Quantum state tomography (QST) is an essential tool for characterizing an unknown quantum state. Recently, QST has been performed for entangled qudits based on orbital angular momentum, time-energy uncertainty, and frequency bins. Here, we propose a QST for time-bin qudits, with which the number of measurement settings scales linearly with dimension d . Using the proposed scheme, we performed QST for a four-dimensional time-bin maximally entangled state with 16 measurement settings. We successfully reconstructed the density matrix of the entangled qudits, with which the average fidelity of the state was calculated to be 0.950.
Quantum states encoded in the time-bin degree of freedom of photons represent a fundamental resource for quantum information protocols. Traditional methods for generating and measuring time-bin-encoded quantum states face severe challenges due to optical instabilities, complex setups, and timing resolution requirements. To circumvent these issues, we leverage an approach based on Hong-Ou-Mandel interference and we propose and demonstrate a robust and scalable protocol to generate and measure arbitrary high-dimensional time-bin quantum states. We experimentally implement the protocol in a photonic setup reaching high-fidelity quantum state tomographies of two- and three-dimensional quantum states encoded in time bins with short temporal separation. We also certify intrasystem polarization-time entanglement of single photons through a nonclassicality test. The demonstrated approach enables access to high-dimensional states and tasks that are practically inaccessible with standard schemes, thereby advancing fundamental quantum information science and opening applications in quantum communication.
Frequency-bin encoding provides a scalable platform for photonic quantum information processing by enabling high-dimensional qudit states compatible with the telecommunications infrastructure. However, characterizing these systems remains challenging, as conventional quantum state tomography requires measurement resources that increase rapidly with dimensionality, compounded by the difficulty of implementing controllable measurements across many frequency modes at once. Here, we address these challenges and demonstrate threshold quantum state tomography of entangled frequency-bin qudits using adaptive measurements that exploit the sparsity of highly entangled biphoton frequency combs. Combined with Bayesian inference, we experimentally demonstrate full state estimation of biphoton frequency combs with Hilbert space dimensions up to
d2=100---a 56% increase over the previous record---all while performing a mere 1.9% of the measurements required by conventional tomographically complete approaches. This work confirms the promise of measurement-aware approaches for characterizing high-dimensional photonic quantum systems, unlocking new tools for full tomography that are hardware-efficient, state-aware, and free from a priori assumptions about state structure.