Optimal Error Exponents for Composite Sequential Quantum Hypothesis Testing

arXiv:2605.0491557.6
Predicted impact top 22% in QUANT-PH · last 90 daysOriginality Highly original
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This work provides the first optimal error exponent characterization for composite sequential quantum hypothesis testing, establishing fundamental limits for quantum decision-making with unknown alternatives.

The paper addresses composite sequential quantum hypothesis testing, proposing an adaptive test that achieves optimal Type-I and worst-case Type-II error exponents under an expected sample size constraint, characterized by minimal measured relative entropies.

We study the composite sequential quantum hypothesis testing (SQHT) problem, where the objective is to distinguish a null quantum state from a compact, convex set of alternative quantum states. We propose a mixture-sequential quantum probability ratio test that adaptively selects measurements based on the current mixture estimate of the alternative set, and stops upon the first threshold crossing of the mixture log-likelihood ratio. Under an expected sample size constraint, we show that our proposed adaptive strategy simultaneously achieves the optimal Type-I and (worst-case) Type-II error exponents. These exponents are characterized by the minimal measured relative entropies between the null state and the alternative set. We further establish a matching converse, thereby characterizing the optimal error exponent region. Finally, our results show that achieving vanishing error probabilities in composite SQHT requires an expected sample complexity at least as large as that of sequential testing between two fixed quantum states.

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