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arXiv:1804.04480 · Physical Review A

Mutually unbiased coarse-grained measurements of two or more phase-space variables

E. C. Paul, Stephen Patrick Walborn, D. S. Tasca, Łukasz Rudnicki

Published May 4, 2018• 6 citations
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Abstract

Mutual unbiasedness of the eigenstates of phase-space operators---such as position and momentum, or their standard coarse-grained versions---exists only in the limiting case of infinite squeezing. In Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 040403 (2018), it was shown that mutual unbiasedness can be recovered for periodic coarse graining of these two operators. Here we investigate mutual unbiasedness of coarse-grained measurements for more than two phase-space variables. We show that mutual unbiasedness can be recovered between periodic coarse graining of any two nonparallel phase-space operators. We illustrate these results through optics experiments, using the fractional Fourier transform to prepare and measure mutually unbiased phase-space variables. The differences between two and three mutually unbiased measurements is discussed. Our results contribute to bridging the gap between continuous and discrete quantum mechanics, and they could be useful in quantum-information protocols.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.97.052103

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Mutual unbiasedness of the eigenstates of phase-space operators---such as position and momentum, or their standard coarse-grained versions---exists only in the limiting case of infinite squeezing. In Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 040403 (2018), it was shown that mutual unbiasedness can be recovered for periodic coarse graining of these two operators. Here we investigate mutual unbiasedness of coarse-grained measurements for more than two phase-space variables. We show that mutual unbiasedness can be recovered between periodic coarse graining of any two nonparallel phase-space operators. We illustrate these results through optics experiments, using the fractional Fourier transform to prepare and measure mutually unbiased phase-space variables. The differences between two and three mutually unbiased measurements is discussed. Our results contribute to bridging the gap between continuous and discrete quantum mechanics, and they could be useful in quantum-information protocols.
The notion of mutual unbiasedness for coarse-grained measurements of quantum continuous variable systems is considered. It is shown that while the procedure of "standard" coarse graining breaks the mutual unbiasedness between conjugate variables, this desired feature can be theoretically established and experimentally observed in periodic coarse graining. We illustrate our results in an optics experiment implementing Fraunhofer diffraction through a periodic diffraction grating, finding excellent agreement with the derived theory. Our results are an important step in developing a formal connection between discrete and continuous variable quantum mechanics.
Most of the fundamental characteristics of quantum mechanics, such as nonlocality and contextuality, are manifest in discrete, finite-dimensional systems. However, many quantum information tasks that exploit these properties cannot be directly adapted to continuous variable systems. To access these quantum features, continuous quantum variables can be made discrete by binning together their different values, resulting in observables with a finite number, ddd, of outcomes. While direct measurement indeed confirms their manifestly discrete character, here we employ a salient feature of quantum physics known as mutual unbiasedness to show that such coarse-grained observables are in a sense neither continuous nor discrete. Depending on ddd, the observables can reproduce either the discrete or the continuous behavior, or neither. To illustrate these results, we present an example for the construction of such measurements and employ it in an optical experiment confirming the existence of four mutually unbiased measurements with d=3d=3d=3 outcomes in a continuous variable system, surpassing the number of mutually unbiased continuous variable observables.
One of the most important and useful entropic uncertainty relations concerns a ddd-dimensional system and two mutually unbiased measurements. In such a setting, the sum of two information entropies is lower bounded by lndlndlnd. It has recently been shown that projective measurements subject to operational mutual unbiasedness can also be constructed in a continuous domain, with the help of periodic coarse graining. Here we consider the whole family of R\'enyi entropies applied to these discretized observables and prove that such a scheme does also admit the entropic uncertainty relations mentioned above.
We generalize the concept of unbiasedness from bases to measurements. We show that mutually unbiased (MU) measurements, which are not necessarily von Neumann measurements, exist in all finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. We study the geometrical relation between these measurements and symmetric informationally complete measurements. In particular we find that these two kinds of measurements are related to each other as points and lines in finite affine plane geometries. This relation provides a natural way to define discrete phase-space functions based on MU measurements and symmetric informationally complete measurements.
We derive two quantum uncertainty relations for position and momentum coarse-grained measurements. Building on previous results, we first improve the lower bound for uncertainty relations using the R\'enyi entropy, particularly in the case of coarse-grained measurements. We then sharpen a Heisenberg-like uncertainty relation derived previously in [Europhys. Lett. 97, 38003 (2012)] that uses variances and reduces to the usual one in the case of infinite precision measurements. Our sharpened uncertainty relation is meaningful for any amount of coarse graining. That is, there is always a nontrivial uncertainty relation for coarse-grained measurement of the noncommuting observables, even in the limit of extremely large coarse graining.
While quantum metrology enables measurement precision beyond classical limits, its performance is often susceptible to experimental imperfections. Most prior studies have focused on imperfections in quantum states and operations. Here, we investigate the effect of coarse graining in quantum measurement through both theoretical analysis and experimental demonstration. Using an interferometer with a squeezed vacuum and a laser input, we analyze how coarse graining in homodyne detection affects the precision of phase estimation. We evaluate the Fisher information under various coarse-graining conditions and determine, in each case, an optimal estimation strategy that saturates the Cramér-Rao bound. Remarkably, even extremely coarse-grained measurement -- with only two bins -- enables phase estimation beyond the standard quantum limit and even achieves a precision that follows the Heisenberg scaling. We experimentally demonstrate quantum-enhanced phase estimation under coarse-grained homodyne detection. To determine an optimal estimation strategy, we employ the method of moments and present calibration procedures that enable its application to general experimental settings. Using only two bins, we observe a quantum enhancement of 1.2 dB compared to the classical method using the ideal measurement, improving towards 3.8 dB as the bin number increases. These results highlight a practical pathway to achieving quantum enhancement under the presence of severe experimental imperfections.