It is shown that for an adaptive quantum estimation scheme based on locally unbiased measurements, the sequence of maximum likelihood estimators is strongly consistent and asymptotically efficient.
Estimating correctly the quantum phase of a physical system is a central problem in quantum parameter estimation theory due to its wide range of applications from quantum metrology to cryptography. Ideally, the optimal quantum estimator is given by the so-called quantum Cramér-Rao bound, so any measurement strategy aims to obtain estimations as close as possible to it. However, more often than not, the current state-of-the-art methods to estimate quantum phases fail to reach this bound as they rely on maximum likelihood estimators of non-identifiable likelihood functions. In this work we thoroughly review various schemes for estimating the phase of a qubit, identifying the underlying problem which prohibits these methods to reach the quantum Cramér-Rao bound, and propose a new adaptive scheme based on covariant measurements to circumvent this problem. Our findings are carefully checked by Monte Carlo simulations, showing that the method we propose is both mathematically and experimentally more realistic and more efficient than the methods currently available.
Quantum phase estimation is one of the most important tools in quantum algorithms. It can be made non-adaptive (meaning all applications of the unitary Uφ happen simultaneously) without using more applications of Uφ, albeit at the expense of using many more qubits. It is also known that there is no advantage for adaptive algorithms in the case where the phase that needs to be estimated is arbitrary or is uniformly random. Here we give examples of a special case of phase estimation, with a promise on the values that the unknown phase can take, where adaptive methods are provably better than non-adaptive methods by a factor of nearly 2 in the number of uses of Uφ. We also prove some upper bounds on the maximum advantage that adaptive algorithms for phase estimation can achieve over non-adaptive ones.
Quantum state estimation is an important task in the realm of experimental quantum information science. While the common approaches to this task are generally adequate, the maximum-likelihood method is frequently used with parameterizations that do not strictly satisfy the statistical requirements of maximum-likelihood estimation. We show that the source of this issue is in the structure of the parameter space and we introduce a density matrix parameterization that provides direct control over this structure. The parameterization leads to a natural quantum state estimation algorithm that does satisfy the statistical requirements of maximum-likelihood estimation. Finally, we examine the algorithm through the analysis of several data sets and experimental results.