Quantum state verification in the quantum linear systems problem

We analyze the complexity of quantum state verification in the context of solving systems of linear equations of the form $A \vec x = \vec b$. We show that any quantum operation that verifies whether a given quantum state is within a constant distance from the solution of the quantum linear systems problem requires $q=\Omega(\kappa)$ uses of a unitary that prepares a quantum state $\left| b \right>$, proportional to $\vec b$, and its inverse in the worst case. Here, $\kappa$ is the condition number of the matrix $A$. For typical instances, we show that $q=\Omega(\sqrt \kappa)$ with high probability. These lower bounds are almost achieved if quantum state verification is performed using known quantum algorithms for the quantum linear systems problem. We also analyze the number of copies of $\left| b \right>$ required by verification procedures of the prepare and measure type. In this case, the lower bounds are quadratically worse, being $\Omega(\kappa^2)$ in the worst case and $\Omega(\kappa)$ in typical instances with high probability. We discuss the implications of our results to known variational and related approaches to this problem, where state preparation, gate, and measurement errors will need to decrease rapidly with $\kappa$ for worst-case and typical instances if error correction is not used, and present some open problems.