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Scalable estimation of pure multi-qubit states

We introduce an inductive $n$-qubit pure-state estimation method. This is based on projective measurements on states of $2n+1$ separable bases or $2$ entangled bases plus the computational basis. Thus, the total number of measurement bases scales as $O(n)$ and $O(1)$, respectively. Thereby, the proposed method exhibits a very favorable scaling in the number of qubits when compared to other estimation methods. Monte Carlo numerical experiments show that the method can achieve a high estimation fidelity. For instance, an average fidelity of $0.88$ on the Hilbert space of $10$ qubits is achieved with $21$ separable bases. The use of separable bases makes our estimation method particularly well suited for applications in noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers, where entangling gates are much less accurate than local gates. We experimentally demonstrate the proposed method in one of IBM's quantum processors by estimating 4-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with a fidelity close to $0.875$ via separable bases. Other $10$-qubit separable and entangled states achieve an estimation fidelity in the order of $0.85$ and $0.7$, respectively.