We study the computational complexity of estimating the quantum 𝓁_α distance T_α(ρ₀,ρ₁), defined via the Schatten α-norm ‖A‖_α := tr(|A|^α)^{1/α}, given poly(n)-size state-preparation circuits of n-qubit quantum states ρ₀ and ρ₁. This quantity serves as a lower bound on the trace distance for α > 1. For any constant α > 1, we develop an efficient rank-independent quantum estimator for T_α(ρ₀,ρ₁) with time complexity poly(n), achieving an exponential speedup over the prior best results of exp(n) due to Wang, Guan, Liu, Zhang, and Ying (IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 2024). Our improvement leverages efficiently computable uniform polynomial approximations of signed positive power functions within quantum singular value transformation, thereby eliminating the dependence on the rank of the states. Our quantum algorithm reveals a dichotomy in the computational complexity of the Quantum State Distinguishability Problem with Schatten α-norm (QSD_α), which involves deciding whether T_α(ρ₀,ρ₁) is at least 2/5 or at most 1/5. This dichotomy arises between the cases of constant α > 1 and α = 1: - For any 1+Ω(1) ≤ α ≤ O(1), QSD_α is BQP-complete. - For any 1 ≤ α ≤ 1+1/n, QSD_α is QSZK-complete, implying that no efficient quantum estimator for T_α(ρ₀,ρ₁) exists unless BQP = QSZK. The hardness results follow from reductions based on new rank-dependent inequalities for the quantum 𝓁_α distance with 1 ≤ α ≤ ∞, which are of independent interest.
@InProceedings{liu_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2025.106, author = {Liu, Yupan and Wang, Qisheng}, title = {{On Estimating the Quantum 𝓁\underline\alpha Distance}}, booktitle = {33rd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2025)}, pages = {106:1--106:19}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-395-9}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2025}, volume = {351}, editor = {Benoit, Anne and Kaplan, Haim and Wild, Sebastian and Herman, Grzegorz}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.106}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-245758}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2025.106}, annote = {Keywords: quantum algorithms, quantum state testing, trace distance, Schatten norm} }
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