"Proper" Shift Rules for Derivatives of Perturbed-Parametric Quantum Evolutions

Abstract

Banchi & Crooks (Quantum, 2021) have given methods to estimate derivatives of expectation values depending on a parameter that enters via what we call a "perturbed" quantum evolution $x\mapsto e^{i(x A + B)/\hbar}$. Their methods require modifications, beyond merely changing parameters, to the unitaries that appear. Moreover, in the case when the $B$-term is unavoidable, no exact method (unbiased estimator) for the derivative seems to be known: Banchi & Crooks's method gives an approximation. In this paper, for estimating the derivatives of parameterized expectation values of this type, we present a method that only requires shifting parameters, no other modifications of the quantum evolutions (a "proper" shift rule). Our method is exact (i.e., it gives analytic derivatives, unbiased estimators), and it has the same worst-case variance as Banchi-Crooks's. Moreover, we discuss the theory surrounding proper shift rules, based on Fourier analysis of perturbed-parametric quantum evolutions, resulting in a characterization of the proper shift rules in terms of their Fourier transforms, which in turn leads us to non-existence results of proper shift rules with exponential concentration of the shifts. We derive truncated methods that exhibit approximation errors, and compare to Banchi-Crooks's based on preliminary numerical simulations.