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arXiv:1203.1675 · Physical Review A

Experimental proposal for symmetric minimal two-qubit state tomography

Amir Kalev, Jiangwei Shang, Berthold‐Georg Englert

Published May 17, 2012• 13 citations
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Abstract

We propose an experiment that realizes a symmetric informationally complete (SIC) probability-operator measurement (POM) in the four-dimensional Hilbert space of a qubit pair. The qubit pair is carried by a single photon as a polarization qubit and a path qubit. The implementation of the SIC POM is accomplished with the means of linear optics. The experimental scheme exploits an approach to SIC POMs that uses a two-step process: a measurement with full-rank outcomes, followed by a projective measurement on a basis that is chosen in accordance with the result of the first measurement. The basis of the first measurement and the four bases of the second measurements are pairwise unbiased---a hint at a possibly profound link between SIC POMs and mutually unbiased bases.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.85.052115

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We propose an experiment that realizes a symmetric informationally complete (SIC) probability-operator measurement (POM) in the four-dimensional Hilbert space of a qubit pair. The qubit pair is carried by a single photon as a polarization qubit and a path qubit. The implementation of the SIC POM is accomplished with the means of linear optics. The experimental scheme exploits an approach to SIC POMs that uses a two-step process: a measurement with full-rank outcomes, followed by a projective measurement on a basis that is chosen in accordance with the result of the first measurement. The basis of the first measurement and the four bases of the second measurements are pairwise unbiased---a hint at a possibly profound link between SIC POMs and mutually unbiased bases.
We consider the implementation of a symmetric informationally complete probability-operator measurement (SIC POM) in the Hilbert space of a ddd-level system by a two-step measurement process: a diagonal-operator measurement with high-rank outcomes, followed by a rank-1 measurement in a basis chosen in accordance with the result of the first measurement. We find that any Heisenberg-Weyl group-covariant SIC POM can be realized by such a sequence where the second measurement is simply a measurement in the Fourier basis, independent of the result of the first measurement. Furthermore, at least for the particular cases studied, of dimensions 2, 3, 4, and 8, this scheme reveals an unexpected operational relation between mutually unbiased bases and SIC POMs; the former are used to construct the latter. As a laboratory application of the two-step measurement process, we propose feasible optical experiments that would realize SIC POMs in various dimensions.
Symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measurement (SIC-POVM) is one important class of quantum measurement which is crucial for various quantum information processing tasks. SIC-POVMs have the advantage of providing an unbiased estimator for quantum states with the minimal number of outcomes needed for full tomography. We present an experimental approach on a photonic quantum walk which can be used to implement SIC-POVMs on a single-qbubit. The projection measurements of single-photons' positions correspond to elements of SIC-POVM on the polarization of single-photons.
It is crucial for various quantum information processing tasks that the state of a quantum system can be determined reliably and efficiently from general quantum measurements. One important class of measurements for this purpose is symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measurements (SIC-POVMs). SIC-POVMs have the advantage of providing an unbiased estimator for the quantum state with the minimal number of outcomes needed for full tomography. By virtue of Naimark's dilation theorem, any POVM can always be realized with a suitable coupling between the system and an auxiliary system and by performing a projective measurement on the joint system. In practice, finding the appropriate coupling is rather nontrivial. Here we propose an experimental design for directly implementing SIC-POVMs using multiport devices and path-encoded qubits and qutrits, the utility of which has recently been demonstrated by several experimental groups around the world. Furthermore, we describe how these multiports can be attained in practice with an integrated photonic system composed of nested linear optical elements.
Symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures provide efficient quantum state tomography in any finite dimension.In this work, we implement state tomography using symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures for both pure and mixed photonic qudit states in Hilbert spaces of orbital angular momentum, including spaces whose dimension is not power of a prime.Fidelities of reconstruction within the range of 0.81-0.96are obtained for both pure and mixed states.These results are relevant to high-dimensional quantum information and computation experiments, especially to those where a complete set of mutually unbiased bases is unknown.
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 formulas 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 analog of the SIC POMs, are optimal among all product measurements in the same sense as the SIC POMs are optimal among all joint measurements. We further show that, for bipartite systems, there is only a marginal efficiency advantage of the joint SIC POMs over the product SIC POMs. In marked contrast, for multipartite systems, the efficiency advantage of the joint SIC POMs increases exponentially with the number of parties.
Generalized quantum measurements [also known as positive operator-valued measures (POVMs)] are of great importance in quantum information and quantum foundations but are often difficult to perform. We present an experimental approach which can in principle be used to perform arbitrary POVMs in a linear-optical context. One of the most interesting POVMs, the symmetric informationally complete (SIC) POVM, is the most compact set of measurements that can be used to fully describe a quantum state. We use our technique to carry out the first experimental characterization of the state of a qutrit using SIC POVMs. Because of the highly symmetric nature of this measurement, such a representation has the unique property that it permits all other measurement outcomes to be predicted by a simple extension of the classical Bayesian sum rule, making no use of complex amplitudes or Hilbert-space operators. We demonstrate this approach on several qutrit states encoded in single photons.