Partial Quantum Shadow Tomography for Structured Operators and its Experimental Demonstration using NMR

Abstract: Quantum shadow tomography based on the classical shadow representation provides an efficient way to estimate properties of an unknown quantum state without performing a full quantum state tomography. In scenarios where estimating the expectation values for only certain classes of observables is required, obtaining information about the entire density matrix is unnecessary. We propose a partial quantum shadow tomography protocol, which allows estimation of a subset of density matrix elements contributing to the expectation values of certain classes of structured observables. This method utilizes tomographically incomplete subsets of single qubit Pauli basis measurements to perform partial shadow tomography, making it experimentally more efficient. We demonstrate the advantage over unitary $k$-designs such as Clifford, full Pauli basis, and methods utilizing mutually unbiased bases by numerically analyzing the protocol for structured density matrices and observables. We experimentally demonstrate the partial shadow estimation scheme for a wide class of two-qubit states (pure, entangled, and mixed) in the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) platform, which relies on ensemble-based measurements. The full density matrix experimentally reconstructed by combining different partial estimators produces fidelities exceeding 97%.