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arXiv:2509.21804 · Physical Review A

Towards reconstructing quantum structured light on a quantum computer

Mwezi Koni, Shawal Kassim, Paola Concha Obando, Neelan Gounden, M. Montaz Ali, Isaac M. Nape

Published Mar 31, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We introduce a variational quantum computing approach for quantum state reconstruction within a discretized logical framework, using experimental measurement data as input. By mapping the reconstruction cost function onto an Ising model, the problem can be solved using a variational eigensolver on present-day quantum hardware identifying dominant logical elements of the density matrix. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate the method on quantum structured light, in particular, entangled photons carrying orbital angular momentum and show that the reconstruction procedure can yield reliable performance even on noisy devices. Our results highlight the potential of variational algorithms as a complementary approach to quantum state tomography, particularly for high-dimensional structured light, where classical approaches can face bottlenecks.

DOI
10.1103/75vp-17jx

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Reconstructing quantum states from measurement data represents a formidable challenge in quantum information science, especially as system sizes grow beyond the reach of traditional tomography methods. While recent studies have explored quantum machine learning (QML) for quantum state tomography (QST), nearly all rely on idealized assumptions, such as direct access to the unknown quantum state as quantum data input, which are incompatible with current hardware constraints. In this work, we present a QML-based tomography protocol that operates entirely on classical measurement data and is fully executable on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. Our approach employs a variational quantum circuit trained to reconstruct quantum states based solely on measurement outcomes. We test the method in simulation, achieving high-fidelity reconstructions of diverse quantum states, including GHZ states, spin chain ground states, and states generated by random circuits. The protocol is then validated on quantum hardware from IBM and IonQ. Additionally, we demonstrate accurate tomography is possible using incomplete measurement bases, a crucial step towards scaling up our protocol. Our results in various scenarios illustrate successful state reconstruction with fidelity reaching 90% or higher. To our knowledge, this is the first QML-based tomography scheme that has been implemented on real quantum processors using exclusively classical measurements. This work establishes the feasibility of QML-based tomography on current quantum platforms and offers a scalable pathway for practical quantum state reconstruction.