English

On the distinguishability of random quantum states

Quantum Physics 2009-11-13 v2

Abstract

We develop two analytic lower bounds on the probability of success p of identifying a state picked from a known ensemble of pure states: a bound based on the pairwise inner products of the states, and a bound based on the eigenvalues of their Gram matrix. We use the latter to lower bound the asymptotic distinguishability of ensembles of n random quantum states in d dimensions, where n/d approaches a constant. In particular, for almost all ensembles of n states in n dimensions, p>0.72. An application to distinguishing Boolean functions (the "oracle identification problem") in quantum computation is given.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0607011,
  title  = {On the distinguishability of random quantum states},
  author = {Ashley Montanaro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0607011},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

20 pages, 2 figures; v2 fixes typos and an error in an appendix

R2 v1 2026-07-22T19:55:49.443Z