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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Single-outcome information gain of qubit measurements on different state ensembles

Xi-Jun Ren, Heng Fan

Published Jul 15, 2014• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We calculate the single-outcome information gain of quantum measurements on a completely unknown qubit state randomly chosen from different state ensembles. It is shown that the information gain decreases when the ensemble size increases. We obtain analytic single-outcome information gain formulas for continuous equatorial and spherical state ensembles, which show that the states in the former ensemble are relatively easier to identify. The squared fidelity between post-measurement state and pre-measurement state is also calculated, and the qualitative tradeoff relations between information gain and fidelity are illustrated by our results.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/47/30/305302

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We calculate the single-outcome information gain of quantum measurements on a completely unknown qubit state randomly chosen from different state ensembles. It is shown that the information gain decreases when the ensemble size increases. We obtain analytic single-outcome information gain formulas for continuous equatorial and spherical state ensembles, which show that the states in the former ensemble are relatively easier to identify. The squared fidelity between post-measurement state and pre-measurement state is also calculated, and the qualitative tradeoff relations between information gain and fidelity are illustrated by our results.
In quantum information the fundamental information-containing system is the qubit. A measurement of a single qubit can at most yield one classical bit. However, a dichotomous measurement of an unknown qubit will yield much less information about the qubit state. We use Bayesian inference to compute how much information one progressively gets by making sucessive, individual measurements on an ensemble of identically prepared qubits. Perhaps surprisingly, even if the measurements are arranged so that each measurement yields one classical bit, that is, the two possible measurement outcomes are a priori equiprobable, it takes almost a handful of measurements before one has gained one bit of information about the gradually concentrated qubit probability density. We also show that by following a strategy that reaps the maximum information per measurement, we are led to a mutually unbiased basis as our measurement bases. This is a pleasing, although not entirely surprising, result.
In this thesis I address the fundamental question that how the information gain is possible in the realm of quantum mechanics where a single measurement alters the state of the system. I study an ensemble of particles in some unknown (but product) state in detail and suggest an optimal way of gaining the maximum information and also quantify the corresponding information exactly. We find a rather novel result which is quite different from other well-known definitions of the information gain in quantum theory.
We present the amount of information, fidelity, and reversibility obtained by arbitrary quantum measurements on completely unknown states. These quantities are expressed as functions of the singular values of a measurement operator corresponding to the obtained outcome. As an example, we consider a class of quantum measurements with highly degenerate singular values to discuss trade-offs among information, fidelity, and reversibility. The trade-offs are at the level of a single outcome, in the sense that the quantities pertain to each single outcome rather than the average over all possible outcomes.
Quantum measurement is essentially taken to gain information encoded in quantum states, however, it also inevitably disturbs the measured state such that the postmeasurement state loses its quantum information partially or fully. Thus, it is an important issue to characterise such information gain and state disturbance associated with measurement. In this work, we study the relationships between the information gain and measurement disturbance for two-valued qubit measurements. In particular, we employ a powerful tradeoff relation between the measurement strength and reversibility to obtain, generalise, and even strengthen certain well-known tradeoff relations between information gain and measurement disturbance of qubit measurements. Moreover, it is pointed out that our results are useful to understand the measurement effects at the fundamental level as they are state-independent. Hence, our work is helpful for designing quantum information processing tasks aided by measurement.
Quantum state estimation is one of the most extensively studied topics in the field of quantum theory and quantum information. This process is essential in quantum protocols to ensure that the estimated state matches the true state. Typically, the quantum state of identical systems can be estimated from the statistics of measurement outcomes across different measurement bases. In this research, we study adaptive-measurement strategies for quantum state estimation used to identify a pure state of two-level systems and compare the obtained estimated state to the state obtained when the measurement bases are chosen randomly. The adaptive measurements in this study include the maximum-information-gain strategy, and the confirmation strategy. In this work, we simulate the outcome of the measurement on a system and use the Bayesian estimation method to estimate the obtained state. We then adaptively change the basis of the next measurement in accordance with the estimated state and the used adaptive strategy. We find that the maximum-information-gain strategy provides the fastest convergence and the most accurate state estimation compared to the confirmation strategy and the randomly-chosen-measurement-basis strategy, especially in the presence of measurement noise. Keywords: Quantum state estimation, State tomography, Adaptive measurements