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.
The method and prototype of a device for characterizing of biphoton light sources based on spontaneous parametric downdonversion by quantum tomography are described. The prototype is an experimental implementation of a specialized quantum tomograph designed to measure the quantum polarization states of radiation generated by biphoton sources. Specially developed software will determine the statistical characteristics of the measured quantum state, calculate the tomographic and likelihood estimations of the density matrix, calculate the measurement errors of the density matrix elements and evaluate the quality of the quantum state of biphotons.