Spectrum Estimation is Almost as Hard as Tomography

Abstract

We study the sample complexity of estimating and testing fundamental unitarily invariant properties of unknown quantum states; namely, the tasks of spectrum estimation, von Neumann entropy estimation, and rank-testing. For $d$-dimensional states, and for every $\gamma>0$, we prove a sample complexity lower bound of $\Omega(d^{2-\gamma})$ for spectrum estimation to constant sorted total-variation error, entropy estimation to constant additive error, and rank-testing to constant trace distance. Our hard instances are constructed from sandwiched products of Haar-random projectors, suitably normalized using a novel technique that lets us derive explicit expressions for high-order tensor moments of the resultant states. These moments can be expressed as symmetric functions of Jucys--Murphy elements of the symmetric group algebra. To show that two such mixtures are indistinguishable, we analyze the log-likelihood ratio and perform moment-matching, i.e., we set its low-order Jucys--Murphy components to zero. Indistinguishability is then obtained by bounding an $f$-divergence through the high-order components; the non-zero high-order terms and concentration of functions of Haar-random unitaries also imply separations in typical spectra, entropies, and ranks, proving all our lower bounds.