The abelian state hidden subgroup problem: Learning stabilizer groups and beyond

Abstract

Identifying the symmetry properties of quantum states is a central theme in quantum information theory and quantum many-body physics. In this work, we investigate quantum learning problems in which the goal is to identify a hidden symmetry of an unknown quantum state. Building on the recent formulation of the state hidden subgroup problem (StateHSP), we focus on abelian groups and develop an efficient quantum algorithm that learns any hidden symmetry subgroup using a generalized form of Fourier sampling. We showcase the versatility of the approach in three concrete applications: These are learning (i) qubit and qudit stabilizer groups, (ii) cuts along which a state is unentangled, and (iii) hidden translation symmetries. Through these applications, we reveal that well-known quantum learning primitives, such as Bell sampling and Bell difference sampling, are, in fact, special cases of Fourier sampling. Our results highlight the broad potential of the StateHSP framework for symmetry-based quantum learning tasks and provide protocols that are easier to implement on near-term quantum devices.