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arXiv:1701.06498 · Physical Review A

Experimental demonstration of loop state-preparation-and-measurement tomography

A. F. McCormick, S. J. van Enk, M. Beck

Published Apr 20, 2017• 10 citations
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Abstract

We have performed an experiment demonstrating that loop state-preparation-and-measurement tomography [Jackson and van Enk, Phys. Rev. A 92, 042312 (2015)] is capable of detecting correlated errors between the preparation and the measurement of a quantum system. Specifically, we have prepared pure and mixed states of single qubits encoded in the polarization of heralded individual photons. By performing measurements using multiple state preparations and multiple measurement device settings we are able to detect if there are any correlated errors between them, and we are also able to determine which state preparations are correlated with which measurements. This is accomplished by going around a ``loop'' in parameter space, which allows us to check for self-consistency. No assumptions are made concerning either the state preparations or the measurements, other than that the dimensions of the states and the positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs) describing the detector are known. In cases where no correlations are found we are able to perform quantum state tomography of the polarization qubits by using knowledge of the detector POVMs, or quantum detector tomography by using knowledge of the state preparations. Note, however, that the detection of correlated errors does not require estimating any state or measurement parameters.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.95.042329

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We have performed an experiment demonstrating that loop state-preparation-and-measurement tomography [Jackson and van Enk, Phys. Rev. A 92, 042312 (2015)] is capable of detecting correlated errors between the preparation and the measurement of a quantum system. Specifically, we have prepared pure and mixed states of single qubits encoded in the polarization of heralded individual photons. By performing measurements using multiple state preparations and multiple measurement device settings we are able to detect if there are any correlated errors between them, and we are also able to determine which state preparations are correlated with which measurements. This is accomplished by going around a ``loop'' in parameter space, which allows us to check for self-consistency. No assumptions are made concerning either the state preparations or the measurements, other than that the dimensions of the states and the positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs) describing the detector are known. In cases where no correlations are found we are able to perform quantum state tomography of the polarization qubits by using knowledge of the detector POVMs, or quantum detector tomography by using knowledge of the state preparations. Note, however, that the detection of correlated errors does not require estimating any state or measurement parameters.
We experimentally demonstrate that loop state-preparation-and-measurement (SPAM) tomography is capable of detecting correlated errors in a two-qubit system. We prepare photon pairs in a state that approximates a Werner state, which may or may not be entangled. By performing measurements with multiple different detector settings, we are able to detect correlated errors between two single-qubit measurements performed in different locations. No assumptions are made concerning either the state preparations or the measurements, other than that the dimensions of the states and the positive-operator-valued measures describing the detectors are known. The only other needed information is experimentally measured expectation values, which are analyzed for self-consistency. This demonstrates that loop SPAM tomography is a useful technique for detecting errors that would degrade the performance of multiple-qubit quantum information processors.
Whereas in standard quantum-state tomography one estimates an unknown state by performing various measurements with known devices, and whereas in detector tomography one estimates the positive-operator-valued-measurement elements of a measurement device by subjecting to it various known states, we consider here the case of SPAM (state preparation and measurement) tomography where neither the states nor the measurement device are assumed known. For ddd-dimensional systems measured by ddd-outcome detectors, we find there are at most ${d}^{2}({d}^{2}\ensuremath{-}1)$ ``gauge'' parameters that can never be determined by any such experiment, irrespective of the number of unknown states and unknown devices. For the case d=2d=2d=2 we find gauge-invariant quantities that can be accessed directly experimentally and that can be used to detect and describe SPAM errors. In particular, we identify conditions whose violations detect the presence of correlations between SPAM errors. From the perspective of SPAM tomography, standard quantum-state tomography and detector tomography are protocols that fix the gauge parameters through the assumption that some set of fiducial measurements is known or that some set of fiducial states is known, respectively.
Tomography allows one to estimate the density matrix describing the state an ensemble of quantum systems are prepared in (for example, polarization tomography determines the polarization state of a beam of identically prepared photons). In general, it is not possible to uniquely decompose the density matrix into its pure state components. Agarwal et al. proposed a protocol which, for a mixture composed of any two pure states of a qubit (with arbitrary probabilities), allows an observer to infer not only the density matrix but the identity of those specific pure states and their weights - the additional requirement being that the qubits arrive in pairs, where both qubits in each pair are in the same state. We experimentally demonstrate this learning-from-pairs concept using photons in the polarization degree of freedom. We use tomography to measure a sequence of single photons and make use of their time-of-arrival information to 'pair up' the photons after the measurement. From here we are able to infer the photons' polarization states and their respective probabilities, and we demonstrate this for various different choices of polarization states and ratios. Finally, we investigate our ability to discriminate between two equal mixtures of distinct pairs of orthogonal polarization states. We find that on the order of approx. 10e4 photons is typically enough to achieve tomography fidelities of approximately 0.9999. This is sufficient to discriminate between two different preparations of the same mixed state, differing by angles of less than 5 degrees between the pure states used in the two preparations.
It is possible for two parties, Alice and Bob, to establish a secure communication link by sharing an ensemble of entangled particles, and then using these particles to generate a secret key. One way to establish that the particles are indeed entangled is to verify that they violate a Bell inequality. However, it might be the case that Bob is not trustworthy and wishes Alice to believe that their communications are secure, when in fact they are not. He can do this by managing to have prior knowledge of Alice's measurement device settings and then modifying his own settings based upon this information. In this case it is possible for shared particle states that must satisfy a Bell inequality to appear to violate this inequality, which would also make the system appear secure. When Bob modifies his measurement settings, however, he produces false correlations. Here we demonstrate experimentally that Alice can detect these false correlations, and uncover Bob's trickery, by using loop-state-preparation-and-measurement (SPAM) tomography. More generally, we demonstrate that loop SPAM tomography can detect false correlations (correlated errors) in a two-qubit system without needing to know anything about the prepared states or the measurements, other than the dimensions of the operators that describe them.