Abstract Quantum tomography is currently the mainly employed method to characterize a quantum system and therefore plays a fundamental role when trying to characterize the action of a particular channel. Nonetheless, quantum tomography works on the premise of a full characterization and description of the devices preparing the quantum state and realizing the measurements. Such an assumption was recently relaxed in Dall’Arno et al (arXiv: 1805.01159 ) and Dall’Arno et al (2017 Proc. R. Soc. A 473 20160721), where a theoretical framework for the device-independent inference of quantum channels was developed and experimentally implemented with superconducting qubits. Here, based on such a framework, we present a complete experimental test on a photonic setup of two semi-device-independent protocols that can be employed for the validation of the tomographic reconstruction or the characterization of a given quantum channel, not relying on many assumptions on the adopted device. Our implementation paves the way to the development of new experimental methods not relying on the assumptions typically taken for granted in all the previous protocols.
Abstract Quantum tomography is currently the mainly employed method to characterize a quantum system and therefore plays a fundamental role when trying to characterize the action of a particular channel. Nonetheless, quantum tomography works on the premise of a full characterization and description of the devices preparing the quantum state and realizing the measurements. Such an assumption was recently relaxed in Dall’Arno et al (arXiv: 1805.01159 ) and Dall’Arno et al (2017 Proc. R. Soc. A 473 20160721), where a theoretical framework for the device-independent inference of quantum channels was developed and experimentally implemented with superconducting qubits. Here, based on such a framework, we present a complete experimental test on a photonic setup of two semi-device-independent protocols that can be employed for the validation of the tomographic reconstruction or the characterization of a given quantum channel, not relying on many assumptions on the adopted device. Our implementation paves the way to the development of new experimental methods not relying on the assumptions typically taken for granted in all the previous protocols.
Given a physical device as a black box, one can in principle fully reconstruct its input-output transfer function by repeatedly feeding different input probes through the device and performing different measurements on the corresponding outputs. However, for such a complete tomographic reconstruction to work, full knowledge of both input probes and output measurements is required. Such an assumption is not only experimentally demanding, but also logically questionable, as it produces a circular argument in which the characterization of unknown devices appears to require other devices to have been already characterized beforehand. Here, we introduce a method to overcome such limitations present in usual tomographic techniques. We show that, even without any knowledge about the tomographic apparatus, it is still possible to infer the unknown device to a high degree of precision, solely relying on the observed data. This is achieved by employing a criterion that singles out the minimal explanation compatible with the observed data. Our method, that can be seen as a device-independent analogue of tomography, is solved analytically and experimentally tested in an actual implementation with superconducting qubits for a broad class of quantum channels.
The accurate and reliable description of measurement devices is a central problem in both observing uniquely nonclassical behaviors and realizing quantum technologies from powerful computing to precision metrology. To date quantum tomography is the prevalent tool to characterize quantum detectors. However, such a characterization relies on accurately characterized probe states, rendering reliability of the characterization lost in circular argument. Here we report a self-characterization method of quantum measurements based on reconstructing the response range-the entirety of attainable measurement outcomes, eliminating the reliance on known states. We characterize two representative measurements implemented with photonic setups and obtain fidelities above 99.99% with the conventional tomographic reconstructions. This initiates range-based techniques in characterizing quantum systems and foreshadows novel device-independent protocols of quantum information applications.
We look into the task of differentiating between any two quantum channels and reconstructing them from the obtained measurement statistics with possibly limited information about the experimental set-up. We employ the communication matrix formalism where the measurement statistics of a prepare-and-measure scenario is represented as a stochastic communication matrix. In order to differentiate between any two quantum channels, the informational completeness of the set-up is both necessary and sufficient. On the other hand, if we want to uniquely characterize any quantum channel, in addition we also need to have a complete description of the set-up. We show that in many important cases we can deduce this information directly from the communication matrix of the set-up before applying the channel. Given that we trust the dimension of the system, we show that we can deduce the information completeness of the set-up directly from the rank of the communication matrix. Furthermore, we show that another quantity of the communication matrix, called the information storability, can be used to self-test the set-up (up to unitary or antiunitary freedom) for an important class of states and measurements. This provides us a semi-device-independent way to identify quantum channels from the prepare-and-measure statistics. Lastly, we consider scenarios where we might have some additional information about the channels or additional resources at our disposal which could help us relax some of the assumptions of the proposed scenario.
As one of the fundamental tools in the quantum information field, quantum state tomography can be utilized to reconstruct any unknown state. Usually, it needs a tomographically complete set of measurements and meantime it requires that all measurements are fully characterized. Here we propose a semi-measurement-device-independent quantum state tomography protocol, which only needs one characterized measurement and a trusted ancillary system. Furthermore, we carry out corresponding experimental demonstrations by using linear optics, and obtain the average state fidelity as high as 0.973, verifying the effectiveness of the scheme.
Quantum process tomography, the standard procedure to characterize any quantum channel in nature, is affected by a circular argument: in order to characterize the channel, the tomographic preparation and measurement need in turn to be already characterized. We break this loop by designing an operational framework able to optimally characterize any given unknown quantum channel in a device-independent fashion, namely, by only looking at its input-output statistics, under the sole assumption that quantum theory is valid. We provide explicit solutions, in closed form, for practically relevant cases such as the erasure, depolarizing, and amplitude-damping channels.
The development of key devices and systems in quantum information technology, such as entangled particle sources, quantum gates and quantum cryptographic systems, requires a reliable and well-established method for characterizing how well the devices or systems work. We report our recent work on experimental characterization of pulsed entangled photonic states and photonic quantum channels, using the methods of state and process tomography. By using state tomography, we could reliably evaluate the states generated from a two-photon source under development and develop a highly entangled pulsed photon source. We are also devoted to characterization of single-qubit and two-qubit photonic quantum channels. Characterization of typical single-qubit decoherence channels has been demonstrated using process tomography. Characterization of two-qubit channels, such as classically correlated channels and quantum mechanically correlated channels is under investigation. These characterization techniques for quantum states and quantum processes will be useful for developing photonic quantum devices and for improving their performances.