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International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks

Threshold Quantum State Tomography

Diego Maragnano, Daniele Binosi, Giovanni Garberoglio, Claudio Cusano, Maurizio Dapor, Marco Liscidini

Published Jul 2, 2023• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum state tomography aims at reconstructing the state of a quantum system. The standard approach is based on a tomographically complete set of observables and a maximum likelihood estimation of the density matrix. However, the number of measurements scales exponentially with the number of qubits or qudits of the system. By leveraging some properties of any physical density matrix, we propose a method in which the number of necessary measurements depends on the state under investigation but without the need for any a priori information. In some cases, this can lead to a significant reduction of the resources necessary for state characterization.

DOI
10.1109/icton59386.2023.10207290

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Quantum state tomography aims at reconstructing the state of a quantum system. The standard approach is based on a tomographically complete set of observables and a maximum likelihood estimation of the density matrix. However, the number of measurements scales exponentially with the number of qubits or qudits of the system. By leveraging some properties of any physical density matrix, we propose a method in which the number of necessary measurements depends on the state under investigation but without the need for any a priori information. In some cases, this can lead to a significant reduction of the resources necessary for state characterization.
Quantum state tomography (QST) aims at reconstructing the state of a quantum system. However, in conventional QST, the number of measurements scales exponentially with the number of qubits. Here, we propose a QST protocol, in which the introduction of a threshold allows one to drastically reduce the number of measurements required for the reconstruction of the state density matrix without compromising the result accuracy. In addition, one can also use the same approach to reconstruct an approximated density matrix tailoring the number of measurements on the available resources. We experimentally demonstrate this protocol by performing the tomography of states up to 7 qubits. We show that our approach can lead to results in agreement with those obtained by QST even when the number of measurements is reduced by more than two orders of magnitude.
We propose an efficient quantum state tomography method inspired by compressed sensing and threshold quantum state tomography that can drastically reduce the number of measurement settings to reconstruct the density matrix of an NNN-qudit system. We validate our algorithm with demonstrations on IBMQ and show the efficient and accurate reconstruction of $N\ensuremath{\le}7$ qubit systems, reproducing GHZ, W\mathrm{W}W, and random states with O(1)O(1)O(1), O(N2)O({N}^{2})O(N2), and O(N)O(N)O(N) settings.
Quantum state tomography is the experimental procedure of determining an unknown state. It is not only essential for the verification of resources and processors of quantum information but is also important in its own right with regard to the foundation of quantum mechanics. Standard methods have been elusive for large systems because of the enormous number of observables to be measured and the exponential complexity of data post-processing. Here, we propose a new scheme of quantum state tomography that requires the measurement of only three observables (acting jointly on the system and pointer) regardless of the size of the system. The system is coupled to a "pointer" of single qubit, and the wavefunction of the system is "reaped" onto the pointer upon the measurement of the system. Subsequently, standard two-state tomography on the pointer and classical post-processing are used to reconstruct the quantum state of the system. We also developed an efficient and scalable iterative maximum likelihood algorithm to estimate states from statistically incomplete data.
Abstract Reconstructing the state of a quantum system represents a pivotal task for quantum information applications. The standard approach based on quantum state tomography requires a number of measurements that scales exponentially with the number of qubits. Other methods have been proposed and tested to reduce the number of measurements, or to focus on specific properties of the output state rather than on its complete reconstruction. Here, we show experimentally the application of an approach, called threshold quantum state tomography, in an advanced hybrid photonic platform with states up to n = 4 qubits. This method does not require prior knowledge and selects only the informative projectors starting from the measurement of the density matrix diagonal. We demonstrate its effectiveness by showing that a consistent reduction in the number of measurements is obtained for relevant states, with only very limited loss of information. These results open perspective for its application in larger systems.
Quantum state tomography is a technique in quantum information science used to reconstruct the density matrix of an unknown quantum state, providing complete information about the quantum state. It is of significant importance in fields such as quantum computation, quantum communication, and quantum simulation. However, as the size of the quantum system increases, the number of measurement settings and sampling requirements for quantum state tomography grow exponentially with the number of qubits. This not only makes experimental design and implementation more complex, but also exacerbates the consumption of experimental resources. These limitations severely hinder the application of state tomography in large-scale quantum systems. To reduce measurement settings and improve sampling efficiency, this study proposes a state tomography method based on auxiliary systems. This method can be implemented through either entanglement between the quantum system to be measured and a quantum auxiliary system or through correlation between the quantum system and a probabilistic classical auxiliary system. Measurements on the entire joint system enable more efficient extraction of information about the quantum state to be measured. This method relies on standard quantum gate operations and requires only two measurement settings, with a total sampling complexity of O(d2)O(d^2)O(d2), significantly simplifying experimental operations and measurement processes. Additionally, this study provides two schemes for measuring purity based on the proposed circuit, one of which achieves measurement precision at the Heisenberg limit. This study validates the effectiveness of the proposed method through a detailed theoretical analysis, a series of numerical simulations, and experiments.
In quantum information transformation and quantum computation, the most critical issues are security and accuracy. These features, therefore, stimulate research on quantum state characterization. A characterization tool, Quantum state tomography, reconstructs the density matrix of an unknown quantum state. Theoretically, reconstructing an unknown state using this method can be arbitrarily accurate. However, this is less practical owing to the huge burden of measurements and data processing for large numbers of qubits. Even comprising an efficient estimator and a precise algorithm, an optimal tomographic framework can also be overburdened owing to the exponential growth of the measurements. Moreover, the consequential postprocessing of huge amounts of data challenges the capacity of computers. Thus, it is crucial to build an efficient framework that requires fewer measurements but yields an expected accuracy. To this end, we built a tomography schema by which only a few Pauli measurements enable an accurate tomographic reconstruction. Subsequently, this schema was verified as efficient and accurate through numerical simulations on the tomography of multi-qubit quantum states. Furthermore, this schema was proven to be robust through numerical simulations on a noisy superconducting qubit system. Therefore, the tomography schema paves an alternatively effective way to reconstruct the density matrix of a quantum state owing to its efficiency and accuracy, which are essential for quantum state tomography.