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arXiv:1404.2680 · Physical Review Letters

Compressive Direct Measurement of the Quantum Wave Function

Mohammad Mirhosseini, Omar S. Magaña‐Loaiza, Seyed Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani, Robert W. Boyd

Published Aug 27, 2014• 106 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The direct measurement of a complex wave function has been recently realized by using weak values. In this Letter, we introduce a method that exploits sparsity for the compressive measurement of the transverse spatial wave function of photons. The procedure involves weak measurements of random projection operators in the spatial domain followed by postselection in the momentum basis. Using this method, we experimentally measure a 192-dimensional state with a fidelity of 90% using only 25 percent of the total required measurements. Furthermore, we demonstrate the measurement of a 19,200-dimensional state, a task that would require an unfeasibly large acquiring time with the standard direct measurement technique.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.113.090402

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The direct measurement of a complex wave function has been recently realized by using weak values. In this Letter, we introduce a method that exploits sparsity for the compressive measurement of the transverse spatial wave function of photons. The procedure involves weak measurements of random projection operators in the spatial domain followed by postselection in the momentum basis. Using this method, we experimentally measure a 192-dimensional state with a fidelity of 90% using only 25 percent of the total required measurements. Furthermore, we demonstrate the measurement of a 19,200-dimensional state, a task that would require an unfeasibly large acquiring time with the standard direct measurement technique.
The wave function is at the foundation of quantum theory, which is assumed to give a complete description of a quantum system. From early inception, the wave function was introduced as an abstract element of the theory and lacked any way to measure it directly. The situation, however, has somewhat changed with the reporting of the direct measurement of the quantum wave function via weak measurements, giving the wave function a clearly operational definition. The weak measurement method requires sequential measurements of conjugate observables position and momentum with the position measurement sufficiently weak. Surprisingly, recent research showed that performing sequential strong measurements realized the same object, in which case no approximation in weak measurements has to be made. Here, we report on experiments of direct measurements of the two-dimensional transverse wave function of photons via strong measurement, implying that an accurate and clear operational definition may be given to the wave function. We have measured the Gaussian and Laguerre--Gaussian of l=1l=1l=1 spatial wave functions of photons with fidelity of 0.93. As a potential important application, we show that this direct measurement of the wave function provides an alternative way to realize digital holography of three-dimensional objects. This realization of direct measurement of the wave function has significant consequences in quantum information processing and quantum imaging.
It is of great importance to determine an unknown quantum state for fundamental studies of quantum mechanics, yet it is still difficult to characterize systems of large dimensions in practice. Although the scan-free direct measurement approach based on a weak measurement scheme was proposed to measure a high-dimensional photonic state, how weak the interaction should be to give a correct estimation remains unclear. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a technique that measures a high-dimensional quantum state with the combination of scan-free measurement and direct strong measurement. The procedure involves sequential strong measurement, in which case no approximation is made similarly to the conventional direct weak measurement. We use this method to measure a transverse state of a photon with effective dimensionality of 65000 without the time-consumed scanning process. Furthermore, the high fidelity of the result and the simplicity of the experimental apparatus show that our approach can be readily used to measure the complex field of a beam in diverse applications such as wavefront sensing and quantitative phase imaging.
The measurement of a quantum state wave function not only acts as a fundamental part in quantum physics but also plays an important role in developing practical quantum technologies. Conventional quantum state tomography has been widely used to estimate quantum wave functions, which usually requires complicated measurement techniques. The recent weak-value-based quantum measurement circumvents this resource issue but relies on an extra pointer space. Here, we theoretically propose and then experimentally demonstrate a direct and efficient measurement strategy based on a δ-quench probe: by quenching its complex probability amplitude one by one (δ quench) in the given basis, we can directly obtain the quantum wave function of a pure ensemble by projecting the quenched state onto a postselection state. We confirm its power by experimentally measuring photonic complex temporal wave functions. This new method is versatile and can find applications in quantum information science and engineering.
Retrieving the vast amount of information carried by a photon is an enduring challenge in quantum metrology science and quantum photonics research. The transverse spatial state of a photon is a convenient high-dimensional quantum system for study, as it has a well-understood classical analogue as the transverse complex field profile of an optical beam. One severe drawback of all currently available quantum metrology techniques is the need for a time-consuming characterization process, which scales very unfavorably with the dimensionality of the quantum system. Here we demonstrate a technique that directly measures a million-dimensional photonic spatial state in a single setting. Through the arrangement of a weak measurement of momentum and parallel strong measurements of position, the complex values of the entire photon state vector become measurable directly. The dimension of our measured state is approximately four orders of magnitude larger than previously measured. Our work opens up a practical route for characterizing high-dimensional quantum systems in real time. Furthermore, our demonstration also serve as a high-speed, extremely-high-resolution unambiguous complex field measurement technique for diverse classical applications.
Recent work by Lundeen et al. [Nature (London) 474, 188 (2011)] directly measured the wave function by weakly measuring a variable followed by a normal (i.e., "strong") measurement of the complementary variable. We generalize this method to mixed states by considering the weak measurement of various products of these observables, thereby providing the density matrix an operational definition in terms of a procedure for its direct measurement. The method only requires measurements in two bases and can be performed in situ, determining the quantum state without destroying it.
Retrieving the vast amount of information carried by a photon is an enduring challenge in quantum metrology science and quantum photonics research. The transverse spatial state of a photon is a convenient high-dimensional quantum system for study, as it has a well-understood classical analog as the transverse complex field profile of an optical beam. One severe drawback of all currently available quantum metrology techniques is the need for a time-consuming characterization process, which scales very unfavorably with the dimensionality of the quantum system. Here we demonstrate a technique that directly measures a million-dimensional photonic spatial state with a single setting of the measurement apparatus. Through the arrangement of a weak measurement of momentum and parallel strong measurements of position, the complex values of the entire photon state vector become measurable directly. The dimension of our measured state is approximately four orders of magnitude larger than previously measured. Our work opens up a practical route for characterizing high-dimensional quantum systems in real time. Furthermore, our demonstration also serves as a high-speed, extremely high-resolution unambiguous complex field measurement technique for diverse classical applications.