Quantum Channel Certification with Incoherent Strategies

In the problem of quantum channel certification, we have black box access to a quantum process and would like to decide if this process matches some predefined specification or is varepsilon-far from this specification. The objective is to achieve this task while minimizing the number of times the black box is used. Here, we focus on optimal incoherent strategies for two relevant extreme cases of channel certification. The first one is when the predefined specification is a unitary channel, e.g., a gate in a quantum circuit. In this case, we show that testing whether the black box is described by a fixed unitary operator in dimension d or varepsilon-far from it in the trace norm requires Theta(d/varepsilon2) uses of the black box. The second setting we consider is when the predefined specification is a completely depolarizing channel with input dimension din and output dimension dout. In this case, we prove that, in the non-adaptive setting, tildeTheta(din2dout1.5/varepsilon2) uses of the channel are necessary and sufficient to verify whether it is equal to the depolarizing channel or varepsilon-far from it in the diamond norm. Finally, we prove a lower bound of Omega(din2dout/varepsilon2) for this problem in the adaptive setting. Note that the special case din = 1 corresponds to the well-studied quantum state certification problem.