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arXiv:1105.0961 · Physical Review X

Maximum Information Gain in Weak or Continuous Measurements of Qudits: Complementarity Is Not Enough

Joshua Combes, Howard M. Wiseman

Published Sep 28, 2011• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

To maximize average information gain for a classical measurement, all outcomes of an observation must be equally likely.The condition of equally likely outcomes may be enforced in quantum theory by ensuring that the system's state is maximally different, or complementary, to the measured observable.This requires the ability to perform unitary operations on the state, conditioned on the results of prior measurements.We consider the case of measurement of a component of angular momentum for a qudit (a D-dimensional system, with D ¼ 2J þ 1, where J is the total angular momentum).For weak or continuous-in-time (i.e., repeated weak) measurements, we show that the complementarity condition ensures an average improvement in the rate of purification of only 2. However, we show that, by choosing the locally optimal control protocol of this type, one can attain the best possible scaling, OðD 2 Þ, for the average improvement.For this protocol, the acquisition of information is nearly deterministic.Finally, we contrast these results with those for complementarity-based protocols in a register of qubits.

DOI
10.1103/physrevx.1.011012

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To maximize average information gain for a classical measurement, all outcomes of an observation must be equally likely.The condition of equally likely outcomes may be enforced in quantum theory by ensuring that the system's state is maximally different, or complementary, to the measured observable.This requires the ability to perform unitary operations on the state, conditioned on the results of prior measurements.We consider the case of measurement of a component of angular momentum for a qudit (a D-dimensional system, with D ¼ 2J þ 1, where J is the total angular momentum).For weak or continuous-in-time (i.e., repeated weak) measurements, we show that the complementarity condition ensures an average improvement in the rate of purification of only 2. However, we show that, by choosing the locally optimal control protocol of this type, one can attain the best possible scaling, OðD 2 Þ, for the average improvement.For this protocol, the acquisition of information is nearly deterministic.Finally, we contrast these results with those for complementarity-based protocols in a register of qubits.
A measurement performed on a quantum system is an act of gaining information about its state. However, in the foundations of quantum theory, the concept of information is multiply defined, particularly in the area of quantum reconstruction, and its conceptual foundations remain surprisingly under-explored. In this paper, we investigate the gain of information in quantum measurements from an operational viewpoint in the special case of a two-outcome probabilistic source. We show that the continuous extension of the Shannon entropy naturally admits two distinct measures of information gain, differential information gain and relative information gain, and that these have radically different characteristics. In particular, while differential information gain can increase or decrease as additional data are acquired, relative information gain consistently grows and, moreover, exhibits asymptotic indifference to the data or choice of Bayesian prior. In order to make a principled choice between these measures, we articulate a Principle of Information Increase, which incorporates a proposal due to Summhammer that more data from measurements leads to more knowledge about the system, and also takes into consideration black swan events. This principle favours differential information gain as the more relevant metric and guides the selection of priors for these information measures. Finally, we show that, of the symmetric beta distribution priors, the Jeffreys binomial prior is the prior that ensures maximal robustness of information gain for the particular data sequence obtained in a run of experiments.
Observables in quantum mechanics are generally complementary, that is, they reveal mutually incompatible pieces of information about a given system. This property is not only a fundamental tenet of the quantum formalism, but also a key component in quantum cryptographic protocols. As such it has fuelled much research into finding sets of highly complementary observables. In its strongest form -- the one we consider in this work -- the information between complementary observables is not merely incompatible but mutually exclusive: maximal information about one observable implies no information about the other, and vice versa. Maximal sets of non-degenerate complementary observables are known to exist in systems of prime power dimension such as n-qubit systems. Here, we study complementarity of degenerate observables, specifically we prove that observables associated with the n-qubit Pauli group also exhibit complementarity under this restriction: first, we obtain a criterion for two such observables to be complementary and, second, we relate maximal sets of complementary observables with informational pure state complementarity equalities, further studied in two companion papers. Equivalently, these results can be formulated in terms of maximal complementary sets of (not necessarily maximal) Abelian subgroups of the Pauli group linking with (possibly coarse-grained) mutually unbiased bases. Finally, we prove that these complementarity sets entail strong entropic uncertainty relations.
We show that the amount of complementarity that a quantum system can exhibit depends on which complementary properties one is considering. Consider a set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) which corresponds to the spectral decomposition of some maximally complementary properties: The perfect knowledge of one, i.e. the state of the system is one of the basis states, implies that all the others are completely unknown, namely the measurement of another property will find any of its possible outcomes with uniform probability. We show that, depending on which three of the MUBs we choose, a 5-dimensional system can have different degrees of complementarity, measured using the minimum over all the system states of the sum of the entropies and of the variances of the measurement outcomes related to the three chosen observables. This property was first found experimentally, and demonstrates that an experimental discovery can disclose quantum information effects.
It was first shown by Jacobs, in 2003, that the process of qubit state purification by continuous measurement of one observable can be enhanced, on average, by unitary feedback control. Here, we quantify this by the reduction in any one of the family of Rényi entropies , with , at some terminal time, revealing the rich structure of stochastic quantum control even for this simple problem. We generalize Jacobs' original argument, which was for the (unique) impurity measure with a linear evolution map under his protocol, by replacing linearity with convexity, thereby making it applicable to Rényi entropies for α in a finite interval about one. Even with this generalization, Jacobs' argument fails to identify the surprising fact, which we prove by Bellmanʼs principle of dynamic programming, that his protocol is globally optimal for all Rényi entropies whose decrease is locally maximized by that protocol. Also surprisingly, even though there is a range of Rényi entropies whose decrease is always locally maximized by the null-control protocol, that null-control protocol cannot be shown to be globally optimal in any instance. These results highlight the non-intuitive relation between local and global optimality in stochastic quantum control.
For target unitary operations which preserve the basis of measurement operators, the average fidelity of the corresponding N -qubit gate can be determined efficiently. That is, the number of required experiments is independent of system size and the classical computational resources scale only polynomially in the number N of qubits. Here we address the question of how to optimally choose the measurement basis for fidelity estimation when replacing two-level qubits by d -level qudits. We define optimality in terms of the maximal number of unitaries that preserve the measurement basis. Our definition allows us to construct the optimal measurement basis in terms of their spectra and eigenbases: the measurement operators are unitaries with d -nary spectrum and partition into Abelian groups whose eigenbases are mutually unbiased.
The principle of complementarity is quantified in two ways: by a universal uncertainty relation valid for arbitrary joint estimates of any two observables from a given measurement setup and by a general uncertainty relation valid for the optimal estimates of the same two observables when the state of the system prior to measurement is known. A formula is given for the optimal estimate of any given observable, based on arbitrary measurement data and prior information about the state of the system, which generalizes and provides a more robust interpretation of previous formulas for ``local expectations'' and ``weak values'' of quantum observables. As an example, the canonical joint measurement of position XXX and momentum PPP corresponds to measuring the commuting operators ${X}_{J}=X+{X}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ and ${P}_{J}=P\ensuremath{-}{P}^{\ensuremath{'}}$, where the primed variables refer to an auxiliary system in a minimum-uncertainty state. It is well known that $\ensuremath{\Delta}{X}_{J}\ensuremath{\Delta}{P}_{J}\ensuremath{\geqslant}\ensuremath{\hbar}$. Here it is shown that given the same physical experimental setup and knowledge of the system density operator prior to measurement, one can make improved joint estimates Xopt{X}_{opt}Xopt​ and Popt{P}_{opt}Popt​ of XXX and PPP. These improved estimates are not only statistically closer to XXX and PPP but further satisfy $\ensuremath{\Delta}{X}_{opt}\ensuremath{\Delta}{P}_{opt}\ensuremath{\geqslant}\ensuremath{\hbar}∕4$, where equality can be achieved in certain cases. Thus one can do up to four times better than the standard lower bound (where the latter corresponds to the limit of no prior information). Other applications include the heterodyne detection of orthogonal quadratures of a single-mode optical field and joint measurements based on Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations.