Exponential Advantage from One More Replica in Estimating Nonlinear Properties of Quantum States

Abstract

Inferring nonlinear features of quantum states is fundamentally important across quantum information science, but remains challenging due to the intrinsic linearity of quantum mechanics. It is widely recognized that quantum memory and coherent operations help avoid exponential sample complexity, by mapping nonlinear properties onto linear observables over multiple copies of the target state. In this work, we prove that such a conversion is not only sufficient but also necessary. Specifically, we prove that the estimation of $\mathrm{tr}(ρ^{k} O)$ for a broad class of observables $O$ is exponentially hard for any protocol restricted to $(k-1)$-replica joint measurements, whereas access to one additional replica reduces the complexity to a constant. These results establish, for the first time, an exponential separation between $(k-1)$- and $k$-replica protocols for any integer $k>2$, thereby introducing a fine-grained hierarchy of replica-based quantum advantage and resolving an open question in the literature. The technical core is a general indistinguishability principle showing that any ensemble constructed from large Haar random states via tensor products and mixtures is hard to distinguish from its average. Leveraging this principle, we further prove that $k$-replica joint measurements are also necessary for distinguishing rank-$k$ density matrices from rank-$(k-1)$ ones. Overall, our work delineates sharp boundaries on the power of joint measurements, highlighting resource-complexity trade-offs in quantum learning theory and deepening the understanding of quantum mechanics' intrinsic linearity.