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arXiv:2101.05860 · Physical Review A

Quantum state tomography and purity measurement of a multiqubit system with random single-pulse rotations

Yariv Yanay, Charles Tahan

Published Jun 11, 2021• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum state tomography and other measures of the global properties of a quantum state are indispensable tools in understanding many-body physics through quantum simulators. Unfortunately, the number of experimental measurements of the system required to estimate these global quantities scales exponentially with system size. Here, we consider the use of random-axis measurements for quantum state tomography and state purity estimation. We perform a general analysis of the statistical deviation in such methods for any given algorithm. We then propose a simple protocol which relies on single-pulse rotations only. We find that it reduces the basis of the exponential growth, calculating the statistical variance to scale as ${\ensuremath{\sum}}_{\mathbit{a},\mathbit{b}}{|\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{\mathbit{a}\mathbit{b}}|}^{2}\ensuremath{\sim}{5}^{N}/{N}_{\mathrm{tot}}$ for full tomography, and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}\ensuremath{\mu}}^{2}\ensuremath{\sim}{7}^{N}/{N}_{\mathrm{tot}}^{2}$ for purity estimation, for $N$ qubits and ${N}_{\mathrm{tot}}$ measurements performed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.103.062411

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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.
Abstract Quantum state tomography is a cornerstone of quantum information technologies to characterize and benchmark quantum systems from measurement statistics. In this work, we present an infidelity-based least-squares estimator, which incorporates the state purity information and provides orders of magnitude higher tomography accuracy than previous ones. It is further enhanced with the randomized toolbox of direct fidelity estimation, making it applicable to large-scale quantum systems. We validate the proposed estimators through extensive experiments conducted on the IBM Qiskit simulator. The results also demonstrate that our estimator admits an O ( 1 / N ) infidelity scaling with Pauli sample size N for (nearly) pure states. Further, it enables high-precision pure-state tomography for systems of up to 25-qubit states, given some state priors. Our method provides a novel perspective on the union of underlying tomography technique and state properties estimation.
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Quantum state tomography is a fundamental tool in quantum information processing. It allows us to estimate the state of a quantum system by measuring different observables on many identically prepared copies of the system. This is, in general, a very time-consuming task that requires a large number of measurements. There are, however, systems in which the data acquisition can be done more efficiently. In fact, an ensemble of quantum systems can be prepared and manipulated by external fields while being continuously and collectively probed, producing enough information to estimate its state. This provides a basis for continuous measurement quantum tomography. In this protocol, an ensemble of identically prepared systems is collectively probed and controlled in a time-dependent manner to create an informationally complete continuous measurement record. The measurement history is then inverted to determine the state at the initial time. We use two different estimation methods: maximum likelihood and compressed sensing. The general formalism is applied to the case of reconstruction of the quantum state encoded in the magnetic sub-levels of a large-spin alkali atom, 133{}^{133}133Cs. We apply this protocol to the case of reconstruction of states in the full 16-dimensional electronic-ground subspace (F=3⊕F=4F=3 \oplus F=4F=3⊕F=4), controlled by microwaves and radio-frequency magnetic fields. We present an experimental demonstration of continuous measurement quantum tomography in an ensemble of cold cesium atoms with full control of its 16-dimensional Hilbert space. We show the exquisite level of control achieved in the lab and the excellent agreement between the theory discussed in this dissertation and the experimental results. This allows us to achieve fidelities >95% for low complexity quantum states, and >92% for arbitrary random states, which is a formidable accomplishment for a space of this size.
Quantum state tomography is the experimental procedure of determining an unknown state. It is not only essential for the verification of resources and processors of quantum information but is also important in its own right with regard to the foundation of quantum mechanics. Standard methods have been elusive for large systems because of the enormous number of observables to be measured and the exponential complexity of data post-processing. Here, we propose a new scheme of quantum state tomography that requires the measurement of only three observables (acting jointly on the system and pointer) regardless of the size of the system. The system is coupled to a "pointer" of single qubit, and the wavefunction of the system is "reaped" onto the pointer upon the measurement of the system. Subsequently, standard two-state tomography on the pointer and classical post-processing are used to reconstruct the quantum state of the system. We also developed an efficient and scalable iterative maximum likelihood algorithm to estimate states from statistically incomplete data.
ventional full state tomography reaches its limit already for a few qubits and hence novel methods for the verification and benchmarking of quantum devices are called for. We show how the complete reconstruction of density matrices is possible even if one relies only on local information about the state. This results in an experimental effort that is linear in the number of qubits and efficient post-processing – in stark contrast to the exponential scaling of standard tomography. Whenever full tomography is not needed but instead less information required, one would expect that even fewer measurements suffice. Taking entanglement content of solid state samples and bosons in lattices as an example, we show how it may be quantified unconditionally using already routinely performed measurements only.