Universality of Many-body Projected Ensemble for Learning Quantum Data Distribution

Abstract: Generating quantum data by learning the underlying quantum distribution poses challenges in both theoretical and practical scenarios, yet it is a critical task for understanding quantum systems. A fundamental question in quantum machine learning (QML) is the universality of approximation: whether a parameterized QML model can approximate any quantum distribution. We address this question by proving a universality theorem for the Many-body Projected Ensemble (MPE) framework, a method for quantum state design that uses a single many-body wave function to prepare random states. This demonstrates that MPE can approximate any distribution of pure states within a 1-Wasserstein distance error. This theorem provides a rigorous guarantee of universal expressivity, addressing key theoretical gaps in QML. For practicality, we propose an Incremental MPE variant with layer-wise training to improve the trainability. Numerical experiments on clustered quantum states and quantum chemistry datasets validate MPE's efficacy in learning complex quantum data distributions.