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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.25708 |
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| _version_ | 1866917453326450688 |
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| author | Maciejunes, Andrew Gore, Ross Shetty, Sachin Ezell, Barry |
| author_facet | Maciejunes, Andrew Gore, Ross Shetty, Sachin Ezell, Barry |
| contents | We compare four polynomial-resource measurement strategies, (I) $Z$-basis-only, (II) nearest-neighbor $ZZ$ (NN), (III) multi-basis ($Z$, $X$, $Y$), and (IV) classical shadows, for classifying three quantum circuit families: IQP, Clifford, and Clifford$+T$. We find $Z$-only measurements outperform multi-basis and classical shadows across all qubit counts and all four classifiers evaluated, and the $O(\nqubits)$-feature NN strategy matches $Z$-only to within $0.02$ in Random Forest accuracy. The best result is a Random Forest accuracy of $0.91$ at 4--5 qubits under $Z$-only ($0.89$ for NN, $0.85$ for multi-basis, $0.67$ for shadows). All four strategies collapse to near-chance accuracy ($\approx 0.33$) above approximately 12 qubits under the quadratic shot budget $\shots = 16\nqubits^2$. These findings indicate that the discriminative signal between these circuit families is concentrated in local, nearest-neighbor $Z$-basis correlations, consistent with the diagonal gate structure of IQP circuits, and that additional Pauli correlator types or long-range correlations carry no compensating discriminative power for this task. We provide a formal theoretical framework showing that circuits with high diagonal fraction in a given basis concentrate their correlator structure in that basis, and that any deviation from the dominant basis incurs a provably higher estimator variance. These results establish that a quadratic shot budget is insufficient for reliable classification above approximately 12 qubits, but do not rule out the existence of a subquadratic or otherwise more efficient polynomial-resource strategy; whether any polynomial measurement protocol can classify these families at large qubit counts remains an open question. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_25708 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Polynomial Resource Classification of Quantum Circuit Familes via Classical Shadows Maciejunes, Andrew Gore, Ross Shetty, Sachin Ezell, Barry Quantum Physics We compare four polynomial-resource measurement strategies, (I) $Z$-basis-only, (II) nearest-neighbor $ZZ$ (NN), (III) multi-basis ($Z$, $X$, $Y$), and (IV) classical shadows, for classifying three quantum circuit families: IQP, Clifford, and Clifford$+T$. We find $Z$-only measurements outperform multi-basis and classical shadows across all qubit counts and all four classifiers evaluated, and the $O(\nqubits)$-feature NN strategy matches $Z$-only to within $0.02$ in Random Forest accuracy. The best result is a Random Forest accuracy of $0.91$ at 4--5 qubits under $Z$-only ($0.89$ for NN, $0.85$ for multi-basis, $0.67$ for shadows). All four strategies collapse to near-chance accuracy ($\approx 0.33$) above approximately 12 qubits under the quadratic shot budget $\shots = 16\nqubits^2$. These findings indicate that the discriminative signal between these circuit families is concentrated in local, nearest-neighbor $Z$-basis correlations, consistent with the diagonal gate structure of IQP circuits, and that additional Pauli correlator types or long-range correlations carry no compensating discriminative power for this task. We provide a formal theoretical framework showing that circuits with high diagonal fraction in a given basis concentrate their correlator structure in that basis, and that any deviation from the dominant basis incurs a provably higher estimator variance. These results establish that a quadratic shot budget is insufficient for reliable classification above approximately 12 qubits, but do not rule out the existence of a subquadratic or otherwise more efficient polynomial-resource strategy; whether any polynomial measurement protocol can classify these families at large qubit counts remains an open question. |
| title | Polynomial Resource Classification of Quantum Circuit Familes via Classical Shadows |
| topic | Quantum Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.25708 |