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arXiv:1908.00577

Efficient quantum state tomography with auxiliary Hilbert space

Ruifeng Liu, Junling Long, Pei Zhang, Russell E. Lake, Gao, Hong, David P. Pappas, Fuli Li

Published Aug 1, 2019• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum state tomography is an important tool for quantum communication, computation, metrology, and simulation. Efficient quantum state tomography on a high dimensional quantum system is still a challenging problem. Here, we propose a novel quantum state tomography method, auxiliary Hilbert space tomography, to avoid pre-rotations before measurement in a quantum state tomography experiment. Our method requires projective measurements in a higher dimensional space that contains the subspace that includes the prepared states. We experimentally demonstrate this method with orbital angular momentum states of photons. In our experiment, the quantum state tomography measurements are as simple as taking a photograph with a camera. We experimentally verify our method with near-pure- and mixed-states of orbital angular momentum with dimension up to $d=13$, and achieve greater than 95 % state fidelities for all states tested. This method dramatically reduces the complexity of measurements for full quantum state tomography, and shows potential application in various high dimensional quantum information tasks.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1908.00577

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Quantum state tomography is an important tool for quantum communication, computation, metrology, and simulation. Efficient quantum state tomography on a high dimensional quantum system is still a challenging problem. Here, we propose a novel quantum state tomography method, auxiliary Hilbert space tomography, to avoid pre-rotations before measurement in a quantum state tomography experiment. Our method requires projective measurements in a higher dimensional space that contains the subspace that includes the prepared states. We experimentally demonstrate this method with orbital angular momentum states of photons. In our experiment, the quantum state tomography measurements are as simple as taking a photograph with a camera. We experimentally verify our method with near-pure- and mixed-states of orbital angular momentum with dimension up to d=13d=13d=13, and achieve greater than 95 % state fidelities for all states tested. This method dramatically reduces the complexity of measurements for full quantum state tomography, and shows potential application in various high dimensional quantum information tasks.
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Quantum state tomography is a technique in quantum information science used to reconstruct the density matrix of an unknown quantum state, providing complete information about the quantum state. It is of significant importance in fields such as quantum computation, quantum communication, and quantum simulation. However, as the size of the quantum system increases, the number of measurement settings and sampling requirements for quantum state tomography grow exponentially with the number of qubits. This not only makes experimental design and implementation more complex, but also exacerbates the consumption of experimental resources. These limitations severely hinder the application of state tomography in large-scale quantum systems. To reduce measurement settings and improve sampling efficiency, this study proposes a state tomography method based on auxiliary systems. This method can be implemented through either entanglement between the quantum system to be measured and a quantum auxiliary system or through correlation between the quantum system and a probabilistic classical auxiliary system. Measurements on the entire joint system enable more efficient extraction of information about the quantum state to be measured. This method relies on standard quantum gate operations and requires only two measurement settings, with a total sampling complexity of O(d2)O(d^2)O(d2), significantly simplifying experimental operations and measurement processes. Additionally, this study provides two schemes for measuring purity based on the proposed circuit, one of which achieves measurement precision at the Heisenberg limit. This study validates the effectiveness of the proposed method through a detailed theoretical analysis, a series of numerical simulations, and experiments.
The exponential growth in Hilbert space with increasing size of a quantum system means that accurately characterizing the system becomes significantly harder with system dimension d. We show that self-guided tomography is a practical, efficient, and robust technique of measuring higher-dimensional quantum states. The achieved fidelities are over 99.9% for qutrits (d=3) and ququints (d=5), and 99.1% for quvigints (d=20)-the highest values ever realized for qudit pure states. We also show excellent performance for mixed states, achieving average fidelities of 96.5% for qutrits. We demonstrate robustness against experimental sources of noise, both statistical and environmental. The technique is applicable to any higher-dimensional system, from a collection of qubits through to individual qudits, and any physical realization, be it photonic, superconducting, ionic, or spin.
The physical properties of a quantum system, whether pure or mixed, are described fully by its density matrix. Recovery of the density matrix through projective measurements -- referred to as quantum state tomography -- is a cornerstone of quantum optics and metrology. The implementation of this approach in transmission electron microscopy, in particular for the characterisation of an electron beam after inelastic scattering, has remained a longstanding challenge as a result of the complexity of scanning high-dimensional phase spaces, with the number of required measurements growing quadratically with space dimensionality. Here, we introduce a simplified approach by restricting tomography to the electron orbital angular momentum (OAM) subspace. By using an electron optical device known as an OAM sorter, we discretise the phase space into a finite set of measurable states, thus significantly reducing the experimental and computational burden. The resulting measurements suffice to probe essential features of inelastic scattering. We demonstrate the technique by studying the inelastic scattering of a structured electron probe exciting volume plasmons in a carbon film. The combined use of a structured beams and OAM-resolved quantum tomography reveals symmetry-breaking effects and offers insight into the coherence and evolution of the scattered quantum states. Analysis of the diagonalised density matrices further reveals the nature of the induced state transitions, demonstrating the power of the approach for quantum tomography of electron scattering.
Symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures provide efficient quantum state tomography in any finite dimension.In this work, we implement state tomography using symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures for both pure and mixed photonic qudit states in Hilbert spaces of orbital angular momentum, including spaces whose dimension is not power of a prime.Fidelities of reconstruction within the range of 0.81-0.96are obtained for both pure and mixed states.These results are relevant to high-dimensional quantum information and computation experiments, especially to those where a complete set of mutually unbiased bases is unknown.
While measuring the orbital angular momentum state of bright light beams can be performed using imaging techniques, a full characterization at the single-photon level is challenging. For applications to quantum optics and quantum information science, such characterization is an essential capability. Here, we present a setup to perform the quantum state tomography of photonic qubits encoded in this degree of freedom. The method is based on a projective technique using spatial mode projection via fork holograms and single-mode fibers inserted into an interferometer. The alignment and calibration of the device is detailed as well as the measurement sequence to reconstruct the associated density matrix. Possible extensions to higher-dimensional spaces are discussed.