Learning the closest Slater determinant
Source: Originally published on arXiv quant-ph on July 24, 2026.
arXiv:2607.20623v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Learning compact, interpretable descriptions of quantum many-body states is an important task in quantum science. We study the task of learning the Slater determinant with maximum fidelity to an arbitrary fermionic many-body state, with motivation from both Hartree-Fock methods and agnostic tomography. Given an $n$-fermion wavefunction built from $m$ fermionic modes, we provide classical and quantum algorithms returning a Slater determinant with fidelity within $\varepsilon$ of maximal in time $m^{\text{poly}(n,1/\varepsilon)}$. We prove matching hardness lower bounds, assuming standard complexity conjectures, along some parameter axes. Given access to quantum copies, we prove this can be accomplished with $\text{poly}(m,n,1/\varepsilon...
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