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Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics

Reconstructing quantum states via unambiguous state discrimination

Naser Karimi, Hadi Z. Olyaei, Marziyeh Yahyavi, M. A. Jafarizadeh

Published Nov 21, 2022• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we introduce an analytical framework for the reconstruction of quantum states. The reconstruction of an unknown quantum state requires the information of a complete set of observables, obtained through experimental measurements of Hermitian operators usually defined as positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs). The scheme involves a single-qubit unambiguous state discrimination POVM, which can be generalized to perform n-qubit measurements. We also use maximum likelihood estimation as a method in the reconstruction of the density matrix from experimental data and show that the expected value of the cleaner is independent of the parameter of the density operator.

DOI
10.1093/ptep/ptac153

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Abstract In this paper, we introduce an analytical framework for the reconstruction of quantum states. The reconstruction of an unknown quantum state requires the information of a complete set of observables, obtained through experimental measurements of Hermitian operators usually defined as positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs). The scheme involves a single-qubit unambiguous state discrimination POVM, which can be generalized to perform n-qubit measurements. We also use maximum likelihood estimation as a method in the reconstruction of the density matrix from experimental data and show that the expected value of the cleaner is independent of the parameter of the density operator.
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.
We describe a technique for self-consistently characterizing both the quantum state of a single-qubit system, and the positive-operator-valued measure (POVM) that describes measurements on the system. The method works with only 10 measurements. We assume that a series of unitary transformations performed on the quantum state are fully known, while making minimal assumptions about both the density operator of the state and the POVM. The technique returns maximum-likely estimates of both the density operator and the POVM. To experimentally demonstrate the method, we perform reconstructions of over 300 state-measurement pairs, and we compare them to their expected density operators and POVMs. We find that 95% of the reconstructed POVMs have fidelities of 0.98 or greater, and 92% of the density operators have fidelities that are 0.98 or greater.
We introduce a mathematical framework for the description of measurements of quantum processes. Using this framework, process estimation problems can be treated in a similar way as state estimation problems, only replacing the concept of positive-operator-valued measure (POVM) by the concept of process POVM (PPOVM). In particular, we will show that any measurement of qudit channels can be described by a collection of effects (positive operators) defined on a two-qudit system. However, the effects forming a PPOVM are not normalized in the usual sense. We will demonstrate the use of this formalism in discrimination problems by showing that perfect channel discrimination is equivalent to a specific unambiguous state discrimination.
Tomography of a quantum state is usually based on a positive-operator-valued measure (POVM) and on their experimental statistics. Among the available reconstructions, the maximum-likelihood (MaxLike) technique is an efficient one. We propose an extension of this technique when the measurement process cannot be simply described by an instantaneous POVM. Instead, the tomography relies on a set of quantum trajectories and their measurement records. This model includes the fact that, in practice, each measurement could be corrupted by imperfections and decoherence, and could also be associated with the record of continuous-time signals over a finite amount of time. The goal is then to retrieve the quantum state that was present at the start of this measurement process. The proposed extension relies on an explicit expression of the likelihood function via the effective matrices appearing in quantum smoothing and solutions of the adjoint quantum filter. It allows us to retrieve the initial quantum state as in standard MaxLike tomography, but where the traditional POVM operators are replaced by more general ones that depend on the measurement record of each trajectory. It also provides, aside from the MaxLike estimate of the quantum state, confidence intervals for any observable. Such confidence intervals are derived, as the MaxLike estimate, from an asymptotic expansion of multidimensional Laplace integrals appearing in Bayesian mean estimation. A validation is performed on two sets of experimental data: photon(s) trapped in a microwave cavity subject to quantum nondemolition measurements relying on Rydberg atoms, and heterodyne fluorescence measurements of a superconducting qubit.
This paper considers the use of linear state observers to infer the unknown state (density matrix) of a closed quantum system using generalized quantum measurement—positive operator-valued measures (POVMs). An efficient test for observability is described in terms of two quantum observability matrices. The main contribution of this work is the development of a canonical quantum state observer, which may be utilized to estimate the state of any closed quantum system using POVM measurements. The observer ensures the state estimation error tends to the unobservable space of the system, which is exactly zero when the system is observable. The space of Hermitian matrices is shown to be invariant with respect to the dynamics of the canonical observer, which allows one to project the observer's state onto the space of valid quantum density operators while retaining convergence to the true state.
Recently, a novel framework for semi-device-independent quantum prepare-and-measure protocols has been proposed, based on the assumption of a limited distinguishability between the prepared quantum states. Here, we discuss the problem of characterizing an unknown quantum measurement device in this setting. We present several methods to attack the problem. Considering the simplest scenario of two preparations with lower bounded overlap, we show that genuine three-outcome positive-operator valued measures (POVMs) can be certified, even in the presence of noise. Moreover, we show that the optimal POVM for performing unambiguous state discrimination can be self-tested.