Interference and Measurements

Daniel Braun, Bertrand Georgeot

We introduce an interference measure which allows to quantify the amount of interference present in any physical process that maps an initial density matrix to a final density matrix. In particular, the interference measure enables one to monitor the amount of interference generated in each step of a quantum algorithm. We show that a Hadamard gate acting on a single qubit is a basic building block for interference generation and realizes one bit of interference, an ``ibit.'' We use the interference measure to quantify interference for various examples, including Grover's search algorithm and Shor's factorization algorithm. We distinguish between ``potentially available'' and ``actually used'' interference, and show that for both algorithms the potentially available interference is exponentially large. However, the amount of interference actually used in Grover's algorithm is only about $3\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ibits}$ and asymptotically independent of the number of qubits, while Shor's algorithm indeed uses an exponential amount of interference.

David S. Simon

You-Yang Xu

The interference has been measured by the visibility in two-level systems, which, however, does not work for multi-level systems. We generalize a measure of the interference based on decoherence process, consistent with the visibility in qubit systems. By taking cluster states as examples, we show in the one-way quantum computation that the gate fidelity is proportional to the interference of the measured qubit and is inversely proportional to the interference of all register qubits. We also find that the interference increases with the number of the computing steps. So we conjecture that the interference may be the source of the speedup of the one-way quantum computation.

Yunxiao Zhang, Xuan Tang, Xueshi Guo +3 more

Interference effects are usually observed by intensity measurement. Path indistinguishability by the quantum complementarity principle requires projection of the interfering fields into a common indistinguishable mode before detection. On the other hand, the essence of wave interference is the addition of amplitudes of the interfering fields. Therefore, if amplitudes can be directly measured and added, interference can occur even though the interfering fields are in well-distinguishable modes. Here, we make a comprehensive study in both theory and experiment of a technique by homodyne measurement of field amplitudes to reveal interference. This works for both classical and quantum fields even though there exists distinguishability in the interfering paths of light. This directly challenges the complementarity principle. We present a resolution of this issue from the viewpoint of measurement that emphasizes either particle or wave. This technique is particularly useful for recovering interference in unbalanced interferometers with path imbalance beyond a coherence length of the input field and can be applied to remote sensing to extend the applicable range. Since the amplitude-based interference phenomena studied here are fundamentally different from the traditional intensity-based interference phenomena, our approach leads to a new paradigm to study coherence between optical fields.

JOHN WYLIE