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arXiv:1203.4909 · Physical Review Letters

Balance Between Information Gain and Reversibility in Weak Measurement

Yong Wook Cheong, Seung-Woo Lee

Published Oct 9, 2012• 91 citations
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Abstract

We derive a tight bound between the quality of estimating a quantum state by measurement and the success probability of undoing the measurement in arbitrary dimensional systems, which completely describes the tradeoff relation between the information gain and reversibility. In this formulation, it is clearly shown that the information extracted from a weak measurement is erased through the reversing process. Our result broadens the information-theoretic perspective on quantum measurement as well as provides a standard tool to characterize weak measurements and reversals.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.109.150402

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We derive a tight bound between the quality of estimating a quantum state by measurement and the success probability of undoing the measurement in arbitrary dimensional systems, which completely describes the tradeoff relation between the information gain and reversibility. In this formulation, it is clearly shown that the information extracted from a weak measurement is erased through the reversing process. Our result broadens the information-theoretic perspective on quantum measurement as well as provides a standard tool to characterize weak measurements and reversals.
Quantum measurement is a basic tool to manifest intrinsic quantum effects from fundamental tests to quantum information applications. While a measurement is typically performed to gain information on a quantum state, its role in quantum technology is indeed manifold. For instance, quantum measurement is a crucial process element in measurement-based quantum computation. It is also used to detect and correct errors thereby protecting quantum information in error-correcting frameworks. It is therefore important to fully characterize the roles of quantum measurement encompassing information gain, state disturbance and reversibility, together with their fundamental relations. Numerous efforts have been made to obtain the trade-off between information gain and state disturbance, which becomes a practical basis for secure information processing. However, a complete information balance is necessary to include the reversibility of quantum measurement, which constitutes an integral part of practical quantum information processing. We here establish all pairs of trade-off relations involving information gain, disturbance, and reversibility, and crucially the one among all of them together. By doing so, we show that the reversibility plays a vital role in completing the information balance. Remarkably, our result can be interpreted as an information-conservation law of quantum measurement in a nontrivial form. We completely identify the conditions for optimal measurements that satisfy the conservation for each tradeoff relation with their potential applications. Our work can provide a useful guideline for designing a quantum measurement in accordance with the aims of quantum information processors.
We study trade-off relations in information extraction from quantum systems subject to null-result weak measurements, where the absence of a detected photon continuously updates the system state. We present a detailed analysis of qubit and qutrit systems and investigate a general framework for a multilevel quantum system. We develop a dynamical characterization of null-result weak measurements that quantifies the information extracted over time, revealing the amount of the obtained information and also the rate of the information accumulation. The characterizations are obtained by examining the time-dependent evolution of the information theoretic quantities. More specifically, we consider Shannon entropy, mutual information, fidelity, and relative entropy to characterize the weak measurement dynamics. Our results provide an information theoretic analysis of the weak measurement process and highlight the dynamical nature of information extraction and reversibility in the weak measurement processes.
An upper bound between the information gain and state reversibility of weak measurement was first developed by Y. K. Cheong and S. W. Lee [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 150402 (2012)]. Their results are valid for arbitrary d-level quantum systems. In light of the commonly used qubit system in quantum information, a sharp tradeoff relation can be obtained. In this letter, this tradeoff relation is experimentally verified with polarization encoded single photons from a quantum dot. Furthermore, a complete traversal of weak measurement operators is realized, and the mapping to the least upper bound of this tradeoff relation is obtained. Our results complement the theoretical work and provide a universal ruler for the characterization of weak measurements.
Quantum measurement is essentially taken to gain information encoded in quantum states, however, it also inevitably disturbs the measured state such that the postmeasurement state loses its quantum information partially or fully. Thus, it is an important issue to characterise such information gain and state disturbance associated with measurement. In this work, we study the relationships between the information gain and measurement disturbance for two-valued qubit measurements. In particular, we employ a powerful tradeoff relation between the measurement strength and reversibility to obtain, generalise, and even strengthen certain well-known tradeoff relations between information gain and measurement disturbance of qubit measurements. Moreover, it is pointed out that our results are useful to understand the measurement effects at the fundamental level as they are state-independent. Hence, our work is helpful for designing quantum information processing tasks aided by measurement.
We theoretically study the reversible process of quantum entanglement state by means of weak measurement and corresponding reversible operation. We present a protocol of the reversion operation in two bodies based on the theory of reversion of single photon and then expend it in quantum communication channels. The theoretical results demonstrate that the protocol does not break the information transmission after a weak measurement and a reversible measurement with the subsequent process in the transmission path. It can reverse the perturbed entanglement intensity evolution to its original state. Under the condition of different weak measurement intensity the protocol can reverse the perturbed quantum entanglement system perfectly. In the process we can get the classical information described by information gain from the quantum system through weak measurement operation. On the other hand, in order to realize complete reversibility, the classical information of the quantum entanglement system must obey a limited range we present in this paper in the reverse process.
Quantum measurement unavoidably disturbs the state of a quantum system if any information about the system is extracted. Recently, the concept of reversing quantum measurement has been introduced and has attracted much attention. Numerous efforts have thus been devoted to understanding the fundamental relation of the amount of information obtained by measurement to either state disturbance or reversibility. Here, we experimentally prove the trade-off relations in quantum measurement with respect to both state disturbance and reversibility. By demonstrating the quantitative bound of the trade-off relations, we realize an optimal measurement for estimating quantum systems with minimum disturbance and maximum reversibility. Our results offer fundamental insights on quantum measurement and practical guidelines for implementing various quantum information protocols.