High posterior density ellipsoids of quantum states

Abstract: Regions of quantum states generalize the classical notion of error bars. High posterior density (HPD) credible regions are the most powerful of region estimators. However, they are intractably hard to construct in general. This paper reports on a numerical approximation to HPD regions for the purpose of testing a much more computationally and conceptually convenient class of regions: posterior covariance ellipsoids (PCEs). The PCEs are defined via the covariance matrix of the posterior probability distribution of states. Here it is shown that PCEs are near optimal for the example of Pauli measurements on multiple qubits. Moreover, the algorithm is capable of producing accurate PCE regions even when there is uncertainty in the model.