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Physical Review X

Experimental Realization of Quantum Tomography of Photonic Qudits via Symmetric Informationally Complete Positive Operator-Valued Measures

Nicolas Bent, Hammam Qassim, A. A. Tahir, Сыч Денис Васильевич, Gerd Leuchs, Luis Lorenzo Sánchez-Soto, Ebrahim Karimi, Robert W. Boyd

Published Oct 12, 2015• 133 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures provide efficient quantum state tomography in any finite dimension.In this work, we implement state tomography using symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures for both pure and mixed photonic qudit states in Hilbert spaces of orbital angular momentum, including spaces whose dimension is not power of a prime.Fidelities of reconstruction within the range of 0.81-0.96are obtained for both pure and mixed states.These results are relevant to high-dimensional quantum information and computation experiments, especially to those where a complete set of mutually unbiased bases is unknown.

DOI
10.1103/physrevx.5.041006

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Symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures provide efficient quantum state tomography in any finite dimension.In this work, we implement state tomography using symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures for both pure and mixed photonic qudit states in Hilbert spaces of orbital angular momentum, including spaces whose dimension is not power of a prime.Fidelities of reconstruction within the range of 0.81-0.96are obtained for both pure and mixed states.These results are relevant to high-dimensional quantum information and computation experiments, especially to those where a complete set of mutually unbiased bases is unknown.
We present a quantum state tomography method that enables the reconstruction of \emph{arbitrary} d−d-d−dimensional quantum states encoded in the discretized transverse momentum of photons, by using \emph{only} d+1d+1d+1 experimental settings. To this end, we identify a family of bases with the property that the outcomes of a projective measurement are \emph{spatially multiplexed} on the interference pattern of the projected state. Using the proposed scheme we performed, as a proof-of-principle, an experimental reconstruction of d=6−d=6-d=6−dimensional states, for which a complete set of mutually unbiased bases does not exist. We obtained fidelity values above 0.97 for both pure and mixed states, reducing the number of experimental settings from 424242 to only 777.
We present a quantum state tomography method that enables the reconstruction of arbitrary d−dimensional quantum states encoded in the discretized transverse momentum of photons, by using only d+1 experimental settings. To this end, we identify a family of bases with the property that the outcomes of a projective measurement are spatially multiplexed on the interference pattern of the projected state. Using the proposed scheme, we performed, as a proof-of-principle, an experimental reconstruction of d=6−dimensional states, for which a complete set of mutually unbiased bases does not exist. We obtained fidelity values above 0.97 for both pure and mixed states, reducing the number of experimental settings from 42 to only 7.
We propose an experiment that realizes a symmetric informationally complete (SIC) probability-operator measurement (POM) in the four-dimensional Hilbert space of a qubit pair. The qubit pair is carried by a single photon as a polarization qubit and a path qubit. The implementation of the SIC POM is accomplished with the means of linear optics. The experimental scheme exploits an approach to SIC POMs that uses a two-step process: a measurement with full-rank outcomes, followed by a projective measurement on a basis that is chosen in accordance with the result of the first measurement. The basis of the first measurement and the four bases of the second measurements are pairwise unbiased---a hint at a possibly profound link between SIC POMs and mutually unbiased bases.
Quantum state tomography is an important tool for quantum communication, computation, metrology, and simulation. Efficient quantum state tomography on a high dimensional quantum system is still a challenging problem. Here, we propose a novel quantum state tomography method, auxiliary Hilbert space tomography, to avoid pre-rotations before measurement in a quantum state tomography experiment. Our method requires projective measurements in a higher dimensional space that contains the subspace that includes the prepared states. We experimentally demonstrate this method with orbital angular momentum states of photons. In our experiment, the quantum state tomography measurements are as simple as taking a photograph with a camera. We experimentally verify our method with near-pure- and mixed-states of orbital angular momentum with dimension up to d=13d=13d=13, and achieve greater than 95 % state fidelities for all states tested. This method dramatically reduces the complexity of measurements for full quantum state tomography, and shows potential application in various high dimensional quantum information tasks.
We introduce a class of informationally complete positive-operator-valued measures which are, in analogy with a tight frame, ‘as close as possible’ to orthonormal bases for the space of quantum states. These measures are distinguished by an exceptionally simple state-reconstruction formula which allows ‘painless’ quantum state tomography. Complete sets of mutually unbiased bases and symmetric informationally complete positive-operator-valued measures are both members of this class, the latter being the unique minimal rank-one members. Recast as ensembles of pure quantum states, the rank-one members are in fact equivalent to weighted 2-designs in complex projective space. These measures are shown to be optimal for quantum cloning and linear quantum state tomography.
We study the determination of an unknown mixed state of a ddd-dimensional quantum system by means of unambiguous state discrimination. We show that optimal and nonoptimal unambiguous state discrimination can be used to reconstruct unknown states of a qubit. This result is extended to the case of a qudit by a sequence of reconstructions in two-dimensional subspaces. The total number of projections scales approximately as 2d22{d}^{2}2d2 for ddd large; this is twice as much as in the case of tomography based on mutually unbiased bases or symmetric informationally complete positive-operator-valued measures, and less than the d3{d}^{3}d3 projections required by standard tomography.