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arXiv:cond-mat/0606713 · Physical Review Letters

Undoing a Weak Quantum Measurement of a Solid-State Qubit

Alexander N. Korotkov, Andrew N. Jordan

Published Oct 20, 2006• 255 citations
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Abstract

We propose an experiment which demonstrates the undoing of a weak continuous measurement of a solid-state qubit, so that any unknown initial state is fully restored. The undoing procedure has only a finite probability of success because of the nonunitary nature of quantum measurement, though it is accompanied by a clear experimental indication of whether or not the undoing has been successful. The probability of success decreases with increasing strength of the measurement, reaching zero for a traditional projective measurement. Measurement undoing ("quantum undemolition") may be interpreted as a kind of quantum eraser, in which the information obtained from the first measurement is erased by the second measurement, which is an essential part of the undoing procedure. The experiment can be realized using quantum dot (charge) or superconducting (phase) qubits.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.97.166805

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We propose an experiment which demonstrates the undoing of a weak continuous measurement of a solid-state qubit, so that any unknown initial state is fully restored. The undoing procedure has only a finite probability of success because of the nonunitary nature of quantum measurement, though it is accompanied by a clear experimental indication of whether or not the undoing has been successful. The probability of success decreases with increasing strength of the measurement, reaching zero for a traditional projective measurement. Measurement undoing ("quantum undemolition") may be interpreted as a kind of quantum eraser, in which the information obtained from the first measurement is erased by the second measurement, which is an essential part of the undoing procedure. The experiment can be realized using quantum dot (charge) or superconducting (phase) qubits.
We review and expand on recent advances in theory and experiments concerning the problem of wavefunction uncollapse: given an unknown state that has been disturbed by a generalised measurement, restore the state to its initial configuration. We describe how this is probabilistically possible with a subsequent measurement that involves erasing the information extracted about the state in the first measurement. The general theory of abstract measurements is discussed, focusing on quantum information aspects of the problem, in addition to investigating a variety of specific physical situations and explicit measurement strategies. Several systems are considered in detail: the quantum double dot charge qubit measured by a quantum point contact (with and without Hamiltonian dynamics), the superconducting phase qubit monitored by a SQUID detector, and an arbitrary number of entangled charge qubits. Furthermore, uncollapse strategies for the quantum dot electron spin qubit, and the optical polarisation qubit are also reviewed. For each of these systems the physics of the continuous measurement process, the strategy required to ideally uncollapse the wavefunction, as well as the statistical features associated with the measurement are discussed. We also summarise the recent experimental realisation of two of these systems, the phase qubit and the polarisation qubit.
We demonstrate in a superconducting qubit the conditional recovery (uncollapsing) of a quantum state after a partial-collapse measurement. A weak measurement extracts information and results in a nonunitary transformation of the qubit state. However, by adding a rotation and a second partial measurement with the same strength, we erase the extracted information, canceling the effect of both measurements. The fidelity of the state recovery is measured using quantum process tomography and found to be above 70% for partial-collapse strength less than 0.6.
We show that qubit decoherence due to zero-temperature energy relaxation can be almost completely suppressed by using the quantum uncollapsing (measurement reversal) procedure. To protect a qubit state, a partial quantum measurement moves it toward the ground state, where it is kept during the storage period, while the second partial measurement restores the initial state. This procedure preferentially selects the cases without energy decay events. Stronger decoherence suppression requires smaller selection probability; a desired point in this trade-off can be chosen by varying the measurement strength. The experiment can be realized in a straightforward way using the superconducting phase qubit.
We derive a tight bound between the quality of estimating a quantum state by measurement and the success probability of undoing the measurement in arbitrary dimensional systems, which completely describes the tradeoff relation between the information gain and reversibility. In this formulation, it is clearly shown that the information extracted from a weak measurement is erased through the reversing process. Our result broadens the information-theoretic perspective on quantum measurement as well as provides a standard tool to characterize weak measurements and reversals.