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arXiv:2509.24636 · Physical Review A

Reconstructing quantum states and expectations via dynamical tomography

Marco Peruzzo, Tommaso Grigoletto, Francesco Ticozzi

Published Feb 13, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

When the dynamics of a quantum system of interest is known, an informationally complete set of observables is not needed for state reconstruction via tomographic techniques: letting the system evolve before performing the measurement allows one to effectively extend the available ways to probe the system. This idea leads to dynamical quantum tomography, whose feasibility we characterize for general quantum dynamics using Krylov-based methods. Specializing in Markovian ones, we also provide deterministic tests and randomized ones to effectively assess parametric dynamics. The limits of the methods are explored by comparing unitary and open dynamics when a single observable is available, and the set of observables whose expectation can be reconstructed from the available ones characterized. The framework is illustrated with applications to a spin chain (with or without dissipation) and an electron-nuclear system.

DOI
10.1103/x88t-j8k9

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When the dynamics of a quantum system of interest is known, an informationally complete set of observables is not needed for state reconstruction via tomographic techniques: letting the system evolve before performing the measurement allows one to effectively extend the available ways to probe the system. This idea leads to dynamical quantum tomography, whose feasibility we characterize for general quantum dynamics using Krylov-based methods. Specializing in Markovian ones, we also provide deterministic tests and randomized ones to effectively assess parametric dynamics. The limits of the methods are explored by comparing unitary and open dynamics when a single observable is available, and the set of observables whose expectation can be reconstructed from the available ones characterized. The framework is illustrated with applications to a spin chain (with or without dissipation) and an electron-nuclear system.
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PACS. 03.65.Ta – Foundations of quantum mechanics; measurement theory. PACS. 03.65.Wj – State reconstruction, quantum tomography. Abstract. – We propose a method for the tomographic reconstruction of qubit states for a general class of solid-state systems in which the Hamiltonians are represented by spin operators, e.g., with Heisenberg-, XXZ-, or XY-type exchange interactions. We analyze the implementation of the projective operator measurements, or spin measurements, on qubit states. All the qubit states for the spin Hamiltonians can be reconstructed by using experimental data. Quantum information processing requires the effective measurement of quantum states. However, a single quantum measurement can only obtain partial information of a quantum state. The reconstruction of a quantum state requires measuring a complete set of observables on an ensemble of identically prepared copies of the system. This method called quantum state tomography [1], is very important because any unknown state can be ascertained by tomographic measurements. Moreover, the full description of qubit states can increase the accuracy of quantum operations. Tomographic measurements have been experimentally implemented for, e.g., the nuclear spin state of an NMR system [2], the electromagnetic field and photon
Quantum state tomography aims at reconstructing the state of a quantum system. The standard approach is based on a tomographically complete set of observables and a maximum likelihood estimation of the density matrix. However, the number of measurements scales exponentially with the number of qubits or qudits of the system. By leveraging some properties of any physical density matrix, we propose a method in which the number of necessary measurements depends on the state under investigation but without the need for any a priori information. In some cases, this can lead to a significant reduction of the resources necessary for state characterization.
We present a novel method for performing quantum state tomography for many-particle systems, which are particularly suitable for estimating the states in lattice systems such as of ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices. We show that the need to measure a tomographically complete set of observables can be overcome by letting the state evolve under some suitably chosen random circuits followed by the measurement of a single observable. We generalize known results about the approximation of unitary two-designs, i.e. certain classes of random unitary matrices, by random quantum circuits and connect our findings to the theory of quantum compressed sensing. We show that for ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices established experimental techniques such as optical super-lattices, laser speckles and time-of-flight measurements are sufficient to perform fully certified, assumption-free tomography. This is possible without the need to address single sites in any step of the procedure. Combining our approach with tensor network methods—in particular, the theory of matrix product states—we identify situations where the effort of reconstruction is even constant in the number of lattice sites, allowing, in principle, to perform tomography on large-scale systems readily available in present experiments.