The Quantum Esscher Transform

The Esscher Transform is a tool of broad utility in various domains of applied probability. It provides the solution to a constrained minimum relative entropy optimization problem. In this work, we study the generalization of the Esscher Transform to the quantum setting. We examine a relative entropy minimization problem for a quantum density operator, potentially of wide relevance in quantum information theory. The resulting solution form motivates us to define the $\mathit{\text{quantum}}$ Esscher Transform, which subsumes the classical Esscher Transform as a special case. Envisioning potential applications of the quantum Esscher Transform, we also discuss its implementation on fault-tolerant quantum computers. Our algorithm is based on the modern techniques of block-encoding and quantum singular value transformation (QSVT). We show that given block-encoded inputs, our algorithm outputs a subnormalized block-encoding of the quantum Esscher transform within accuracy $\epsilon$ in $\tilde{O}(\kappa d{\log }^{2}1\mathrm{/}\epsilon )$ queries to the inputs, where $\kappa$ is the condition number of the input density operator and $d$ is the number of constraints.