Here we show that, in principle it is possible to clone (measure) a single arbitrary unknown quantum state of a spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particle (an electron) with arbitrary precision and with success probability tending to one, using protective measurement. We first transfer the information from spin to spatial degree of freedom (d.o.f) of system electron, then trap it in a double well potential, and finally measure it protectively using a probe electron (which donot get entangled with system electron, but still extracts expectation value of an observable from a single quantum system (system electron)) to obtain information about the unknown spin polarization. Nonorthogonal state discrimination being a subclass of cloning, part of the paper (till finding out $θ_{m}$, polar angle corresponding to the unknown spin polarization) is sufficient for discrimination.
We generalize protective measurement for protective joint measurement of several observables. The merit of joint protective measurement is the determination of the eigenstates of an unknown Hamiltonian rather than the determination of features of an unknown quantum state. As an example, we precisely determine the two eigenstates of an unknown Hamiltonian by a single joint protective measurement of the three Pauli matrices on a qubit state.
Alter and Yamamoto [Phys. Rev. A 53, R2911 (1996)] claimed to consider ``protective measurements'' [Phys. Lett. A 178, 38 (1993)] which we have recently introduced. We show that the measurements discussed by Alter and Yamamoto ``are not'' the protective measurements we proposed. Therefore, their results are irrelevant to the nature of protective measurements.
My view on the meaning of the quantum wave function and its connection to protective measurements is described. The wave function and only the wave function is the ontology of the quantum theory. Protective measurements support this view although they do not provide a decisive proof. A brief review of the discovery and the criticism of protective measurements is presented. Protective measurements with postselection are discussed.
Making measurements on single quantum systems is considered difficult, almost impossible if the state is a-priori unknown. Protective measurements suggest a possibility to measure single quantum systems and gain some new information in the process. Protective measurement is described, both in the original and generalized form. The degree to which the system and the apparatus remain entangled in a protective measurement, is assessed. A possible experimental test of protective measurements is discussed.
It has been debated whether protective measurement implies the reality of the wave function. In this paper, I present a new analysis of the relationship between protective measurements and the reality of the wave function. First, I briefly introduce protective measurements and the ontological models framework for them. Second, I give a simple proof of Hardy's theorem in terms of protective measurements. Third, I analyze two suggested $ψ$-epistemic models of a protective measurement. It is shown that although these models can explain the appearance of expectation values of observables in a sing…
A review of protective measurements. Protective measurement is a method for measuring an expectation value of an observable on a single quantum system. The quantum state of the system can be protected by a potential, when the state is a nondegenerate energy eigenstate with a known gap to neighboring states, or via Zeno effect by frequent projection measurements.
A new type of procedures, called protective measurements, has been proposed by Aharonov, Anandan and Vaidman. These authors argue that a protective measurement allows the determination of arbitrary observables of a single quantum system and claim that this favors a realistic interpretation of the quantum state. This paper proves that only observables that commute with the system's Hamiltonian can be measured protectively. It is argued that this restriction saves the coherence of alternative interpretations.
A distinguishing feature of protective measurement is the possibility of obtaining information about expectation values while making the disturbance of the initial state arbitrarily small. Quantifying this state disturbance is of paramount importance. Here we derive exact and perturbative expressions for the state disturbance and the faithfulness of the measurement outcome in a model describing a spin-1/2 particle protectively measured by an inhomogeneous magnetic field. We determine constraints on the experimentally required field strengths from bounds imposed on the allowable state disturban…
We examine the entanglement and state disturbance arising in a protective measurement and argue that these inescapable effects doom the claim that protective measurement establishes the reality of the wave function. An additional challenge to this claim results from the exponential number of protective measurements required to reconstruct multi-qubit states. We suggest that the failure of protective measurement to settle the question of the meaning of the wave function is entirely expected, for protective measurement is but an application of the standard quantum formalism, and none of the hard…
Protective measurements illustrate how Yakir Aharonov's fundamental insights into quantum theory yield new experimental paradigms that allow us to test quantum mechanics in ways that were not possible before. As for quantum theory itself, protective measurements demonstrate that a quantum state describes a single system, not only an ensemble of systems, and reveal a rich ontology in the quantum state of a single system. We discuss in what sense protective measurements anticipate the theorem of Pusey, Barrett, and Rudolph (PBR), stating that, if quantum predictions are correct, then two distinc…
We investigate the disturbance of the state of a quantum system in a protective measurement for finite measurement times and different choices of the time-dependent system-apparatus coupling function. The ability to minimize this state disturbance is essential to protective measurement. We show that for a coupling strength that remains constant during the measurement interaction of duration $T$, the state disturbance scales as $T^{-2}$, while a simple smoothing of the coupling function significantly improves the scaling behavior to $T^{-6}$. We also prove that the shift of the apparatus pointe…
Classical ergodicity retains its meaning in the quantum realm when the employed measurement is protective. This unique measuring technique is reexamined in the case of post-selection, giving rise to novel insights studied in the Heisenberg representation. Quantum statistical mechanics is then briefly described in terms of two-state density operators.
We present a detailed description of the experiment realising for the first time a protective measurement, a novel measurement protocol which combines weak interactions with a ``protection mechanism'' preserving the measured state coherence during the whole measurement process. Furthermore, protective measurement allows finding the expectation value of an observable, i.e. an inherently statistical quantity, by measuring a single particle, without the need of any statistics. This peculiar property, in sharp contrast with the framework of traditional (projective) quantum measurement, might const…
This paper presents a proof-of-principle scheme for the protective measurement of a single photon. In this scheme, the photon is looped arbitrarily many times through an optical stage that implements a weak measurement of a polarization observable followed by a strong measurement protecting the state. The ability of this scheme to realize a large number of such interaction-protection steps means that the uncertainty in the measurement result can be drastically reduced while maintaining a sufficient probability for the photon to survive the measurement.
"Protective measurement" refers to two related schemes for finding the expectation value of an observable without disturbing the state of a quantum system, given a single copy of the system that is subject to a "protecting" operation. There have been several claims that these schemes support interpreting the quantum state as an objective property of a single quantum system. Here we provide three counter-arguments, each of which we present in two versions tailored to the two different schemes. Our first argument shows that the same resources used in protective measurement can be used to reconst…
A recent result about measurability of a quantum state of a single quantum system is generalized to the case of a single pre- and post-selected quantum system described by a two-state vector. The protection required for such measurement is achieved by coupling the quantum system to a pre- and post-selected protected device yielding a nonhermitian effective Hamiltonian.
Recently proposed idea of "protective" measurement of a quantum state is critically examined, and generalized. Earlier criticisms of the idea are discussed and their relevance to the proposal assessed. Several constraints on measuring apparatus required by "protective" measurements are discussed, with emphasis on how they may restrict their experimental feasibility. Though "protective" measurements result in an unchanged system state and a shift of the pointer proportional to the expectation value of the measured observable in the system state, the actual reading of the pointer position gives …
Protective measurements which were defined by Aharonov and Vaidman in 1993 played an important role in the discussion about the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In 1999, following an early work by Englert et al., Aharonov et al. wrote an article in which they showed that protective measurements can be used to demonstrate the `surrealism' of Bohmian mechanics. Bohmian mechanics also known as pilot-wave interpretation is certainly the best-known hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics. It played a fundamental role in the discovery by Bell of his famous non locality theorem. There…
In the above paper [1], it is claimed that Bohm's mechanics can be challenged by a simple gedanken experiment involving a protecting measurement. Here we show that this gedanken experiment can be justified without problem and without contradicting the axiom attributing a physical meaning to the Bohmian trajectorie
We study protective quantum measurements in the presence of an environment and decoherence. We consider the model of a protectively measured qubit that also interacts with a spin environment during the measurement. We investigate how the coupling to the environment affects the two characteristic properties of a protective measurement, namely, (i) the ability to leave the state of the system approximately unchanged and (ii) the transfer of information about expectation values to the apparatus pointer. We find that even when the interaction with the environment is weak enough not to lead to appr…
A joint measurement of two observables is a {\it simultaneous} measurement of both quantities upon the {\it same} quantum system. When two quantum-mechanical observables do not commute, then a joint measurement of these observables cannot be accomplished by projective measurements alone. In this paper we shall discuss the use of quantum cloning to perform a joint measurement of two components of spin associated with a qubit system. We introduce a cloning scheme which is optimal with respect to this task. This cloning scheme may be thought to work by cloning two components of spin onto its outp…
We analyze quantum algorithms for cloning of a quantum measurement. Our aim is to mimic two uses of a device performing an unknown von Neumann measurement with a single use of the device. When the unknown device has to be used before the bipartite state to be measured is available we talk about 1 -> 2 learning of the measurement, otherwise the task is called 1 -> 2 cloning of a measurement. We perform the optimization for both learning and cloning for arbitrary dimension of the Hilbert space. For 1 -> 2 cloning we also propose a simple quantum network that realizes the optimal strategy.
Cloning of observables, unlike standard cloning of states, aims at copying the information encoded in the statistics of a class of observables rather then on quantum states themselves. In such a process the emphasis is on the quantum operation (evolution plus measurement) necessary to retrieve the original information. We analyze, for qubit systems, the cloning of a class generated by two noncommuting observables, elucidating the relationship between such a process and joint measurements. This helps in establishing an optimality criterion for cloning of observables. We see that, even if the cl…
We study the protective measurement of a qubit by a second qubit acting as a probe. Consideration of this model is motivated by the possibility of its experimental implementation in multiqubit systems such as trapped ions. In our scheme, information about the expectation value of an arbitrary observable of the system qubit is encoded in the rotation of the state of the probe qubit. We describe the structure of the Hamiltonian that gives rise to this measurement and analyze the resulting dynamics under a variety of realistic conditions, such as noninfinitesimal measurement strengths, repeated m…
We show that universally covariant cloning is not optimal for achieving joint measurements of noncommuting observables with minimum added noise. For such a purpose a cloning transformation that is covariant with respect to a restricted transformation group is needed.
Conventionally, unknown quantum states are characterized using quantum-state tomography based on strong or weak measurements carried out on an ensemble of identically prepared systems. By contrast, the use of protective measurements offers the possibility of determining quantum states from a series of weak, long measurements performed on a single system. Because the fidelity of a protectively measured quantum state is determined by the amount of state disturbance incurred during each protective measurement, it is crucial that the initial quantum state of the system is disturbed as little as po…
We explore the possibility of achieving optimal joint measurements of noncommuting observables on a single quantum system by performing conventional measurements of commuting self adjoint operators on optimal clones of the original quantum system. We consider the case of both finite dimensional and infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces. In the former we study the joint measurement of three orthogonal components of a spin 1/2, in the latter we consider the case of the joint measurements of any pair of noncommuting quadratures of one mode of the electromagnetic field. We show that universally cova…
We consider the problem of phase-covariant cloning for coherent states. We show that an experimental scheme based on ideal phase measurement and feedforward outperforms the semiclassical procedure of ideal phase measurement and preparation in terms of fidelity. A realistic scheme where the ideal phase measurement is replaced with double-homodyne detection is shown to be unable to overcome the semiclassical cloning strategy. On the other hand, such a realistic scheme is better than semiclassical cloning based on double-homodyne phase measurement and preparation.
Protective measurements yield properties of the quantum state of a single quantum system without affecting the quantum state. A protective measurement involves adiabatic coupling to the measuring device together with a procedure to protect the state from changing. For nondegenerate energy eigenstates the protection is provided by the system itself. In this case it is actually possible to measure the Schrödinger wave via measurements on a single system. This fact provides an argument in favor of associating physical reality with a quantum state of a single system, challenging the usual ensemble…
We introduce the concept of cloning for classes of observables and classify cloning machines for qubit systems according to the number of parameters needed to describe the class under investigation. A no-cloning theorem for observables is derived and the connections between cloning of observables and joint measurements of noncommuting observables are elucidated. Relationships with cloning of states and non-demolition measurements are also analyzed.
We propose a scheme to enhance the fidelity of symmetric quantum cloning machine using a weak measurement. By adjusting the intensity of weak measurement parameter $p$, we obtain the copies with different optimal fidelity. Choosing proper value of $p$, we can obtain the perfect copies for initial qubits. In this paper, we focus on $1-2$ quantum cloning for two nonorthogonal states. Sets containing more than two linear independent states are also discussed briefly. Due to weak measurements being probabilistic, we obtain high fidelity at risk of probability. If the weak measurement successes, we…
In this article we propose an alternate model for the so called {\it protective measurements}, more appropriately {\it adiabatic measurements} of a spin 1/2 system where the {\it apparatus} is also a quantum system with a {\em finite dimensional Hilbert space}. This circumvents several technical as well as conceptual issues that arise when dealing with an infinite dimensional Hilbert space as in the analysis of conventional Stern-Gerlach experiment. Here also it is demonstrated that the response of the detector is continuous and it {\it directly} measures {\em expectation values without alteri…
We study measurements on various subsystems of the output of a universal 1 to 2 cloning machine, and establish a correspondence between these measurements at the output and effective measurements on the original input. We show that one can implement sharp effective measurement elements by measuring only two out of the three output systems. Additionally, certain complete sets of sharp measurements on the input can be realised by measurements on the two clones. Furthermore, we introduce a scheme that allows to restore the original input in one of the output bits, by using measurements and classi…
Within the class of ontological interpretations of quantum theory where a physical system comprises a particle and a field (wavefunction) guiding it, an empty wave is a segment of the wavefunction not containing the particle. We examine the impact of this concept on the debate between the epistemological and ontological viewpoints. The theoretical merits of the empty wave in avoiding the wavefunction collapse hypothesis, and in supplying conceptual precision in the application of quantum mechanics, are emphasized. Particular reference is made to path detection in interferometry and it is shown…
Copying information is an elementary operation in classical information processing. However, copying seems rather different in the quantum regime. Since the discovery of the universal quantum cloning machine, much has been found from the fundamental point of view about quantum copying. But a basic question as to the utility of universal quantum cloning remains. We have considered its application in quantum state restoration by using cloning circuit for state estimation. It might be expected that classical information from the state estimation might help restore the quantum state that was distu…
We investigate the security of continuous-variable (CV) quantum key distribution (QKD) using coherent states and reverse reconciliation against Gaussian individual attacks based on an optimal Gaussian $1 \to 2$ cloning machine. We provide an implementation of the optimal Gaussian individual attack. we also find a Bell-measurement attack which works without delayed choice of measurements and has better performance than the cloning attack.
One of the characteristic features of quantum mechanics is that every measurement that extracts information about a general quantum system necessarily causes an unavoidable disturbance to the state of this system. A plethora of different approaches has been developed to characterize and optimize this tradeoff. Here, we apply the framework of quantum instruments to investigate the optimal tradeoff and to derive a class of procedures that is optimal with respect to most meaningful measures. We focus our analysis on binary measurements on qubits as commonly used in communication and computation p…
We show that in the case of unknown {\em harmonic oscillator coherent states} it is possible to achieve what we call {\it perfect information cloning}. By this we mean that it is still possible to make arbitrary number of copies of a state which has {\it exactly} the same information content as the original unknown coherent state. By making use of this {\it perfect information cloning} it would be possible to estimate the original state through measurements and make arbitrary number of copies of the estimator. We define the notion of a {\em Measurement Fidelity}. We show that this information …
The ontological model framework provides a rigorous approach to address the question of whether the quantum state is ontic or epistemic. When considering only conventional projective measurements, auxiliary assumptions are always needed to prove the reality of the quantum state in the framework. For example, the Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph theorem is based on an additional preparation independence assumption. In this paper, we give a new proof of psi-ontology in terms of protective measurements in the ontological model framework. The proof does not rely on auxiliary assumptions, and also applies to …
We propose two feasible experimental implementations of an optimal asymmetric 1->2 quantum cloning of a polarization state of photon. Both implementations are based on a partial and optimal reverse of recent conditional symmetrical quantum cloning experiments. The reversion procedure is performed only by a local measurement of one from the clones and ancilla followed by a local operation on the other clone. The local measurement consists only of a single unbalanced beam splitter followed in one output by a single photon detector and the asymmetry of fidelities in the cloning is controlled by a…
An application of quantum cloning to optimally interface a quantum system with a classical observer is presented, in particular we describe a procedure to perform a minimal disturbance measurement on a single qubit by adopting a 1->2 cloning machine followed by a generalized measurement on a single clone and the anti-clone or on the two clones. Such scheme has been applied to enhance the transmission fidelity over a lossy quantum channel.
We present Quantum Cloning Machines (QCM) that transform N identical qubits into $M>N$ identical copies and we prove that the fidelity (quality) of these copies is optimal. The connection between cloning and measurement is discussed in detail. When the number of clones M tends towards infinity, the fidelity of each clone tends towards the optimal fidelity that can be obtained by a measurement on the input qubits. More generally, the QCM are universal devices to translate quantum information into classical information.
We construct a probabilistic quantum cloning machine by a general unitary-reduction operation. With a postselection of the measurement results, the machine yields faithful copies of the input states. It is shown that the states secretly chosen from a certain set $\$=\left\{\left| Ψ_1\right> ,\left| Ψ_2\right> ,... ,\left| Ψ_n\right> \right\} $ can be probabilistically cloned if and only if $% \left| Ψ_1\right>$, $\left| Ψ_2\right>$, $... ,$ and $\left| Ψ_n\right>$ are linearly-independent. We derive the best possible cloning efficiencies. Probabilistic cloning has close connection with the pro…
We propose a probabilistic quantum cloning scheme using Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, Bell basis measurements, single-qubit unitary operations and generalized measurements, all of which are within the reach of current technology. Compared to another possible scheme via Tele-CNOT gate [D. Gottesman and I. L. Chuang, Nature 402, 390 (1999)], the present scheme may be used in experiment to clone the states of one particle to those of two different particles with higher probability and less GHZ resources.
Cloning of statistics of general quantum measurement is discussed. The presented approach is connected with the known concept of observable cloning, but differs in some essential respects. The reasons are illustrated within some variety of B92 protocol. As it is shown, there exist pairs of states such that the perfect cloning of given POVM is not possible. We discuss some properties of these intolerant sets. An example allowing the perfect cloning is presented as well.
The impossibility to clone an unknown quantum state is a powerful principle to understand the nature of quantum mechanics, especially within the context of quantum computing and quantum information. This principle has been generalized to quantitative statements as to what extent imperfect cloning is possible. We delineate an aspect of the border between the possible and the impossible concerning quantum cloning, by putting forward an entanglement-assisted scheme for simulating perfect cloning in the context of weak measurements. This phenomenon we call weak cloning of an unknown quantum state.
We discuss the criteria presently used for evaluating the efficiency of quantum teleportation schemes for continuous variables. Using an argument based upon the difference between 1-to-2 quantum cloning (quantum duplication) and 1-to-infinity cloning (classical measurement), we show that a fidelity value larger than 2/3 is required for successful quantum teleportation of coherent states. This value has not been reached experimentally so far.
We consider quantum devices for turning a finite number N of d-level quantum systems in the same unknown pure state σinto M>N systems of the same kind, in an approximation of the M-fold tensor product of the state σ. In a previous paper it was shown that this problem has a unique optimal solution, when the quality of the output is judged by arbitrary measurements, involving also the correlations between the clones. We show in this paper, that if the quality judgement is based solely on measurements of single output clones, there is again a unique optimal cloning device, which coincides with th…
We show that, there are physical means for cloning two non-orthogonal pure states which are secretly chosen from a certain set $% \$={ | Ψ_0 > , | Ψ_1 > }$. The states are cloned through a unitary evolution together with a measurement. The cloning efficiency can not attain 100%. With some negative measurement results, the cloning fails.
We analyze to what extent it is possible to copy arbitrary states of a two-level quantum system. We show that there exists a "universal quantum copying machine", which approximately copies quantum mechanical states in such a way that the quality of its output does not depend on the input. We also examine a machine which combines a unitary transformation with a selective measurement to produce good copies of states in a neighborhood of a particular state. We discuss the problem of measurement of the output states.
A quantum cloning machine is introduced that yields $M$ identical optimal clones from $N$ replicas of a coherent state and $N'$ replicas of its phase conjugate. It also optimally produces $M'=M+N'-N$ phase-conjugated clones at no cost. For well chosen input asymmetries $N'/(N+N')$, this machine is shown to provide better cloning fidelities than the standard $(N+N') \to M$ cloner. The special cases of the optimal balanced cloner ($N=N'$) and the optimal measurement ($M=\infty$) are investigated.
We propose a feasible scheme of conditional quantum partial teleportation of a qubit as optimal asymmetric cloning at a distance. In this scheme, Alice preserves one imperfect clone whereas other clone is teleported to Bob. Fidelities of the clones can be simply controlled by an asymmetry in Bell-state measurement. The optimality means that tightest inequality for the fidelities in the asymmetric cloning is saturated. Further we design a conditional teleportation as symmetric optimal N-> N+1 cloning from N Alice's replicas on single distant clone. We shortly discussed two feasible experimental…
The problem of quantum state reduction in the process of measurement has attracted attention of almost everyone who created, developed or explained quantum physics to the students. Absence of a solution is the basis for the statement that the physical laws alone are not enough to describe the reduction of state of the measured particle. In the presented study, it is taken into account that the measurement of all properties of quantum particles can not be carried out in one physical process (the no-cloning theorem). For such a measurement several series of incompatible observations are needed, …
The quantum cloner machine maps an unknown arbitrary input qubit into two optimal clones and one optimal flipped qubit. By combining linear and non-linear optical methods we experimentally implement a scheme that, after the cloning transformation, restores the original input qubit in one of the output channels, by using local measurements, classical communication and feedforward. This significant teleportation-like method demonstrates how the information is preserved during the cloning process. The realization of the reversion process is expected to find useful applications in the field of mod…
We derive the transformation for the optimal universal quantum anti-cloner which produces two anti-parallel outputs for a single input state. The fidelity is shown to be 2/3 which is same as the measurement fidelity. We consider a probabilistic quantum anti-cloner and show quantum states can be anti-cloned exactly with non-zero probability and its efficiency is higher than the efficiency of distinguishing between the two states.
Multiphoton state in quantum cryptography decreases its security. Key disclosing with universal quantum cloning machine (UQCM) is considered in explicit manner. Although UQCM cannot make perfect clones, there is some invariant quantity between the original photon and the imperfect clones. The invariant quantity, the direction of Stokes parameters, tells us the auxiliary information leading into key information. The attack, then, corresponds to some kind of quantum non-demolition measurement. Its application to recent high-performance quantum cryptography, Y-00 protocol, is also studied.
