We study generalized measurements (POVM measurements) on a single d-level quantum system which is in a completely unknown pure state, and derive the best estimate of the post-measurement state. The mean post-measuremement estimation fidelity of a generalized measurement is obtained and related to the operation fidelity of the device. This illustrates how the information gain about the post-measurement state and the corresponding state disturbance are mutually dependent. The connection between the best estimates of the pre- and post-measurement state is established and interpreted. For pure generalized measurements the two states coincide.
In analogy with the usual state estimation problem, we introduce the problem of state estimation for a pre- and post-selected ensemble. The problem has fundamental physical significance since, as argued by Y. Aharonov and collaborators, pre- and post-selected ensembles are the most basic quantum ensembles. Two new features are shown to appear: 1) information is flowing to the measuring device both from the past and from the future; 2)because of the post-selection, certain measurement outcomes can be forced never to occur. Due to these features, state estimation in such ensembles is dramaticall…
We present the optimal scheme for estimating a pure qubit state by means of local measurements on N identical copies. We give explicit examples for low N. For large N, we show that the fidelity saturates the collective measurement bound up to order 1/N. When the signal state lays on a meridian of the Bloch sphere, we show that this can be achieved without classical communication.
Efficient methods for characterizing the performance of quantum measurements are important in the experimental quantum sciences. Ideally, one requires both a physically relevant distinguishability measure between measurement operations and a well-defined experimental procedure for estimating the distinguishability measure. Here, we propose the average measurement fidelity and error between quantum measurements as distinguishability measures. We present protocols for obtaining bounds on these quantities that are both estimable using experimentally accessible quantities and scalable in the size …
We discuss single adaptive measurements for the estimation of mixed quantum states of qubits. The results are compared to the optimal estimation schemes using collective measurements. We also demonstrate that the advantage of collective measurements increases when the degree of mixing of the quantum states increases.
We examine the problem of estimating the expectation values of two observables when we have a finite number of copies of an unknown qubit state. Specifically we examine whether it is better to measure each of the observables separately on different copies or to perform a joint measurement of the observables on each copy. We find that joint measurements can sometimes provide an advantage over separate measurements, but only if we make estimates of an observable based solely on the results of measurements of that observable. If we instead use both sets of results to estimate each observable then…
It is known that mutually unbiased bases, whenever they exist, are optimal in an information theoretic sense for the determination of unknown state of a quantum ensemble. These bases may not exist in most dimensions and some suboptimal choices have to be made. The present paper deals with estimates of the information loss in suboptimal choice of bases. The information is calculated directly in terms of transition probabilities. I give estimates for the information content of measurement in some approximate MUBs proposed recently.
We derive the amount of information retrieved by a quantum measurement in estimating an unknown maximally entangled state, along with the pertaining disturbance on the state itself. The optimal tradeoff between information and disturbance is obtained, and a corresponding optimal measurement is provided.
An effective description of microscopic measurements is given, in which the precise moment of probing is not determined. Within this scenario we propose a scheme that relies on an "attempt" to make a forbidden simultaneous measurement of two incompatible observables. Although bound to failure in what concerns this goal, the process can lead to information on a possible non-vanishing time scale $δt$ involved in the collapsing of the wave function, even if the duration $Δt$ of the individual measurements is much larger than $δt$.
We give an introduction to Gaussian states and operations. A discussion of the entanglement properties of bipartite Gaussian states in terms of its covariance matrix follows. It is explained how entanglement can be witnessed using feasible measurements, e.g. homodyne measurements. We find that the outcome of such a measurements cannot only witness but also quantify entanglement.
Given n qubits prepared according to the same unknown density operator, we propose a nondestructive measuring method which approximately yields the eigenstates. It is shown that, for any plane which passes through the center point of the Bloch sphere, there exists corresponding projective measurement. By performing these measurements, we can scan the whole Bloch sphere like radar to search for the orientation of and determine the eigenstates. We show the convergency of the measurements. This result actually reveals a mathematical structure of the n-fold Hilbert space .
We study the efficiency of estimation procedures where the temperature of an external bath is indirectly recovered by monitoring the transformations induced on a probing system that is put in thermal contact with the bath. In particular we compare the performances of sequential measurement schemes where the probe is initialized only once and measured repeatedly during its interaction with the bath, with those of measure & re-prepare approaches where instead, after each interaction-and-measurement stage, the probe is reinitialized into the same fiduciary state. From our analysis it is revealed …
The problem of the estimation of multiple phases (or of commuting unitaries) is considered. This is a sub-model of the estimation of a completely unknown unitary operation where it has been shown in recent works that there are considerable improvements by using entangled input states and entangled measurements. Here it is shown that when estimating commuting unitaries, there is practically no advantage in using entangled input states or entangled measurements.
We present a robust method for quantum process tomography, which yields a set of Lindblad operators that optimally fit the measured density operators at a sequence of time points. The benefits of this method are illustrated using a set of liquid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) measurements on a molecule containing two coupled hydrogen nuclei, which are sufficient to fully determine its relaxation superoperator. It was found that the complete positivity constraint, which is necessary for the existence of the Lindblad operators, was also essential for obtaining a robust fit to the measure…
The problem of estimating the spectrum of a density matrix is considered. Other problems, such as bipartite pure state entanglement, can be reduced to spectrum estimation. A local operations and classical communication (LOCC) measurement strategy is shown which is asymptotically optimal. This means that, for a very large number of copies, it becomes unnecessary to perform collective measurements which should be more difficult to implement in practice.
We study an analog quantum simulator coupled to a reservoir with a known spectral density. The reservoir perturbs the quantum simulation by causing decoherence. The simulator is used to measure an operator average, which cannot be calculated using any classical means. Since we cannot predict the result, it is difficult to estimate the effect of the environment. Especially, it is difficult to resolve whether the perturbation is small or if the actual result of the simulation is in fact very different from the ideal system we intend to study. Here, we show that in specific systems a measurement …
Estimation of expectation values of incompatible observables is an essential practical task in quantum computing, especially for approximating energies of chemical and other many-body quantum systems. In this work we introduce a method for this purpose based on performing a single joint measurement that can be implemented locally and whose marginals yield noisy (unsharp) versions of the target set of non-commuting Pauli observables. We derive bounds on the number of experimental repetitions required to estimate energies up to a certain precision. We compare this strategy to the classical shado…
The conventional coherence is defined with respect to a fixed orthonormal basis, i.e., to a von Neumann measurement. Recently, generalized quantum coherence with respect to general positive operator-valued measurements (POVMs) has been presented. Several well-defined coherence measures, such as the relative entropy of coherence $C_{r}$, the $l_{1}$ norm of coherence $C_{l_{1}}$ and the coherence $C_{T,α}$ based on Tsallis relative entropy with respect to general POVMs have been obtained. In this work, we investigate the properties of $C_{r}$, $l_{1}$ and $C_{T,α}$. We estimate the upper bounds…
We analyze the information an attacker can obtain on the numbers generated by a user by measurements on a subsystem of a system consisting of two entangled two-level systems. The attacker and the user make measurements on their respective subsystems, only. Already the knowledge of the density matrix of the subsystem of the user completely determines the upper bound on the information accessible to the attacker. We compare and contrast this information to the appropriate bounds provided by quantum state discrimination.
We revisit the problem of mutually unbiased measurements in the context of estimating the unknown state of a $d$-level quantum system, first studied by W. K. Wootters and B. D. fields[7] in 1989 and later investigated by S. Bandyopadhyay et al [3] in 2001 and A. O. Pittenger and M. H. Rubin [6] in 2003. Our approach is based directly on the Weyl operators in the $L^2$-space over a finite field when $d=p^r$ is the power of a prime. When $d$ is not a prime power we sacrifice a bit of optimality and construct a recovery operator for reconstructing the unknown state from the probabilities of eleme…
We consider the optimal discrimination of nonorthogonal qubit states with post-measurement information and provide an analytic structure of the optimal measurements. We also show that there is always a null optimal measurement when post-measurement information is given. Further, in discriminating four states using post-measurement information, we analytically provide the optimal probability of correct guessing and show that the uniqueness of optimal measurement is equivalent to the non-existence of non-null optimal measurement with post-measurement information.
Many experiments in quantum information aim at creating graph states. Quantifying the purity of an experimentally achieved graph state could in principle be accomplished using full-state tomography. This method requires a number of measurement settings growing exponentially with the number of constituents involved. Thus, full-state tomography becomes experimentally infeasible even for a moderate number of qubits. In this paper we present a method to estimate the purity of experimentally achieved graph states with simple measurements. The observables we consider are the stabilizers of the under…
The quantum multiparameter estimation is very different from the classical multiparameter estimation due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. When the optimal measurements for different parameters are incompatible, they cannot be jointly performed. We find a correspondence relationship between the inaccuracy of a measurement for estimating the unknown parameter with the measurement error in the context of measurement uncertainty relations. Taking this correspondence relationship as a bridge, we incorporate Heisenberg's uncertainty principle into quantum multiparameter es…
