Ptychography is a computational imaging technique mainly used in optical and electron microscopy. Its quantum analog was recently introduced as a simple method for estimating unknown pure quantum states through projections onto partially overlapping subspaces, each one followed by a projective measurement in the Fourier basis. In the end, an iterative algorithm estimates the state from the collected data. Here, we theoretically describe how to implement this method for D -dimensional qudit states encoded in the angular position and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of single photons. For this purpose, we define the qudit by discretizing the spatial profile of a photon in cylindrical coordinates, using an array of D angular slits symmetrically distributed in the transverse plane. To apply ptychography to this encoding, we show that the intermediate projections will be carried out by simple binary spatial filters in the angular paths, while the measurement in the Fourier basis will be performed by postselecting D OAM modes compatible with the quantum Fourier transform of the path basis. We illustrate the effectiveness of this scheme through simulations and discuss its experimental feasibility.
Ptychography is a computational imaging technique mainly used in optical and electron microscopy. Its quantum analog was recently introduced as a simple method for estimating unknown pure quantum states through projections onto partially overlapping subspaces, each one followed by a projective measurement in the Fourier basis. In the end, an iterative algorithm estimates the state from the collected data. Here, we theoretically describe how to implement this method for D -dimensional qudit states encoded in the angular position and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of single photons. For this purpose, we define the qudit by discretizing the spatial profile of a photon in cylindrical coordinates, using an array of D angular slits symmetrically distributed in the transverse plane. To apply ptychography to this encoding, we show that the intermediate projections will be carried out by simple binary spatial filters in the angular paths, while the measurement in the Fourier basis will be performed by postselecting D OAM modes compatible with the quantum Fourier transform of the path basis. We illustrate the effectiveness of this scheme through simulations and discuss its experimental feasibility.
In the context of quantum information theory, the use of certain photonic degrees of freedom allows the creation of high-dimensional quantum states, called qudits, which offer advantages over qubits in applications such as communication, cryptography, and fundamental tests of quantum mechanics. In many of these applications, it is necessary to reconstruct the quantum state to be used, since it contains all the measurable properties of a physical system. Recently, a simple method for reconstructing pure quantum states, called quantum ptychography, has been proposed. It is based on projections of the input state into various partial overlapping subspaces, each one followed by a projective measurement in the Fourier basis, which is generated by the quantum Fourier transform (QFT) of the computational basis. At the end, an iterative algorithm estimates the state from the collected data. In this work, we propose to apply this method to pure states of qudits encoded in angular position and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of single photons. For this purpose, we define these qudits based on the discretization of the spatial profile of a photon in cylindrical coordinates, through an arrangement of D angular slits, and describe their representation in the OAM basis. To apply ptychography to these qudits, we show that the intermediate projections will be implemented by simple binary spatial filters, while the measurement in the Fourier basis of the post-projection states will be performed by measuring in a basis defined by D OAM modes. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of the ptychographic method by simulating the reconstruction of angular qudits for D = 5 and D = 12, and evaluate its experimental feasibility.
The quantum analogue of ptychography, a powerful coherent diffractive imaging technique, is a simple method for reconstructing d -dimensional pure states. It relies on measuring partially overlapping parts of the input state in a single orthonormal basis and feeding the outcomes to an iterative phase retrieval algorithm for postprocessing. We provide a proof of concept demonstration of this method by determining pure states given by superpositions of d transverse spatial modes of an optical field. A set of n rank- r projectors, diagonal in the spatial mode basis, is used to generate n partially overlapping parts of the input, and each part is projectively measured in the Fourier transformed basis. For d up to 32, we successfully reconstructed hundreds of random states using n = 5 and n = d rank- ⌈ d / 2 ⌉ projectors. The extension of quantum ptychography for other types of photonic spatial modes is outlined.
Quantum ptychography is a method for estimating an unknown pure quantum state by subjecting it to overlapping projections, each one followed by a projective measurement on a single prescribed basis. Here, we present a comprehensive study of this method applied for estimating n-qubit states in a circuit-based quantum computer, including numerical simulations and experiments carried out on an IBM superconducting quantum processor. The intermediate projections are implemented through Pauli measurements on one qubit at a time, which sets the number of ptychographic circuits to 3n (in contrast to the 3n circuits for standard Pauli tomography); the final projective measurement in the computational basis is preceded by the quantum Fourier transform (QFT). Due to the large depth and number of two-qubit gates of the QFT circuit, which is unsuitable for noisy devices, we also test the approximate QFT (AQFT) and separable unitary operations. Using the QFT and AQFT of degree 2, we obtained high estimation fidelities in all tests with separable and entangled states for up to three and four qubits, respectively; on the other hand, the separable unitaries in this scenario provided good estimations only for separable states, in general. Our results compare favorably with recent results in the literature, and we discuss further alternatives to make the ptychographic method scalable for the current noisy devices.
Abstract Ptychography is an imaging technique in which a localized illumination scans overlapping regions of an object and generates a set of diffraction intensities used to computationally reconstruct its complex-valued transmission function. We propose a quantum analogue of this technique designed to reconstruct d-dimensional pure states. A set of n rank-r projectors “scans” overlapping parts of an input state and the moduli of the d Fourier amplitudes of each part are measured. These nd outcomes are fed into an iterative phase retrieval algorithm that estimates the state. Using d up to 100 and r around d / 2, we performed numerical simulations for single systems in an economic (n = 4) and a costly (n = d) scenario, as well as for multiqubit systems (n = 6logd). This numeric study included realistic amounts of depolarization and poissonian noise, and all scenarios yielded, in general, reconstructions with infidelities below 10−2. The method is shown, therefore, to be resilient to noise and, for any d, requires a simple and fast postprocessing algorithm. We show that the algorithm is equivalent to an alternating gradient search, which ensures that it does not suffer from local-minima stagnation. Unlike traditional approaches to state reconstruction, the ptychographic scheme uses a single measurement basis; the diversity and redundancy in the measured data—key for its success—are provided by the overlapping projections. We illustrate the simplicity of this scheme with the paradigmatic multiport interferometer.
Abstract Photons carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) are excellent qudits and are widely used in several applications, such as long distance quantum communication, d -dimensional teleportation and high-resolution imaging and metrology. All these protocols rely on quantum tomography to characterise the OAM state, which currently requires complex measurements involving spatial light modulators and mode filters. To simplify the measurement and characterisation of OAM states, here we apply a recent tomography protocol [Asadian et al , Phys. Rev. A 94 010301 (2016)]. Our scheme for OAM tomography in d dimensions requires only a set of measurements on a path qubit, i.e., a two-dimensional system. This replaces the current complexity of OAM measurements by the ability to perform generalized Pauli operators X d , Z d on OAM states. Our scheme can be adapted in principle to other degrees of freedom, thus opening the way for more complex qudit tomography.
Optical networks implementing single-qudit quantum gates may exhibit superior properties to those for qubits as each optical element in the network can work in parallel on many optical modes simultaneously. We present a class of such networks that implements in a deterministic and efficient way the quantum Fourier transform (QFT) in an arbitrarily high dimension. These networks redistribute the initial quantum state into the orbital angular momentum (OAM) and path degrees of freedom and offer two modes of operation. Either the OAM-only QFT can be implemented, which uses the path as an internal auxiliary degree of freedom, or the path-only QFT is implemented, which uses the OAM as the auxiliary degree of freedom. The resources for both schemes scale linearly O(d) with the dimension d of the system, beating the best known bounds for the path-encoded QFT. While the QFT of the orbital-angular-momentum states of single photons has been applied in a multitude of experiments, these schemes require specially designed elements with nontrivial phase profiles. In contrast, we propose a different approach that utilizes only conventional optical elements.