but the precise constant has been a longstanding open question. We close this gap by exhibiting two new quantum algorithms for ordered search, each using the optimal $\frac{1}π\ln n+o(\log n)$ queries. The first, discovered by Claude Fable 5, is a simple zero-error algorithm derived from a continuum relaxation of the problem. The second, discovered by GPT-5.6-Sol (informed by Claude's zero-error algorithm), is an exact algorithm based on an analytic solution of the polynomial program of Farhi, Goldstone, Gutmann, and Sipser.

The Schmidt number quantifies the dimensionality of entanglement in bipartite quantum states. We investigate when the spectrum of a state on $\mathbb{C}^d \otimes \mathbb{C}^d$ alone guarantees that its Schmidt number is not maximal. By deriving spectral bounds for $(d-1)$-block positive operators, we prove that $\mathrm{LS}_p\subseteq \mathrm{ASN}_{d-1}$ for $p\leq \lfloor d^2/2\rfloor$, where $\mathrm{LS}_p$ denotes the set of states whose largest eigenvalue does not exceed the sum of their $p$ smallest eigenvalues, and $\mathrm{ASN}_{d-1}$ denotes the set of states whose Schmidt number remains at most $d-1$ under all global unitaries. This also yields a simple sufficient condition involving only the largest eigenvalue. As an application, we show that states satisfying the reduction criterion under arbitrary global unitaries belong to $\mathrm{ASN}_{d-1}$ in every dimension. This subsumes the earlier result that absolutely positive partial transpose states belong to $\mathrm{ASN}_{d-1}$. The global unitary requirement is nevertheless essential: for every $d\geq3$, we construct states of maximal Schmidt number satisfying the reduction criterion on both subsystems.

We ask whether non-signaling correlations shared between the sender and receiver can increase the Rényi capacity of a classical channel. Non-signaling boxes form a strictly larger class than that of encoder and decoder pairs assisted by shared randomness, so the usual argument based on independent preprocessing and postprocessing is insufficient, and the constraints defining such boxes are linear in the box, while the Rényi capacity depends on the channel nonlinearly. We resolve this mismatch with a variational approach based on the Legendre transform, which recasts the capacity as an extremum over a family of affine functionals in which the channel appears linearly. Combining this method with separate arguments for the Shannon capacity and endpoint orders, we prove that no non-signaling box can raise the Rényi capacity at any order, from order zero through the Shannon capacity to the limiting order at infinity. Consequently, non-signaling simulation cannot increase the random-coding or sphere-packing exponent below capacity, or decrease the strong-converse exponent above capacity.

We theoretically investigate quantum-light storage in an effective $Λ$-type system formed by a pair of tunable superconducting qubits coupled to a semi-infinite transmission line and separated by half a wavelength. The frequency detuning between the qubits directly couples the superradiant excited state and the subradiant metastable state. By adjusting the qubit detuning, the system exhibits a controllable spectral response accompanied by slow-light behavior. Dynamically controlling the detuning enables an incident quantum field to be mapped onto the subradiant collective state, stored as a long-lived excitation, and subsequently retrieved on demand. Our results establish the proposed system as a minimal and tunable quantum-memory architecture for scalable superconducting quantum networks.

Nakayama found the way to limit the contexts in the Döring-Isham topos quantum theory and unified such limitation and the definition of probability as a single choice of topology. We explain how this unification supports the Bayesian perspective where the probability changes as data is obtained. We describe this change as a local shift of the applicability of a predictive theory and apply it to quantum computing.

Symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases in quantum spin chains are distinguished by topological indices. Ogata's operator-algebraic indices apply to a broad range of symmetry classes without requiring continuous symmetry, whereas the elementary twist index of Tasaki requires $\mathrm{U}(1)$ symmetry. We prove their equivalence in the common setting of integer-spin chains with on-site $\mathrm{U}(1)\rtimes\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and a symmetric locally-unique gapped ground state, without assuming translation invariance or a matrix product representation. A charge-fluctuation estimate yields a strong-limit construction of half-chain rotations with their phases fixed. An exact group commutator identity then identifies the Ogata index with the limit of local twist expectations and gives an explicit error bound. This provides a computable formula when a lower bound on the gap and the relevant ground-state expectations are available. As an application, a previous twist-index calculation determines the Ogata index to be $(-1)^S$ for the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain under explicit uniqueness and boundary-field gap assumptions. The author formulated the problem and proposed the basic strategy, while ChatGPT made substantial contributions to the development of the proof.

Spectral fingerprints in optical absorption and emission have typically been used as a signature of exciton localization in twisted moiré bilayers. However, the mechanism by which excitons become confined to specific stacking sites and their associated optical signature is experimentally unresolved. Here, we directly visualize in real space how tuning the change in extent of structural reconstruction leads to localization and delocalization of moiré excitons in the WSe2/WS2 moiré superlattice. Using cryogenic monochromated electron energy loss spectroscopy, together with first-principles GW-Bethe Salpeter equation calculations and optical spectroscopy, we uncover the physical mechanism that drives the correlation between twist-angle-dependent structural transformations, the real-space localization of moiré excitons, and their optical signatures. Surprisingly, and in contrast to the prevailing understanding, we show that the emergence of new moiré exciton resonances in the optical spectra alone is insufficient to establish exciton localization. Instead, the extent of structural reconstruction and external strain drives exciton localization, leading to new design principles for engineering moiré excitons and strain-aware quantum optoelectronic devices.

Polarization-entangled photon pairs are essential resources for quantum information technologies, yet realizing compact sources with intrinsically controllable entanglement remains challenging. Van der Waals (vdW) nonlinear materials such as NbOCl2 provide atomically thin platforms for quantum light generation, yet their native crystalline anisotropies as natural materials impose limitations on accessible quantum states. Here, we develop a resonant vdW nonlinear metasurface based on NbOCl2 that exploits its intrinsic optical anisotropy to engineer polarization-dependent nonlinear responses. The anisotropic optical dispersion enables selective manipulation of resonant modes, resulting in a three-order-of-magnitude enhancement of the nonlinear response along the c axis. By further tailoring these resonant modes, we redistribute the effective second-order nonlinear susceptibility tensor between orthogonal polarization channels, balancing the spontaneous parametric down-conversion pathways along the b and c axes. This enables polarization-entangled photon generation with a measured fidelity of up to 92%. Our work establishes metasurface-enabled nonlinear optical engineering as a strategy for enhancing and controlling quantum light generation in vdW materials, providing a pathway toward scalable quantum photonic platforms.

We implement the machine-learned Skala exchange-correlation (XC) functional natively in CP2K using its Gaussian and plane-wave (GPW) and Gaussian and augmented-plane-wave (GAPW) methods. A joint one-centre reconstruction of density, density gradients, and kinetic-energy density before functional evaluation preserves mixed gradient terms and nonlocal couplings between smooth and atom-local contributions in all-electron and pseudopotential calculations. An XC-specific GAPW representation resolves rapidly varying local contributions on atom-centred grids, reducing plane-wave requirements for pseudopotential calculations. The implementation includes Brillouin-zone sampling and point-group symmetry reduction. With sufficiently flexible orbital bases, it retains the molecular benchmark accuracy of our earlier GauXC formulation. All-electron Skala-D3(BJ) calculations yield a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.54 kJ mol$^{-1}$ against diffusion Monte Carlo for crystalline CO$_2$, NH$_3$, and urea, spanning dispersion, quadrupolar electrostatics, and hydrogen bonding. For all thirteen DMC-ICE13 phases, the MAEs are 1.16 kJ mol$^{-1}$ for absolute lattice energies and 0.82 kJ mol$^{-1}$ for the twelve relative energies to ice Ih. At fixed experimental geometries, all-electron/mixed-core calculations give a band-gap MAE of 0.43 eV on a 15-material set, substantially below commonly used semilocal functionals and comparable to widely used hybrid functionals. The LC10 benchmark nevertheless reveals systematically underestimated equilibrium lattice constants, indicating structural overbinding. This framework connects molecular Skala to condensed-phase electronic structure and enables future development using periodic many-body reference data.

2-local qubit Hamiltonian simulation, a fundamental task in quantum computing, is widely applied in various applications. This paper presents QBX, the first quantum compiler designed for 2-local qubit Hamiltonian simulation on quantum chiplet architectures. Existing general-purpose quantum compilers for chiplet architectures target quantum programs at the gate level and miss optimizations requiring high-level semantics of Hamiltonian simulation. Conversely, existing domain-specific compilers for Hamiltonian simulation are designed for monolithic architectures, and their limited scalability and inability to adapt to the heterogeneity of chiplet architectures lead to sub-optimal circuit outputs. QBX implements a scalable hierarchical approach to reduce both the amount and distance of cross-chiplet communications. It integrates the highway mechanism, a chiplet-oriented solution for efficient long-range qubit communication, to diminish cross-chiplet interaction costs. Furthermore, QBX efficiently aggregates 2-local Pauli strings into multi-target controlled gates, harnessing highways for deep optimization. Our evaluations show that QBX markedly outperforms both general-purpose and domain-specific compilers in circuit depth and operation count, while scaling to much larger 2-local Hamiltonian simulations.

Quantum annealing is a promising form of quantum computation, but it slows down at a small energy gap $Δ$ during the anneal, and the errors it makes there remain undetected. We introduce cavity quantum annealing, in which a cavity mode of frequency $O(1)\ggΔ$, coupled mid-schedule, swaps these errors into photons. In the $p$-spin model, this reduces the annealing time to nearly the square root of that required without the cavity. Moreover, counting the photons certifies the result: high-photon runs, with an $O(1)$ yield, reach a ground-state fidelity above $99.99\%$ orders of magnitude sooner, a gain that grows exponentially with system size. A pre-loaded photon instead runs the swap in reverse, preparing an excited state. More broadly, our work shows that cavities can enhance computations performed with qubits, paving the way toward high-fidelity quantum state preparation by quantum annealing.

We study the computational complexity of approximating the minimum distance of a stabilizer code. Classically, the minimum distance problem is NP-hard to approximate even to within an additive gap linear in the block length. For quantum codes, however, the reductions of Kapshikar and Kundu and of Grigorescu, Jha and Samperton reach only an additive $O(\sqrt{N})$ gap in the block length $N$. We close this gap and, in a separate direction, initiate the fine-grained study of the problem. We show that no randomized algorithm approximates the distance to within an additive $αN$, for a constant $α> 0$, unless $\mathsf{NP} \subseteq \mathsf{coRP}$. In the fine-grained setting, for every $\varepsilon > 0$, no randomized $2^{(1-\varepsilon)κ}\,\mathrm{poly}(N)$-time algorithm computes the distance of a code with $κ$ logical qubits unless SETH falls; and no randomized $2^{o(N)}$-time algorithm approximates the distance to within a linear additive gap, on instances where block length, number of logical qubits, and gap are simultaneously linear, unless non-uniform Gap-ETH falls.

We present a first-quantization, all-electron, full-potential Kohn-Sham density functional theory method for quantum computers, based on a classically optimized quantum-circuit eigensolver for the self-consistent field (SCF) eigenproblems in any orthonormal basis. The plane-wave-orthonormalized-orbital (PWOO) basis combines plane waves with atomic orbitals (AOs) orthonormalized against them and one another. The eigensolver has a dual-basis form: after full-basis bootstrap steps, it solves each SCF step in a contracted basis of $K$ functions ($\lceil\log_2 K\rceil$ qubits), updated in the full basis when the residual outside it exceeds a threshold. For an H$_8$ chain (SVWN, $K=8$), the state-vector-emulated SCF agrees with classical calculations within 0.02 mHa for 32768 plane waves and PWOO bases up to cc-pVTZ; contraction changes these PWOO energies by at most 5.7 $μ$Ha. With emulated shot noise, the STO-3G PWOO SCF converges near the noise-free fixed point. On IonQ Forte-1, three-qubit-register readout reproduces the noise-free PWOO-AO energy difference within one standard deviation.

A pair of photons entering a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer will bunch or anti-bunch depending on the symmetry of their state in the measured degree of freedom, resulting in constructive or destructive interference. For photon pairs generated through spontaneous parametric down-conversion, this symmetry can be engineered through linear transformations and projections applied to the photon pairs, or by tailoring the pump field. Here, we adopt the latter approach to demonstrate that the pump's parity affects the shape and frequency of the transition from constructive to destructive interference. We demonstrate this concept theoretically and experimentally using a rotating structured pump mode encoded in the Hermite-Gaussian and Laguerre-Gaussian bases. In the former case, we show that the transition exhibits a rich structure unique to the mode family, resulting in enhanced sensitivity as the mode order increases. In the latter case, we demonstrate, as with NOON states, an integer enhancement in angular resolution by a factor proportional to the orbital angular momentum content, thereby opening the possibility of Hong-Ou-Mandel-enhanced rotation sensing.

Controlling photon statistics is pivotal to many applications in classical and quantum photonics. While steady-state photon statistics have been widely studied, dynamically manipulating these statistical properties in time remains elusive. Herein, we propose a scheme to actively control photon statistics between bunching and antibunching regimes through quantum interference. Our approach relies on a Raman-coupled cavity-atom system with parametric amplification, where time modulating the detuning of the intermediate state allows us to either deepen the photon blockade or enhance photon bunching. Simultaneous modulation of the cavity and intermediate-state detunings produces antibunching that cannot be achieved under static conditions or by modulating either detuning alone. Because the modulation is periodic, the antibunching reappears at regular time intervals, enabling time-gated photon antibunching under continuous-wave operation at a repetition rate determined by the modulation frequency. These results show a versatile mechanism based on Raman-assisted quantum interference for dynamically engineering photon correlations.

The quantum data processing inequality asserts that quantum relative entropy is monotonically non-increasing under quantum channels. Here, we promote this fundamental inequality to an exact equality via boundary and surface Poisson integral representations across a complex strip. The relative-entropy loss is resolved into two independent, nonnegative physical mechanisms: an operational Petz recovery component governing state reconstructibility, and a boundary term measuring the mismatch of relative modular dynamics. We further express the loss as the measured relative entropy between the original state and its averaged Petz recovery state plus a nonnegative variational remainder. For the Belavkin--Staszewski (BS) loss, analogous integral representations yield a decomposition into negative log Uhlmann fidelity with an averaged reconstruction plus a nonnegative variational remainder. Furthermore, we establish recovery bounds at any prescribed modular parameter, including the canonical unrotated Petz map, with optimal square-root scaling in the relative entropy loss. The prefactors depend on distinct-eigenvalue counts or logarithmic spectral quantities, improving upon the inverse-power dependence on small eigenvalues in previous bounds.

We formulate the low-energy theory of superconducting pairing in the geometric algebra $Cl_{3,0}$. Conventional BCS mean-field theory and its extensions ($s$-, $p$-, $d$-wave, etc.) have algebraic counterparts in an eight-dimensional real multivector space. The construction is a two-level projection: matrix blocks are represented as Clifford multivectors, and their grade-0 projected geometric products extract the scalar blocks from which Hamiltonians are built. The result is an algebraic reconstruction, physically equivalent to the standard complex-matrix formulation. In this reconstruction, the dichotomy of pairing channels acquires an algebraic root: it follows from the fermionic identity $B^\dagger(V)=-B^\dagger(V^{\mathsf T})$, and the Fierz rearrangement is realized by the map $Φ:G\mapsto Ge_{31}$ (with $e_{31}^2=-1$). This yields a kernel/matrix dictionary: at the effective-kernel level grades $0\oplus3$ correspond to spin singlets and grades $1\oplus2$ to triplets; at the pairing-matrix level the singlet plane is $\mathrm{span}\{e_2,e_{31}\}$. The BCS limit has a double grade identity: kernel grade 0 (scalar glue) and vertex grade 2, a bivector ($iσ_2\leftrightarrow e_{31}$). We state three algebraic results: (i) a decomposition theorem for BdG quantum geometry with a null-texture criterion, applied to the chiral-state controversy in CsV$_3$Sb$_5$; (ii) a Fierz sign duality in the four-dimensional Minkowski algebra, with a chirality-reversal extension to two-node Weyl-semimetal models; (iii) an error bound and condition-number structure for tomographic reconstruction under a linear-response probe model. Illustrations include a glue-generation mechanism, a one-loop algebraic renormalization flow whose feeding constant coincides in magnitude with the $\mathfrak{su}(2)$ Casimir, closed-form $μ=0$ inter-node spectra, and a UTe$_2$ two-phase analysis.

Understanding quantum phases of matter has long relied on physicists' intuition and mathematical tools such as symmetry and topology. Remarkably successful as these approaches have been, they provide no universal way to explore a Hamiltonian space whose organizing principle is not known in advance. In this work, we introduce a fully autonomous system combining differentiable programming and unsupervised learning for quantum phase discovery. The search evaluates ground-state data along an adaptive trajectory rather than on a predetermined parameter grid. We demonstrate the system with three different solvers and benchmark it against random sampling at equal ground-state-evaluation budgets. On a generalized cluster chain hosting up to $200$ distinct phases, the search finds up to $25$ more phases at the same budget, and matches random sampling given thirty times its budget. On a $50$-parameter Chern insulator, it reaches sectors not obtained by the simple harmonic constructions considered here, in a family whose inverse problem remains open, while recovering all sectors found by sampling. Our results establish autonomous, gradient-driven exploration of Hamiltonian space as a practical route to discovering quantum phases without phase labels or a prescribed target phase.

We investigate the dynamics of full counting statistics (FCS) of the growth of the total number of fermions in a one-dimensional non-interacting lattice subjected to a localized particle gain (source) at one edge. The dynamics of the setup is modeled by the Gorini--Kossakowski--Sudarshan--Lindblad (GKSL) quantum master equation. We recast the counting problem that involves counting particle number at every lattice site to a problem where only the local injected site is involved. We employ the Schwinger-Keldysh path integral formalism within the GKSL framework and derive an analytical expression for the cumulant generating function at arbitrary times and obtain a Levitov-Lesovik type formula in the long-time limit, earlier derived for boundary driven setups in the steady-state. For clean lattices with either short- or long-range hopping, supporting single-particle delocalized eigenstates, we show that all cumulants grow linearly with time in the asymptotic regime. Our analytical results are in excellent agreement with direct numerical simulations. These findings establish a general framework for characterizing FCS and quantum fluctuations in driven open fermionic systems with localized particle injection.

The negatively charged boron vacancy is an optically addressable spin centre in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), but bringing two vacancies together introduces electronic interactions absent from the isolated-defect picture. Here we use density-functional theory at total charge q = -2 to show that atomic-scale placement reverses the preferred collinear spin alignment in monolayer hBN. Among seven configurations, the closest pair, separated by 4.3 angstrom, favours parallel alignment by 27.6 meV within the semilocal approximation. Moving one vacancy by a single lattice vector reverses the preference, and a 7.5 angstrom pair favours antiparallel alignment by 50.7 meV. Numerical controls change these two reference splittings by less than 1 meV; hybrid-functional calculations retain their signs while substantially changing their magnitudes. Local distortions connect the antiparallel preference at 7.5 angstrom to changes in vacancy-state hybridization along an intervening atomic chain. The closest pair instead exhibits a contact-localized spin-density contrast and constrained angular energies that depart from the bilinear Heisenberg form. These results identify a placement-sensitive regime of interacting defects and provide a microscopic foundation for investigating coupled spin centres in atomically thin materials.

Quantum physics-informed neural networks (QPINNs) solve partial differential equations (PDEs) by training parameterized quantum circuits against physics-based residuals, yet the role of the embedding that maps coordinates into quantum states remains insufficiently understood. In this research, we introduce a unified embedding framework that formulates embedding as a functional transformation shaping the feature representation available to the variational circuit, and we propose two embeddings within it. The Linear Quantum Neural Network Trainable Embedding QPINN (LQNN-TE-QPINN) generates data-dependent features with an auxiliary quantum circuit and adds them to the input coordinates, instead of multiplying them as in our previous formulation. The adaptive-frequency QPINN (AdaFreq-QPINN) promotes the frequency-scaling factors of an arccos-Chebyshev encoding to trainable parameters. We evaluate both against direct and fixed analytical frequency encodings and alternative hybrid architectures on one- and two-dimensional Burgers equations. In one dimension, LQNN-TE-QPINN achieves a relative $L_2$ error of 0.0916 with 720 trainable parameters, compared with 0.4501 for direct-encoding QPINN and 0.1233 for a locally adaptive classical physics-informed neural network with approximately eleven times more parameters, while AdaFreq-QPINN attains the lowest error among the analytical embeddings with only four additional parameters. In two dimensions, LQNN-TE-QPINN attains the lowest training objective, although its solution error is not clearly separated from that of a data re-uploading QPINN. Under simulated hardware noise, LQNN-TE-QPINN retains the lowest absolute derivative error while degrading most relative to its noiseless baseline. These results demonstrate that embedding design substantially influences the approximation and optimization behavior of QPINNs.

Quantum linear-system algorithms access the coefficient matrix through a block-encoding oracle $U_A$ and the right-hand side through a state-preparation oracle $U_b$. The optimal query complexities of these two oracles are known separately: $O(κ\log(1/\varepsilon))$ queries to $U_A$ and $O(κ/s)$ queries to $U_b$, where $s=α\|A^{-1}b\|$. Whether a single algorithm can achieve both bounds simultaneously has remained open. We resolve this question affirmatively. Given a constant-factor estimate of $s$, we give a quantum linear-system algorithm that prepares the normalized solution to error $\varepsilon$ using simultaneously $ O\left(κ\log\frac1\varepsilon\right)$ queries to $U_A$ and $O\left(κ/{s}\right)$ queries to $U_b$. The algorithm separates state preparation from precision refinement, so only the matrix-query count depends on the target accuracy. We also prove a matching same-instance worst-case lower bound: for every quantum linear-system algorithm and every solution-norm scale, there exists a single Hermitian instance on which that algorithm requires both $Ω(κ\log(1/\varepsilon))$ matrix queries and $Ω(κ/s)$ state-preparation queries. Thus the two oracle complexities can be optimized simultaneously, and the resulting bounds are jointly optimal.

We study three particles on the square lattice with contact interactions of infinite strength, for all total quasimomenta, for three statistics: three identical bosons, two identical fermions plus a third particle, and two identical bosons plus a third particle. Previous work treated only the trimer and zero quasimomentum. Here the atom-dimer sector is analyzed on the whole Brillouin zone. A Feshbach-Schur reduction onto the infinitely degenerate eigenvalue 1 of the pair-contact operator gives explicit effective Hamiltonians with proved first-order error. The threshold problem reduces to a 4x4 Hermitian matrix criterion built from the two-point resistances of the square lattice, and hence to a quartic polynomial. This yields the complete atom-dimer zone and the critical mass ratio on the Brillouin zone, with bound between 1 and pi/(pi-2), and closed forms at all symmetry points. We prove: the zones in closed form; the critical mass ratio with exact value pi/(pi-2) at zero quasimomentum, reproducing a numerical value; at most two atom-dimer states for every quasimomentum and mass ratio; the onset laws, an essential singularity on the zone boundary and a linear-over-logarithm onset in the pure p-wave; two exact dualities showing that a change of statistics is equivalent to a shift of quasimomentum by pi; and the global range of the second fermionic threshold. The onset laws admit a renormalization-group reading: the inverse lattice Green function is a marginal s-wave coupling, binding energies arise by dimensional transmutation with lattice scale 16, and the zone boundary is of marginal (BCS/Kondo) type rather than of Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type. All constants are verified independently by lattice quadrature, computer algebra, exact diagonalisation, and infinite-lattice solvers.

We show that stronger interactions protect periodically driven time-crystal order against dephasing but destabilise order under random multipolar drives, and that coordination matters beyond the total interaction strength. We studied a disordered kicked Ising model of $N=12$ and $16$ spins with imperfect $π$ pulses and per-site dephasing by exact diagonalisation, comparing a periodic drive, random multipolar drives of order $n=0,1,2$ and the Thue-Morse sequence, and separated coupling strength from coordination by comparing a grid with a ring at equal total interaction strength $zJ$. For the periodic drive the coherence time scales approximately as $1/γ$, and stronger coupling reduces the transverse tilt on which dephasing acts. For multipolar drives of order $n\ge1$, doubling the coupling on a ring shortens the coherence time to $0.54$ ($n=1$), $0.37$ ($n=2$) and $0.44$ (Thue-Morse) at $N=16$, while random signs ($n=0$) are unaffected. A disorder scan supports a toggling-frame picture in which interactions spoil the block cancellation of the pulse error. At equal $zJ$ the grid outlives the ring by $2.15$ ($N=12$) and $2.78$ ($N=16$) for the periodic drive despite an identical transverse tilt, a coordination effect beyond this picture. All ratios hold under three definitions of the coherence time.

Structured quantum-state learning not only depends on an expressive ansatz but also on an operational certificate that stays meaningful with finite measurements and imperfect implementation. We study pure one dimensional states learning by an inverse binary multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA). In the learning procedure, the qubits removed during coarse graining are controlled coherently and measured together at the terminal register. We confirm that an ideal sequential and terminal measurement schedule delivers the same complete bit string distribution under matched causal operations, while normalized postselection can amplify perturbations inversely with prefix acceptance. A noise aware theorem introduces an individual calibrated total variation implementation budget to the finite shot certificate. The protocol is estimated on an open boundary transverse field Ising ground state. A frozen 8-qubit schedule using $560$ million simulated training measurements per run achieves fidelity above $0.99$ in all $60$ held-out runs, with a mean fidelity of $0.996886$. 1080 circuit-noise cells and 6480 confidence-coverage rows are covered by fixed-circuit robustness validation without a locked soundness violation. We then address architectural fairness at $n=16$ using three new studies. In a 120-run exact-gradient multistart diagnostic, MERA has higher fidelity in 58/60 paired restarts and lower long-range error in 60/60, although no run met the prespecified stationarity criterion. Finally, a causal cone-complete, parameter matched local circuit achieves $2.62\times$ greater aggregate gate exposure yet loses all 30 paired comparisons in fidelity, long-range error, energy, and entropy.

Point defects in wide-bandgap semiconductors offer spin and photonic qubits in a solid-state platform, making them important building blocks for quantum information processing, communication, and sensing. While these systems have the strong advantage of room-temperature operation, intrinsic electron-phonon interaction induces broad phonon-sideband emission and weak zero-phonon-line transitions, limiting efficient spin-photon interfaces and scalable photon-mediated interaction. Here, we introduce a controlled heterophase interface based on the remote epitaxy technique as a crystal heterogeneity-engineering strategy. While stacking faults are treated as imperfections to be eliminated, our results instead show that crystal-phase interfaces can provide an additional degree of freedom to engineer defect-phonon interaction beyond the intrinsic properties of a single crystal. In comparison with single-phase 4H-silicon carbide (SiC) membranes, Vsi in 3C/4H heterointerface SiC exhibits a drastic enhancement of zero-phonon optical transitions, with a substantially narrower zero-phonon linewidth of 4.71 meV even at room temperature. These results establish heterophase-interface engineering as an effective route for tailoring defect-phonon interactions and realizing bright room-temperature quantum emitters with enhanced zero-phonon optical transitions.

In this paper I revisit my 2006 conjecture on correlated errors in entangled physical qubits, originally proposed as a potential obstruction to quantum fault tolerance. The conjecture asserts that, in any physical implementation of a quantum computer, the effective noise channel acting on entangled physical qubits contains a joint fully depolarizing component, with a rate comparable to that of two-qubit gate errors. This hypothesized structural constraint goes beyond standard noise models and, if valid, would pose a significant challenge to scalable quantum fault tolerance. The conjecture remains open, but recent advances in experimental quantum computing bring it within reach of empirical testing on current devices. I also discuss two related directions in my critical study of quantum computation: the role of noise sensitivity and computational complexity in noisy intermediate-scale quantum systems, and the statistical analysis of experimental claims of quantum advantage. Finally, since this paper is written for a volume honoring Yuri Gurevich, I include some reflections on the ways in which my scientific and personal trajectory became intertwined with Yuri's.

Two irreducible representations of $U(d)$ whose Young diagrams differ by a single box are connected by four covariant quantum channels: the box can be removed or added, and one keeps either the new diagram or the box ($\mathbb{C}^d$ or its dual). We prove that for each of these channels the output of a coherent state majorizes every other output, so that coherent states minimize the output entropy, and we compute the optimal output explicitly in terms of hook lengths. For the two channels that keep the box we also determine all minimizers; these need not be coherent, even when they are pure. As an application we consider $N$ particles with a given permutation symmetry and find sharp bounds on the spectrum of the reduced density matrix of a single particle, as well as the exact set of spectra that mixed states can reach (for fermions these are the Pauli principle and Coleman's theorem).

Molecular qubits held in conservative optical traps may lose coherence when they scatter photons from the trapping lasers. The rate for this process has two parts, one equal to the mean Raman scattering rate of the two qubit states, and the other proportional to the square of the difference in their Rayleigh scattering amplitudes. This paper calculates the decoherence rate, expressing results in terms of the vector and tensor parts of the molecular polarizability, $α_1$ and $α_2$. While the decoherence rate is generally much larger for molecules than for atoms, it is suppressed at wavelengths where $α_1$ and $α_2$ are both small. The wavelengths where this occurs are identified for CaF molecules.

Semiconductor electronic devices are increasingly constrained by fundamental quantum tunneling effects and charge-based mechanisms, which severely limit further miniaturization, write-speed scaling, and environmental robustness of silicon-based technologies. These limitations are particularly prohibitive for deep-space exploration, where extreme temperatures, ultra-strong magnetic fields, and intense radiation rapidly incapacitate conventional electronics without massive shielding. Here, we present an intrinsically resilient, strain-mediated antiferromagnetic MnIr/PMN-PT edge processor that operates reliably as a bare die under temperatures up to 500 K, magnetic fields of 55 T, and radiation doses of 1.5 Mrad. By exploiting an input-modulated in situ self-refreshing encoding mechanism, the device performs nonlinear feature extraction and classification directly from raw analog signals, enabling an analog computing architecture that requires no time-frequency transformation. This architecture achieves 99.8% accuracy in speech recognition without digital preprocessing and 100% accuracy in astronaut visual object recognition. Furthermore, an all-hardware integrated drone vision system demonstrates real-time in situ command execution and autonomous navigation, delivering a terahertz-level response frequency and an ultra-low energy consumption of approximately 0.2 fJ per operation. This work expands the functional scope of antiferromagnetic devices beyond memory and logic, establishing them as a promising materials platform for energy-efficient physical computing and autonomous intelligence in extreme environments.

Bell's theorem establishes that a local and spatially separable physical theory with no superdeterminism or retrocausality must be a theory of many local worlds. The local many worlds formalism of quantum mechanics is a transparent separable physical theory in spacetime with a Lorentz covariant causal structure. Unlike the Everett many worlds interpretation, there is no nonseparable universal wavefunction in configuration space, but like Everett, there is only local unitary evolution which conserves probability (fluid) current, and no wavefunction collapse. Each event in spacetime has its own local wavefunction which is built up using only the local wavefunctions and local unitary evolution operators within its past light cone, and which is entirely disconnected from spacelike separated local wavefunctions. We call this the local Schrödinger picture. Local many worlds can also be described in the Heisenberg picture by ascribing Deutsch-Hayden (DH) descriptors to each individual system, each of which evolves under local unitary operations. Both the local wavefunctions and DH descriptors contain records of past interactions, and while the local wavefunctions provide a clear and intuitive physical narrative, the descriptors contain all of the same information in a much more compact form. Unfortunately, the compact form is also somewhat cryptic, which has made the local Heisenberg picture relatively inaccessible. The purpose of this article is to show that the local wavefunctions for any $N$-qubit system can always be constructed directly from the DH descriptors, allowing us to combine the benefits of both pictures.

Strong coupling generally drives a subsystem away from the Gibbs state of its bare Hamiltonian at the bath temperature. We formulate a temperature--Hamiltonian ambiguity: the reduced equilibrium state fixes the dimensionless Gibbs generator, but does not by itself uniquely determine the local Hamiltonian and temperature entering a Gibbs representation. We propose an operational resolution in which the local Hamiltonian is identified from physical information independent of the stationary Gibbs parametrization. Whenever the exact reduced state is compatible with the Gibbs family generated by that independently identified Hamiltonian, it then determines a unique local temperature. An exactly solvable two-level-system--oscillator model makes the ambiguity explicit through state-equivalent descriptions based on temperature renormalization relative to a specified local Hamiltonian and Hamiltonian-of-mean-force level renormalization at the bath temperature. An exact bosonic model provides the complementary case in which retarded dynamics independently fixes a renormalized local excitation scale and thereby specifies the local Hamiltonian before the stationary populations determine the temperature. These results distinguish state representation from thermodynamic assignment and provide an operational framework for local thermodynamics beyond weak coupling.

Can a system with more stored energy cool faster than one with less? An overdamped resistor--inductor--capacitor (RLC) circuit offers a classical, experimentally accessible spectral Mpemba analogue: both states lose energy monotonically, yet the initially higher-energy state can cross below the lower-energy one. The reason is that initial energy alone does not determine the relaxation path; initial charge and current set how strongly the slow and fast decay modes are excited. We develop this mechanism from deterministic to stochastic and open-system descriptions. For the classical circuit, we derive the modal preparation conditions and crossing criterion, explain geometrically why equal-energy states can relax differently, and confirm the effect experimentally by reconstructing charge, current, and energy from oscilloscope traces. The inversion survives when the circuit is driven by externally injected white noise. An equilibrium Ornstein--Uhlenbeck treatment separates information carried by the ensemble mean from that stored in its covariance: centered Gibbs preparations preserve mean-energy ordering, while displaced or anisotropic Gaussian states can encode distinct slow and fast sectors. A Fokker--Planck generator then bridges to Markovian quantum dynamics. For a thermally damped quantum harmonic oscillator, the mean bare-energy excess decays with a single exponential factor, forbidding energy-order inversion for finite mean occupation. A below-threshold parametric oscillator restores slow and fast quadrature sectors, allowing crossings controlled by displacement and covariance. The Liouvillian formulation shows that observed relaxation depends jointly on the generator spectrum, the modes populated by preparation, and the modes visible to the observable.

Quantum computing has in recent years evolved from a purely theoretical field to an active area in both academia and industry. As a result, Quantum Software Engineering has emerged as an area that aims to organize the process of building, testing, and running quantum software. However, writing quantum software still requires programming with quantum gates and qubits, as well as knowledge specific to quantum software frameworks such as Qiskit, Cirq, Qrisp, pyQuil and PennyLane, each of which reaches quantum hardware through its own toolchain. We present Quanifi, which packages the high-level routines of these frameworks as components on the Apache NiFi dataflow canvas. The components exchange circuits as OpenQASM 2.0, so a circuit built by one framework can be executed by another. This allows for two types of redundancy: several frameworks implement the same algorithm, and several engines (simulators or real hardware) execute the same circuit. We describe N$\times$M program execution, which crosses the two: a single NiFi flow runs each of the $N$ implementations on each of the $M$ engines, and because every result is labelled with its implementation and its engine, a disagreement can be linked to an implementation, to an engine, or to a single implementation-engine pair. We ran Grover's algorithm built by three frameworks on three quantum computers from IBM, IQM and Quantum Inspire, and a matrix of three adder builders on one IQM device reached through two routes. N$\times$M execution helped us discover three real defects: an incorrect gate-set declaration in the Quantum Inspire adapter, execution consistent with negated $R_x$ angles on Tuna-17, and circuit modification through Open Quantum. The latter two returned wrong answers without reporting an error. We reported all three defects and Open Quantum's provider confirmed and fixed its QASM parsing defect.

Achieving high-fidelity and robust qubit manipulations is a crucial requirement for realizing faulttolerant quantum computation. Here, we demonstrate a single-hole spin qubit in a germanium quantum dot and characterize its control fidelity using gate set tomography. The maximum control fidelities reach 97.48%, 99.81%, 99.88% for the I, X/2 and Y /2 gate, respectively. These results reveal that off-resonance noise during consecutive I gates in gate set tomography sequences severely limits qubit performance. Therefore, we introduce geometric quantum computation to realize noiseresilient qubit manipulation. The geometric gate control fidelities remain above 99% across a wide range of Rabi frequencies. The maximum fidelity surpasses 99.9%. Furthermore, the fidelities of geometric X/2 and Y /2 (I) gates exceed 99% even when detuning the microwave frequency by +-2.5 MHz (+-1.2 MHz), highlighting the noise-resilient feature. These results demonstrate that geometric quantum computation is a potential method for achieving high-fidelity qubit manipulation reproducibly in semiconductor quantum computation.

Hole spin qubits based on semiconductor quantum dots are promising for building future large-scale quantum computers owing to their all-electrical manipulation. However, abundant physical mechanisms of valence band holes lead to anisotropic qubit properties. There is an opportunity to prolong the coherence time and achieve high-fidelity qubit manipulations. Here, we report a single-hole spin qubit in a planar germanium quantum dot and investigate its anisotropic susceptibility to charge noise under an in-plane magnetic field. By correlating the longitudinal spin-electric susceptibility with qubit coherence and control performance, we identify an optimal operating point where the sensitivity to charge noise is minimized. We find that optimizing the magnetic-field orientation reduces the spin-electric susceptibility, resulting in a five-fold enhancement of the Hahn-echo coherence time and a nearly tenfold suppression of control infidelity. At the optimal operating point, gate set tomography demonstrates the maximum gate fidelity of 99.82 %. Our finding enhances the prospects of hole spin qubits for scalable quantum information processing.

Flux-pumped Josephson circuits provide a versatile platform for parametric photon generation and multimode bosonic control. We identify an occupation-conditioned pair interaction that arises when two harmonic normal modes participate in the same driven SQUID coordinate. We consider a degenerate pair process in which two photons are created or annihilated in a signal mode while the occupation of a second harmonic mode remains unchanged. Although it does not exchange excitations, this controller mode modifies both the resonance frequency and the strength of the pair transition. The two effects have different physical origins: diagonal Josephson nonlinearities shift the pair resonance, whereas the nonlinear Josephson matrix element makes the avoided-crossing gap itself depend on the controller occupation. Starting from the full Josephson cosine, we develop complementary time-dependent Schrieffer--Wolff and Magnus descriptions that expose the direct and virtual processes responsible for this interaction, and benchmark the resulting effective theory against a numerically converged Floquet treatment of the unexpanded two-mode circuit Hamiltonian. The occupation dependence produces a two-dimensional pair spectrum that enables selective transitions within the bosonic Fock lattice. When the controller is prepared in a coherent superposition, the same interaction converts this conditional dynamics into signal--controller entanglement and controller-dependent non-Gaussian state generation. Observable-level comparisons further show that the variation of the pair-transition strength cannot be reproduced by occupation-dependent resonance shifts alone. These results establish a boson-controlled parametric interaction in which the state of one harmonic mode controls both the spectral position and the coupling strength of a nonlinear process in another.

How many directions in weight space does training need? The intrinsic dimension answers this with the smallest number of random directions in which training still reaches a target accuracy, and small values have motivated parameter-efficient methods such as LoRA. We measure it for variational Monte Carlo (VMC), which trains a neural network to represent the ground state of a quantum many-body system. VMC is a demanding test, because the network generates its own training samples and every gradient is noisy, and a revealing one, because the exact answer is known and every run can be scored. We train only a small latent vector that a frozen random map turns into the network's weights, with no change to the standard natural-gradient optimizer. We find that a small dimension can be misleading, while the stability it brings is real. On a magnet with a hard sign pattern, a network that cannot represent signs reaches its best energy in 8 of 28,642 directions, but only because no such network can go lower; once signs are learnable, neither the signs nor the magnitudes are cheap. The dimension rises across a quantum phase transition, so it tracks how difficult a state is at far less compute than fitting a scaling law, yet it never falls below a floor set by the random subspace itself, even where the ground state is nearly trivial. Training in the subspace, in contrast, never diverged in our experiments, whereas full-parameter training with the same settings did, and a control with matched solvers attributes the difference to the reduced dimension.

Scientific code generation can produce executable programs that fail to compute the intended scientific object. We study this problem in language-model synthesis of Clifford circuits, which prepare the stabilizer states used in quantum error correction and admit exact classical verification. In our target-conditioned framework, each target is given as compact signed stabilizer generators, and an exact verifier checks the generated OpenQASM circuits. We supervise models with Aaronson-Gottesman chain-of-thought (AG-CoT) traces checked by the verifier, and continue training on model generations that the verifier accepts. Across two independently trained model families (3B and 7B), AG-CoT supervision multiplies greedy-decode state-equivalence accuracy by four to six times over circuit-only baselines, and verifier-filtered continuation training adds a further consistent gain atop both. A complementary 32B study shows that supervised models achieve near-perfect syntax and Clifford validity while the strongest direct model reaches 6.14% state equivalence per target, rising to over 10% under verifier-guided selection with multiple candidates. These results show that algorithmic trace supervision gives a large, statistically significant gain in both model families and that verifier-filtered continuation adds a further repeated gain. The persistent gap between Clifford validity and state equivalence confirms that exact verification is necessary: a circuit can be syntactically and physically valid yet prepare the wrong quantum state.

Entanglement harvesting transfers quantum field correlations to localized probes, yet whether these correlations can alter stable strategic behavior has remained unclear. We formulate a quantum-input game in which two Unruh-DeWitt detectors harvest vacuum entanglement from a free massless scalar field in $(3+1)$-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. A referee converts this state into payoffs using independent question qubits and phase-calibrated local Bell measurements. To leading perturbative order, the mean reward is proportional to the signed entanglement margin $\sqrt{\mathcal{H}^2+\mathcal{Q}^2}-\mathcal{P}$, where $\mathcal{H}$ is the Hadamard correlation contribution, $\mathcal{Q}$ is the Pauli-Jordan causal contribution, and $\mathcal{P}$ is the local excitation noise. Away from payoff degeneracies, allowing each player to exit or to choose an early or late interaction yields $1+2n_+$ trembling-hand perfect equilibria, where $n_+$ counts the positive-reward timing equilibria. For one fixed protocol, five analytically certified settings realize the sequence $7\to3\to1\to7\to1$. They represent the spacelike region, the first commutator lobe, central carrier cancellation, the second lobe, and the post-wavefront Huygens regime. Thus, within this fixed quantum-input verification protocol, distinct field-correlation regimes generate different stable strategic structures.

Scalable cryogenic systems require memory that combines nonvolatile storage, selective access, low thermal disturbance, and compatibility with superconducting electronics. We present a cryogenic memory architecture that integrates a voltage-controlled Josephson junction field-effect transistor (JJFET) selector with a ferroelectric superconducting quantum interference device (FeSQUID) storage element, hereafter termed JFS-CryoMem. The JJFET provides gate-controlled cell selection, whereas the FeSQUID stores information in stable remanent-polarization states. JFS-CryoMem features separate read and write path mechanisms that support nondestructive readout and independent optimization of programming and sensing conditions. The architecture is evaluated using experimentally calibrated compact models that reproduce the measured electrical characteristics of both constituent devices. We demonstrate selective programming using a half-bias scheme, nonvolatile state retention, and distinguishable readout in a $4 \times 4$ array while accounting for the selected cell and all unselected parallel branches. We then extend the analysis to arrays up to $16 \times 16$ and examine how array scaling alters current distribution, column-equivalent resistance, readout separation, required bitline current, and read energy. The results reveal the principal sensing and energy tradeoffs associated with larger arrays and identify the operating conditions required to preserve read distinguishability as the array grows. JFS-CryoMem provides a device-to-array framework for cryogenic memory in quantum, high-performance, and space-oriented computing systems.

Recent advances in quantum computing are opening new opportunities for computationally intensive decision problems. This paper studies how quantum computing can improve Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) in the fixed-confidence setting, where the goal is to identify a near-optimal move in a given game tree with high probability while minimizing query complexity. We first formulate MCTS under a quantum oracle model. We then develop a quantum MCTS algorithm (QMCTS) that combines threshold-based elimination on the search tree with quantum Monte Carlo estimation to reduce the cost of evaluating stochastic leaf values. We establish an instance-dependent lower bound on the query complexity and derive a corresponding upper bound for QMCTS. The lower-bound analysis introduces a new quantum phase-testing result that may also be useful beyond MCTS. We validate the theoretical results through simulation experiments and further demonstrate the feasibility of QMCTS on real quantum hardware.

Classically, it is well-known that several fundamental cryptographic primitives, including one-way functions, pseudorandom number generators, commitments, and signatures, characterize the same cryptographic world, which is known as "Minicrypt". In this paper, we investigate to what extent this picture persists in the quantum-computation classical-communication (QCCC) setting, where parties may perform quantum local computation, but communicate through only classical messages. We demonstrate that the classical Minicrypt landscape breaks down in the QCCC model by oracle separations. We construct two oracle worlds where efficiently verifiable one-way puzzles (EV-OWPuzz) exist. By a known equivalence, QCCC one-time signatures also exist in both worlds. In the first, one-way functions do not exist, even if we allow quantum pseudodeterministic evaluation. In the second, QCCC bit commitments do not exist. Thus, the classical Minicrypt reductions from signatures to one-way functions and bit commitments have no fully black-box counterparts in the QCCC setting. Our proofs develop techniques for analyzing the random phase states, including a concentration theorem and an LOCC decoupling theorem, which may be of independent interest.

Multipartite entanglement can endow a quantum network with capabilities unavailable classically, yet their evolution under progressively reduced physical and informational access remains largely unexplored. Here we realize the first eight-photon half-excitation Dicke state, with a fidelity of 0.922(11), and use it to implement two distinct network tasks: open-destination teleportation and quantum telecloning. An unknown state can be teleported from one agent to any of seven remote agents with fidelities of 0.926(7)-0.941(6), while seven approximate clones are distributed with a fidelity of 0.713(3), close to the optimal value of 5/7. The protocol remains above the classical limit under imperfect photon detection, transmission loss and missing information from participating agents, and outperforms the corresponding GHZ benchmarks. As fewer agents contribute, the teleportation fidelity falls through a stepwise hierarchy whose two extremes recover open-destination teleportation and optimal telecloning, connecting both tasks within a single operational framework. These results establish Dicke entanglement as a promising architecture for loss-resilient quantum networks, opening a route towards quantum technologies that retain useful functionality under realistic operating conditions.

Bernard Gavgani joins D-Wave Quantum's board, bringing fintech and cybersecurity expertise. Simon Phillips is now CPO at Oxford Quantum Circuits, focusing on commercializing Quantum-AI platforms, and Doug Campbell is the new CEO of Bifrost Electronics, leading the commercialization of their Heimdall Amplifier. The post Who’s News: Strategic Appointments at D-Wave Quantum, Oxford Quantum Circuits, and Bifrost Electronics appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

ETSI's new report, TR 104 171, addresses vulnerabilities in Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNGs) due to practical hardware limitations. It provides guidelines across the QRNG lifecycle, including the Entropy Zero Trust (EZT) framework to mitigate side-channel attacks. The report also sets priorities for future standardization, such as API command sets and integration with post-quantum cryptography. The post ETSI Identifies Technical Limitations and Implementation Vulnerabilities in Quantum Random Number Generators (ETSI TR 104 171) appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Yuval Boger interviews Sebastian Hassinger, host of The New Quantum Era podcast, and author of a new book by the same name. Sebastian and I have many things in common beyond our jobs in quantum. We are both podcasters, neither of us has a PhD, and we are both authors of new books &#8211; Sebastian’s The New Quantum Era, and my Quantum Bits, the Comic Book Guide to Quantum Computing. In a conversation that is more symmetric than the typical episode, we compare notes about the motivation and process of writing these books, explaining quantum computing for non-physicists, debate Sebastian’s modality forecast, speak about our hypothetical dinner guests and much more. Transcript Yuval: &nbsp;Hello, Sebastian. Thank you for joining me today. Sebastian: &nbsp;Hi, Yuval. Thanks for joining me. This is your Riverside. This is your studio, I know, but we&#8217;ll be guests on each other&#8217;s podcast simultaneously. This is a crossover episode. Yuval: &nbsp;So, Sebastian, who are you and what do you do? Sebastian: &nbsp;I am Sebastian Hassinger. I&#8217;m an independent consultant and jack of all trades in quantum. I have been working in quantum for almost a decade now, which shocked me when I realized that when I counted up the years. First with IBM Quantum and then with AWS. And the beginning of 2026, I went independent and started a company called The New Quantum Era, which is sort of a grab bag of all of the projects that I&#8217;m working on. How about yourself, Yuval? Tell us a bit about yourself. Yuval: &nbsp;I am Yuval Boger. I&#8217;m chief commercial officer of QuEra Computing. We make the world&#8217;s best quantum computer. And I&#8217;ve been doing this, I only have five years of experience in quantum, but sometimes they feel like two and sometimes they feel like 20. Sebastian: &nbsp;Same. (laughing) I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s gonna change. I have bad news for you. (laughing) Yuval: &nbsp;I wasn&#8217;t part of naming the company QuEra, but I think it doe

Pasqal reported strong H1 2026 financial results with €312.9M post-SPAC cash and 14% revenue growth. The company achieved significant technological breakthroughs, including scaling to 1,024 atoms and demonstrating logical qubit execution. Pasqal also expanded commercially with new deployments in Saudi Arabia and Italy, and became an XPRIZE finalist. The post Pasqal Reports H1 2026 Financial Results: €312.9M Post-SPAC Cash Balance, 14% Revenue Growth, and 1,000-Atom Scale appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) will be the first K-12 public high school to install a physical quantum computer, the XeedQ XQ1e, at Skyview High School in December 2026. This 4-qubit quantum computer operates at room temperature and offers high-fidelity quantum computing for student learning. The initiative aims to create a regional talent development hub in quantum computing. The post Fairfax County Public Schools to Install XeedQ 4-Qubit Quantum Computer at Skyview High School appeared first on Quantum Computing Report .

Insider Brief Researchers at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science found that atomic-scale surface steps can guide superconducting vortices in an ultrathin superconductor. Vortices moved more than 1,000 times more easily along the steps than across them at intermediate magnetic fields, with the guiding effect adjustable through temperature and magnetic field. The findings could help researchers control vortex motion and heat flow in future low-power superconducting devices. PRESS RELEASE &#8212; Researchers at the Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), one of the centers under the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, discovered that atomic-scale steps can guide superconducting vortices in an ultrathin superconductor. Vortices moved more than 1,000 times more easily along the steps than across them, and this guiding effect could be tuned by temperature and magnetic field. Superconducting vortices are tiny quantum objects whose movement can strongly influence how superconductors behave. Controlling their direction of motion could therefore be important for developing ultralow-power superconducting technologies. However, directional control of vortices in two-dimensional superconductors has remained challenging. Achieving such control could help develop future superconducting devices that consume less power while improving processing efficiency. Addressing this challenge, a research team led by Takashi Uchihashi from Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, investigated an ultrathin superconductor with regularly arranged atomic steps on its surface. Scanning tunneling microscopy confirmed the parallel steps and directly visualized vortices located along them. Their findings were published in the journal Physical Review B on July 30, 2026. Four-terminal resistance measurements revealed that vortices moved more than 1,000 times more easily along the atomic ste

Abstract Gaussian-modulated coherent-state (GMCS) continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) offers a practical path to quantum-secured communication owing to its compatibility with existing optical fibre networks and use of mature security proofs. Achieving high secret key rates in real-time systems, however, requires post-processing schemes that are both information-theoretically efficient and computationally scalable. In previous experimental work 1 , we have demonstrated record real-time key rates using a one-round sliced reconciliation scheme with guard-band post-selection. Here, we present the corresponding theoretical framework and provide an asymptotic security analysis that considers arbitrary collective attacks, a much broader class of attacks than the usually assumed Gaussian collective attacks. The security analysis applies the entropic continuity of quantum channels justified by a quantum channel estimation procedure. In conditions of high noise, our scheme uses 500 times less classical communication than multidimensional reconciliation.

The positive-partial-transpose-squared (PPT-squared) conjecture asks whether the composition of two positive-partial-transpose (PPT) quantum channels must be entanglement breaking (EB). The problem remains open in general and, within the diagonal orthogonal covariant (DOC) class, the first unresolved deterministic dimension is four. A sufficient condition for PPT-squared composition is derived for DOC maps in arbitrary finite dimension. The proof isolates the quantum coherence data into two correlation matrices, mixes each with the identity until it lies in the convex hull of rank-one correlation matrices, and converts the resulting objects into an explicit triplewise completely positive (TCP) core. The remaining contribution is purely classical and is TCP whenever a simple entrywise mixing inequality is satisfied. For PPT DOC maps $Φ_{A,B,C}$ and $Φ_{D,E,F}$ on $M_d$, the entrywise bound $(AD)_{ij}\ge 2\lfloor\sqrt{d}\rfloor\sqrt{A_{ii}A_{jj}D_{ii}D_{jj}}$ for all $i,j$ guarantees that $Φ_{A,B,C}\circΦ_{D,E,F}$ is EB. In dimension four the universal coefficient becomes four. A continuous family of bistochastic PPT channels is then constructed; every member with $a\ne1$ is not EB, while every pairwise composition within the family is proved to be EB. A rank-sensitive refinement shows explicitly how low coherence rank can improve the universal coefficient. The resulting certificate is sufficient rather than necessary and is complementary to factor-width and semidefinite-hierarchy approaches.

Engineered dissipation corrects errors, yet a memory's phase decays. What the memory's gap measures is not settled. Here we show that when each jump resets one basis state, the wiring can set the gap time while the phase keeps its rate. Under dephasing the gap time spans two orders across wirings; the phase does not. In this class, a contrast on two or more qubits fades faster than a bare qubit at any distance; no such pump power substitutes. The ceiling is two over the qubits the contrast spans. A two-branch pump can escape it at distance three; a two-clock test runs on published data.

Under tight feature and compute budgets, classical threat detection pipelines often degrade on near-decision-boundary events. Small quantum processors are now available, but existing work inadequately shows whether quantum components improve end-to-end threat detection under the above resource constrained conditions. This paper tries to address this gap with a hybrid architecture that uses a compact multilayer perceptron layer to compress the information in data and then routes the processed features to a few qubit quantum heads implemented in quantum support vector machine (QSVM) and variational quantum circuit (VQC) models. On a simulation platform, we benchmark these hybrid models against classical models with comparable parameter budgets on two representative cybersecurity tasks, network intrusion detection on NSL-KDD dataset and spam filtering on Ling-Spam dataset. To validate their precision on real quantum hardware, we deploy the best 4-qubit QSVM model on an IBM Quantum device with noise-aware execution, evaluated on a smaller sub-dataset. In the results, shallow quantum heads consistently match, and on difficult near-boundary cases modestly reduce missed attacks and false alarms compared to classical models using the same features. Hardware validation results track the simulation behavior closely enough that the remaining gap is dominated by device noise rather than model design. Furthermore, we conduct adversarial attacks to test the robustness of one QSVM model. Taken together, the study shows that even on small, noisy devices, carefully engineered quantum components may function as competitive, budget-aware components in practical cyber threat detection applications.