Optimally Weighted Constrained Shadow Tomography for Reduced Density Matrices

Abstract

Accurate measurement of reduced density matrices (RDMs) is central to quantum simulations of many-fermion systems, but the required measurement resources remain a significant challenge. Constrained shadow tomography (CST) combines randomized measurements with $N$-representability conditions to reconstruct physically valid RDMs from limited measurement data. Here we improve CST by orthogonalizing the measurement constraints and using the resulting singular values to determine the relative weight of each independent measurement direction according to how strongly it is sampled by the quantum computer. These optimally weighted constraints are incorporated into the semidefinite program through a least-squares objective implemented with a Schur-complement relaxation. We demonstrate the approach for hydrogen chains on a quantum simulator and for azobenzene on a quantum processor. In both cases, optimally weighted CST systematically improves the accuracy of the reconstructed 2-RDM without increasing the measurement budget, providing a more measurement-efficient approach to partial tomography for quantum simulations of correlated fermions.