Wigner and Husimi quasi-distributions, owing to their functional regularity, give the two archetypal and equivalent representations of all observable-parameters in continuous-variable quantum information. Balanced homodyning and heterodyning that correspond to their associated sampling procedures, on the other hand, fare very differently concerning their state or parameter reconstruction accuracies. We present a general theory of a now-known fact that heterodyning can be tomographically more powerful than balanced homodyning to many interesting classes of single-mode quantum states, and discuss the treatment for two-mode sources.
Efficient quantum state tomography with two complementary projective measurements
Tongji University（同济大学）；Hangzhou Innovation Institute of Beihang University（北京航空航天大学杭州创新研究院）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；Shanxi Normal University（山西师范大学）；State Key Laboratory of Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned Systems, Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Tongji University（同济大学智能无人系统上海研究院、自主智能无人系统全国重点实验室）；Embodied Intelligence Robotics Institute, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学具身智能机器人研究院）
In this study the determinant of the average quadratic error matrix is used as the measure of state estimation efficiency. This quantity is easily computable in some cases, so it gives us a reasonable tool to find optimal measurement setup for different quantum tomography problems. We present numerous applications for a single qubit when von Neumann measurements or a single POVM is used and a part of the parameters of the state is given. Under some restriction the optimality is found for $n$-level system as well. The optimal measurements have some complementary relation to each other or to the…
We introduce random matrix theory to study the tomographic efficiency of a wide class of measurements constructed out of weighted 2-designs, including symmetric informationally complete (SIC) probability operator measurements (POMs). In particular, we derive analytic formulae for the mean Hilbert-Schmidt distance and the mean trace distance between the estimator and the true state, which clearly show the difference between the scaling behaviors of the two error measures with the dimension of the Hilbert space. We then prove that the product SIC POMs---the multipartite analogue of the SIC POMs-…
Estimation of quantum states and measurements is crucial for the implementation of quantum information protocols. The standard method for each is quantum tomography. However, quantum tomography suffers from systematic errors caused by imperfect knowledge of the system. We present a procedure to simultaneously characterize quantum states and measurements that mitigates systematic errors by use of a single high-fidelity state preparation and a limited set of high-fidelity unitary operations. Such states and operations are typical of many state-of-the-art systems. For this situation we design a s…
We show that different entropic measures of fluctuations lead to contradictory uncertainty relations for two complementary observables. We apply Tsallis and Rényi entropies to the joint distribution emerging from a noisy simultaneous measurement of both observables as well as to the product of their individual statistics, either intrinsic or of operational origin.
State tomography on qubit pairs is routinely carried out by measuring the two qubits separately, while one expects a higher efficiency from tomography with highly symmetric joint measurements of both qubits. Our numerical study of simulated experiments does not support such expectations.
One of the challenges in quantum information is the demonstration of quantum coherence in the operations of experimental devices. While full quantum process tomography can do the job, it is both cumbersome and unintuitive. In this presentation, we show that a surprisingly detailed and intuitively accessible characterization of errors is possible by measuring the error statistics of only two complementary classical operations of a quantum gate.
Quantum Optical Coherence Tomography (Q-OCT) presents many advantages over its classical counterpart, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT): it provides an increased axial resolution and is immune to even orders of dispersion. The core of Q-OCT is quantum interference of negatively correlated entangled photon pairs obtained in a Hong-Ou-Mandel configuration. This two-photon interference can be observed in the time domain in the form of dips or in the Fourier domain by means of a joint spectrum. The latter approach proved to be practical in the sense that it alleviated the requirement posed on lig…
Quantum Optical Coherence Tomography (Q-OCT) is the non-classical counterpart of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) - a high-resolution 3D imaging technique based on white-light interferometry. Because Q-OCT uses a source of frequency-entangled photon pairs, not only is the axial resolution not affected by dispersion mismatch in the interferometer, but is also inherently improved by a factor of square root of two. Unfortunately, practical applications of Q-OCT are hindered by image-scrambling artefacts and slow acquisition times. Here, we present a theoretical analysis of a novel approach that…
Recent work has revealed that the wave function of a pure state can be measured directly and that complementary knowledge of a quantum system can be obtained simultaneously by weak measurements. However, the original scheme applies only to pure states, and it is not efficient because most of the data are discarded by post-selection. Here, we propose tomography schemes for pure states and for mixed states via weak measurements, and our schemes are more efficient because we do not discard any data. Furthermore, we demonstrate that any matrix element of a general state can be directly read from a…
We demonstrate a compressive normalized ghost imaging system with entangled photons employing complementary compressive imaging (CCI) technique. The quantum ghost image reconstruction was achieved at only 19.53% sampling ratio of raster scanning. With the special +1/-1 type sensing matrix and appropriate optimal algorithm, the photon utilization efficiency and robustness of the imaging system is enhanced significantly. Our results reveal the great potential of CCI technique applied in quantum imaging and other quantum optics field such as quantum charactering and quantum state tomography to us…
We present an intuitive model of detector self-tomography. Two identical realisations of the detector are illuminated by an entangled state that connects the joint statistics in a way in which each detector sees the other as a kind of mirror reflection. A suitable analysis of the statistics reveals the possibility of fully characterizing the detector. We apply this idea to Bell-type experiments revealing their nonclassical nature.
Self-calibrating quantum state tomography aims at reconstructing the unknown quantum state and certain properties of the measurement devices from the same data. Since the estimates of the state and device parameters come from the same data, one should employ a joint estimation scheme, including the construction and reporting of joint state-device error regions to quantify uncertainty. We explain how to do this naturally within the framework of optimal error regions. As an illustrative example, we apply our procedure to the double-crosshair measurement of the BB84 scenario in quantum cryptograp…
The uncertainty relations, pioneered by Werner Heisenberg nearly 90 years ago, set a fundamental limitation on the joint measurability of complementary observables. This limitation has long been a subject of debate, which has been reignited recently due to new proposed forms of measurement uncertainty relations. The present work is associated with a new error trade-off relation for compatible observables approximating two incompatible observables, in keeping with the spirit of Heisenberg's original ideas of 1927. We report the first \textsl{direct} test and confirmation of the tight bounds pre…
The exponential growth of photonic quantum technologies is driving the demand of tools for measuring the quality of their information carriers. One of the most prominent is Stimulated Emission Tomography (SET), which uses classical coherent fields to measure the Joint Spectral Amplitude (JSA) of photon pairs with high speed and resolution. While the modulus of the JSA can be directly addressed from a single intensity measurement, the retrieval of the Joint Spectral Phase (JSP) is far more challenging and received minor attentions. However, a wide class of spontaneous sources of technological r…
Quantum state tomography is an important tool in quantum information science for complete characterization of multi-qubit states and their correlations. Here we report a method to perform a joint simultaneous read-out of two superconducting qubits dispersively coupled to the same mode of a microwave transmission line resonator. The non-linear dependence of the resonator transmission on the qubit state dependent cavity frequency allows us to extract the full two-qubit correlations without the need for single shot read-out of individual qubits. We employ standard tomographic techniques to recons…
It is natural to ask how to utilize actual measurements, such as the so-called IQ-plane data obtained in the dispersive readout of transmon qubits, in the estimation of the state of a quantum system. We formulate the joint problem of discrimination and quantum state tomography as a bilevel optimization problem and show how to solve it. The use of the joint problem can improve the sample complexity (or the reconstruction error for a fixed number of measurements) compared with traditional techniques that decompose the problem into the discrimination and state tomography based on the estimated ex…
We describe and demonstrate a quantum state tomography for measuring the complex temporal waveform of narrowband biphotons. Through six sets of two-photon interference measurements projected in different polarization subspaces, we can construct the time-frequency entangled two-photon joint amplitude and phase functions in continuous-variable time domain. For the first time, we apply this technique to experimentally determine the temporal quantum states of narrowband biphotons generated from spontaneous four-wave mixing in cold atoms, and fully confirm the theoretical predictions.
A theory of joint nonideal measurement of incompatible observables is used in order to assess the relative merits of quantum tomography and certain measurements of generalized observables, with respect to completeness of the obtained information. A method is studied for calculating a Wigner distribution from the joint probability distribution obtained in a joint measurement.
We describe a quantum state tomography scheme which is applicable to a system described in a Hilbert space of arbitrary finite dimensionality and is constructed from sequences of two measurements. The scheme consists of measuring the various pairs of projectors onto two bases --which have no mutually orthogonal vectors--, the two members of each pair being measured in succession. We show that this scheme implies measuring the joint quasi-probability of any pair of non-degenerate observables having the two bases as their respective eigenbases. The model Hamiltonian underlying the scheme makes u…
We measure the joint Q-function of a multi-spatial-mode field using a charge-coupled device array detector in an unbalanced heterodyne configuration. The intensity pattern formed by interference between a weak signal field and a strong local oscillator is resolved using Fourier analysis and used to reconstruct quadrature amplitude statistics for 22 spatial modes simultaneously. The local oscillator and signal propagate at an angle of 12 mrad thus shifting the classical noise to modes that do not overlap with the signal. In this configuration, balanced detection is not necessary.
Pauli Measurements are the most important measurements in both theoretical and experimental aspects of quantum information science. In this paper, we explore the power of Pauli measurements in the state tomography related problems. Firstly, we show that the \textit{quantum state tomography} problem of $n$-qubit system can be accomplished with ${\mathcal{O}}(\frac{10^n}{ε^2})$ copies of the unknown state using Pauli measurements. As a direct application, we studied the \textit{quantum overlapping tomography} problem introduced by Cotler and Wilczek in Ref. \cite{Cotler_2020}. We show that the s…
Quantum state reconstruction on a finite number of copies of a quantum system with informationally incomplete measurements does, as a rule, not yield a unique result. We derive a reconstruction scheme where both the likelihood and the von Neumann entropy functionals are maximized in order to systematically select the most-likely estimator with the largest entropy, that is the least-bias estimator, consistent with a given set of measurement data. This is equivalent to the joint consideration of our partial knowledge and ignorance about the ensemble to reconstruct its identity. An interesting st…
We demonstrate that it is possible to use the balanced homodyning with array detectors to measure the quantum state of correlated two-mode signal field. We show the applicability of the method to fields with complex mode functions, thus generalizing the work of Beck (Phys. Rev. Letts. 84, 5748 (2000)) in several important ways. We further establish that, under suitable conditions, array detector measurements from one of the two outputs is sufficient to determine the quantum state of signals. We show the power of the method by reconstructing a truncated Perelomov state which exhibits complicate…
Using a result of H. Hanche-Olsen, we show that (subject to fairly natural constraints on what constitutes a system, and on what constitutes a composite system), orthodox finite-dimensional complex quantum mechanics with superselection rules is the only non-signaling probabilistic theory in which (i) individual systems are Jordan algebras (equivalently, their cones of unnormalized states are homogeneous and self-dual), (ii) composites are locally tomographic (meaning that states are determined by the joint probabilities they assign to measurement outcomes on the component systems) and (iii) at…
Parametric down-conversion (PDC) is the established standard for the practical generation of a multiplicity of quantum optical states. These include two-mode squeezed vacuum, heralded non-Gaussian states and entangled photon pairs. Detailed theoretical studies provide insight into the time-frequency (TF) structure of PDC, which are governed by the complex-valued joint spectral amplitude (JSA) function. However in experiments, the TF structure of PDC is mostly characterised by intensity measurementsthat forbid access to the important phase of the JSA. In this paper, we present an amplitude-sens…
We investigate quantum state reconstruction of a superconducting qubit threaded by an Aharonov-Bohm flux, with particular attention to the local geometric phase. A state reconstruction scheme is introduced with a proper account of the local geometric phase generated by Faraday's law of induction. Our scheme is based on measurement of three complementary quantities, that is, the extra charge and two local currents. Incorporating time-reversal symmetry and the Faraday's law, we show that the full density matrix can be reconstructed without ambiguity in the choice of gauge. This procedure clearly…
Intuitively, if a density operator has small rank, then it should be easier to estimate from experimental data, since in this case only a few eigenvectors need to be learned. We prove two complementary results that confirm this intuition. First, we show that a low-rank density matrix can be estimated using fewer copies of the state, i.e., the sample complexity of tomography decreases with the rank. Second, we show that unknown low-rank states can be reconstructed from an incomplete set of measurements, using techniques from compressed sensing and matrix completion. These techniques use simple …
Wiener-Khinchin theorem, the fact that the autocorrelation function of a time process has a spectral decomposition given by its power spectrum intensity, can be used in many disciplines. However, the applications based on a quantum counterpart of Wiener-Khinchin theorem that provides a translation between time-energy degrees of freedom of biphoton wavefunction still remains relatively unexplored. Here, we use a quantum Wiener-Khinchin theorem (QWKT) to state that two-photon joint spectral intensity and the cross-correlation of two-photon temporal signal can be connected by making a Fourier tra…
A recurring problem in quantum mechanics is to estimate either the state of a quantum system or the measurement operator applied to it. If we wish to estimate both, then the difficulty is that the state and the measurement always appear together: to estimate the state, we must use a measurement; to estimate the measurement operator, we must use a state. The data of such quantum estimation experiments come in the form of measurement frequencies. Ideally, the measured average frequencies can be attributed to an average state and an average measurement operator. If this is not the case, we have c…
Standard quantum physics prevents the existence of a joint statistics for complementary observables. Nevertheless, a joint distribution for complementary observables can be derived from their imperfect simultaneous measurement followed by a suitable data inversion. Quantumness is reflected then in the pathologies of the inferred distribution. We apply this program to the paradigmatic example of complementarity: the wave-particle duality in a Young interferometer.
Quantum Optical Coherence Tomography (Q-OCT) is a non-classical equivalent of Optical Coherence Tomography and is able to provide a twofold axial resolution increase and immunity to resolution-degrading dispersion. The main drawback of Q-OCT are artefacts which are additional elements that clutter an A-scan and lead to a complete loss of structural information for multilayered objects. Whereas there are successful methods for artefact removal in Time-domain Q-OCT, no such scheme has been devised for Fourier-domain Q-OCT (Fd-Q-OCT), although the latter modality - through joint spectrum detectio…
Quantum states and measurements exhibit wave-like --- continuous, or particle-like --- discrete, character. Hybrid discrete-continuous photonic systems are key to investigating fundamental quantum phenomena, generating superpositions of macroscopic states, and form essential resources for quantum-enhanced applications, e.g. entanglement distillation and quantum computation, as well as highly efficient optical telecommunications. Realizing the full potential of these hybrid systems requires quantum-optical measurements sensitive to complementary observables such as field quadrature amplitude an…
The density matrix of composite spin system is discussed in relation to the adjoint representation of unitary group U(n). The entanglement structure is introduced as an additional ingredient to the description of the linear space carrying the adjoint representation. Positive maps of density operator are related to random matrices. The tomographic probability description of quantum states is used to formulate the problem of separability and entanglement as the condition for joint probability distribution of several random variables represented as the convex sum of products of probabilities of r…
Quantifying entanglement in a quantum system generally requires a complete quantum tomography followed by the NP-hard computation of an entanglement monotone --- requirements that rapidly become intractable at higher dimensions. Observing entanglement in large quantum systems has consequently been relegated to witnesses that only verify its existence. In this article, we show that the violation of recent entropic witnesses of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox also provides tight lower bounds to multiple entanglement measures, such as the entanglement of formation and the distillable entangle…
Quantum state tomography is the experimental procedure of determining an unknown state. It is not only essential for the verification of resources and processors of quantum information but is also important in its own right with regard to the foundation of quantum mechanics. Standard methods have been elusive for large systems because of the enormous number of observables to be measured and the exponential complexity of data post-processing. Here, we propose a new scheme of quantum state tomography that requires the measurement of only three observables (acting jointly on the system and pointe…
It is shown how it is possible to reconstruct the initial state of a one-dimensional system by measuring sequentially two conjugate variables. The procedure relies on the quasi-characteristic function, the Fourier-transform of the Wigner quasi-probability. The proper characteristic function obtained by Fourier-transforming the experimentally accessible joint probability of observing "position" then "momentum" (or vice versa) can be expressed as a product of the quasi-characteristic function of the two detectors and that, unknown, of the quantum system. This allows state reconstruction through …
Accurate and precise detection of multi-qubit entanglement is key for the experimental development of quantum computation. Traditionally, non-classical correlations between entangled qubits are measured by counting coincidences between single-shot readouts of individual qubits. We report entanglement metrology using a single detection channel with direct access to ensemble-averaged correlations between two superconducting qubits. Following validation and calibration of this joint readout, we demonstrate full quantum tomography on both separable and highly-entangled two-qubit states produced on…
We show that number and canonical phase (of a single mode optical field) are complementary observables. We also bound the measurement uncertainty region for their approximate joint measurements.
