Entanglement plays a fundamental role in quantum physics and information processing. Here, we develop an unbiased estimator for mixed-state entanglement in the few-shot scenario and directly estimate it using random unitary evolution in a photonic system. As a supplement to traditional projective measurements, we incorporate Bell measurements on qubit-pairs, enriching the previous randomized measurement scheme, which is no-go in this task with only local unitary evolution. The scheme is scalable to n-qubits via Bell measurements on qubit-pairs. The estimator can be derived directly from a few consecutive outcomes while exhibiting greater robustness to system errors and noise compared to schemes based on shadow estimation. We find that, under a fixed measurement resource, the way with more versatile measurement settings with fewer repeats per setting is more efficient. Our protocol and demonstration advance the direct characterization of quantum states in practice.
Entanglement plays a fundamental role in quantum physics and information processing. Here, we develop an unbiased estimator for mixed-state entanglement in the few-shot scenario and directly estimate it using random unitary evolution in a photonic system. As a supplement to traditional projective measurements, we incorporate Bell measurements on qubit-pairs, enriching the previous randomized measurement scheme, which is no-go in this task with only local unitary evolution. The scheme is scalable to n-qubits via Bell measurements on qubit-pairs. The estimator can be derived directly from a few consecutive outcomes while exhibiting greater robustness to system errors and noise compared to schemes based on shadow estimation. We find that, under a fixed measurement resource, the way with more versatile measurement settings with fewer repeats per setting is more efficient. Our protocol and demonstration advance the direct characterization of quantum states in practice.
Entanglement is fundamental to quantum physics and information processing. In this work, we introduce the Few-Shot Randomized Measurement (FSRM) method, developing an unbiased estimator for mixed-state entanglement from just three experimental shot outcomes. By incorporating the Bell measurement (BM), we supplement the traditional computational-basis measurement to enhance the randomized measurement scheme, which is scalable to n-qubit systems via BMs on qubit pairs. Our approach enables direct estimation of entanglement through random unitary evolution in a photonic system. Compared to the classical shadow method, BM-enhanced FSRM requires no prior knowledge of the local unitaries, offering greater robustness against unitary imperfections. Additionally, we find that utilizing more versatile measurement settings with fewer repeats per setting is more efficient under fixed measurement resources. Our protocol and experimental demonstration represent a significant advancement in the efficient and practical characterization of quantum states.
Entanglement plays a central role in quantum information processing and quantum physics. However, few effective ways are known to detect the amount of entanglement of an unknown quantum state. Here, we propose a scheme to estimate the entanglement negativity for any bipartition of a composite system. The proposed scheme is based on the random unitary evolution and local measurements on a single-copy quantum state, which is more practical compared to former methods based on collective measurements on many copies of the identical state. Meanwhile, we generalize the scheme to quantify the total correlation. We demonstrate the efficiency of the scheme with statistical analyses and numerical simulations. Our scheme is quite suitable for state-of-the-art quantum platforms, which can serve as a useful benchmarking tool to advance quantum technologies and a probe to study fundamental quantum physics like entanglement dynamics.
Quantum state tomography (QST) has been the traditional method for characterization of an unknown state. Recently, many direct measurement methods have been implemented to reconstruct the state in a resource efficient way. In this Letter, we present an interferometric method, in which any qubit state, whether mixed or pure, can be inferred from the visibility, phase shift, and average intensity of an interference pattern using a single-shot measurement-hence, we call it quantum state interferography. This provides us with a "black box" approach to quantum state estimation, wherein, between the incidence of the photon and extraction of state information, we are not changing any conditions within the setup, thus giving us a true single shot estimation of the quantum state. In contrast, standard QST requires at least two measurements for pure state qubit and at least three measurements for mixed state qubit reconstruction. We then go on to show that QSI is more resource efficient than QST for quantification of entanglement in pure bipartite qubits. We experimentally implement our method with high fidelity using the polarization degree of freedom of light. An extension of the scheme to pure states involving d-1 interferograms for d-dimensional systems is also presented. Thus, the scaling gain is even more dramatic in the qudit scenario for our method, where, in contrast, standard QST, without any assumptions, scales roughly as d^{2}.
Estimating properties of quantum states via randomized measurements has become a significant part of quantum information science. In this paper, we design an innovative approach leveraging metasurfaces to perform randomized measurements on photonic qubits, together with error mitigation techniques that suppress realistic metasurface measurement noise. Through fidelity and purity estimation, we confirm the capability of metasurfaces to implement randomized measurements and the unbiased nature of our error-mitigated estimator. Our findings show the potential of metasurface-based randomized measurement schemes in achieving robust and resource-efficient estimation of quantum state properties. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Shadow estimation provides an efficient framework for estimating observable expectation values using randomized measurements. While originally developed for discrete-variable systems, its recent extensions to continuous-variable (CV) quantum systems face practical limitations due to idealized assumptions of continuous phase modulation and infinite measurement resolution. In this work, we develop a practical shadow estimation protocol for CV systems using discretized homodyne detection with a finite number of phase settings and quadrature bins. We construct an unbiased estimator for the quantum state and establish both sufficient conditions and necessary conditions for informational completeness within a truncated Fock space up to nmax photons. We further provide a comprehensive variance analysis, showing that the shadow norm scales as O(nmax4), improving upon previous O(nmax13/3) bounds. Our work bridges the gap between theoretical shadow estimation and experimental implementations, enabling robust and scalable quantum state characterization in realistic CV systems.
Recently, a proper genuine multipartite entanglement measure has been found for three-qubit pure states [see Xie and Eberly, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 040403 (2021)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.127.040403], but capturing useful entanglement measures for mixed states has remained an open challenge. So far, it requires not only a full tomography in experiments, but also huge calculational labor. A leading proposal was made by Gühne, Reimpell, and Werner [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 110502 (2007)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.98.110502], who used expectation values of entanglement witnesses to describe a lower bound estimation of entanglement. We provide here an extension that also gives genuine upper bounds of entanglement. This advance requires only the expectation value of any Hermitian operator. Moreover, we identify a class of operators A_{1} that not only give good estimates, but also require a remarkably small number of experimental measurements. In this Letter, we define our approach and illustrate it by estimating entanglement measures for a number of pure and mixed states prepared in our recent experiments.