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arXiv:quant-ph/0512029 · Physical Review A

Universal programmable devices for unambiguous discrimination

Chi Zhang, Mingsheng Ying, Bo Qiao

Published Oct 10, 2006• 23 citations
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Abstract

We discuss the problem of designing unambiguous programmable discriminators for any $n$ unknown quantum states in an $m$-dimensional Hilbert space. The discriminator is a fixed measurement that has two kinds of input registers: the program registers and the data register. The quantum state in the data register is what users want to identify, which is confirmed to be among the $n$ states in program registers. The task of the discriminator is to tell the users which state stored in the program registers is equivalent to that in the data register. First, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for judging an unambiguous programmable discriminator. Then, if $m=n$, we present an optimal unambiguous programmable discriminator for them, in the sense of maximizing the worst-case probability of success. Finally, we propose a universal unambiguous programmable discriminator for arbitrary $n$ quantum states.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.74.042308

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We discuss the problem of designing unambiguous programmable discriminators for any nnn unknown quantum states in an mmm-dimensional Hilbert space. The discriminator is a fixed measurement that has two kinds of input registers: the program registers and the data register. The quantum state in the data register is what users want to identify, which is confirmed to be among the nnn states in program registers. The task of the discriminator is to tell the users which state stored in the program registers is equivalent to that in the data register. First, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for judging an unambiguous programmable discriminator. Then, if m=nm=nm=n, we present an optimal unambiguous programmable discriminator for them, in the sense of maximizing the worst-case probability of success. Finally, we propose a universal unambiguous programmable discriminator for arbitrary nnn quantum states.
We discuss the problem of designing unambiguous programmable discriminators for any nnn unknown quantum states in an mmm-dimensional Hilbert space. The discriminator is a fixed measurement which has two kinds of input registers: the program registers and the data register. The program registers consist of the nnn states, while the data register is prepared among them. The task of the discriminator is to tell us which state stored in the program registers is equivalent to that in the data register. First, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for judging an unambiguous programmable discriminator. Then, if m=nm=nm=n, we present an optimal unambiguous programmable discriminator for them, in the sense of maximizing the worst-case probability of success. Finally, we propose a universal unambiguous programmable discriminator for arbitrary nnn quantum states. We also show how to use this universal discriminator to unambiguously discriminate mixed states.
The universal programmable discriminator is a device for discrimination between unknown quantum states. It has two kinds of registers: the program register and the data register. The states that are stored in registers are all unknown. It is assured that the data state is identical with one of the program states with the certain probability. The aim is to optimally identify the state stored in the data register with one of the program states that it is done by discriminating between unknown states of the combined system contains program and data registers. We design an optimal universal unambiguous programmable discriminator that has NNN qubit systems in the program register, to unambiguously identify the qubit state of data with one of NNN program qubit states. All unknown qubit states are pure and ND{N}_{D}ND​ copies of the data state are available. We determine the optimal positive-operator valued measure (POVM) elements in two different ways. First, we find optimal POVMs that maximize the average of the overall success probability of discrimination between NNN unknown pure states of the combined system. In another way, the problem of discrimination between NNN unknown pure states of the combined system is reduced to discrimination between NNN known average mixed states. It is shown that theses two different ways lead to the same results. We show that at least $N\ensuremath{-}1$ copies of the data state are necessary for discriminating between NNN unknown states of the combined system.
We construct a device that can unambiguously discriminate between two unknown quantum states. The unknown states are provided as inputs, or programs, for the program registers, and a third system, which is guaranteed to be prepared in one of the states stored in the program registers, is fed into the data register of the device. The device will then, with some probability of success, tell us whether the unknown state in the data register matches the state stored in the first or the second program register. We show that the optimal device, i.e., the one that maximizes the probability of success, is universal. It does not depend on the actual unknown states that we wish to discriminate.
We describe a class of programmable devices that can discriminate between two quantum states. We consider two cases. In the first, both states are unknown. One copy of each of the unknown states is provided as an input, or program, for the two program registers, and the data state, which is guaranteed to be prepared in one of the program states, is fed into the data register of the device. This device will then tell us, in an optimal way, which of the templates stored in the program registers the data state matches. In the second case, we know one of the states while the other is unknown. One copy of the unknown state is fed into the single program register, and the data state which is guaranteed to be prepared in either the program state or the known state, is fed into the data register. The device will then tell us, again optimally, whether the data state matches the template or is the known state. We determine two types of optimal devices. The first performs discrimination with minimum error, and the second performs optimum unambiguous discrimination. In all cases we first treat the simpler problem of only one copy of the data state and then generalize the treatment to nnn copies. In comparison to other works we find that providing n>1n>1n>1 copies of the data state yields higher success probabilities than providing n>1n>1n>1 copies of the program states.
We discuss the problem of designing an unambiguous programmable discriminator for mixed quantum states. We prove that there does not exist such a universal unambiguous programmable discriminator for mixed quantum states that has two program registers and one data register. However, we find that we can use the idea of programmable discriminator to unambiguously discriminate mixed quantum states. The research shows that by using such an idea, when the success probability for discrimination reaches the upper bound, the success probability is better than what we do not use the idea to do, except for some special cases.
We give a scheme for a physical implementation of the programmable state discriminator that unambiguously discriminates between two unknown qubit states with optimal probability of success. One copy of each of the unknown states is provided as input, or program, for the two program registers, and the data state, which is guaranteed to be prepared in one of the program states, is fed into the data register of the device. This device will then tell us, in an optimal way, which of the templates stored in the program registers the data state matches. The implementation is based on Neumark's theorem. We introduce a single qubit as ancilla and a unitary operator that entangles the system with the ancilla in such a way that projective measurements performed in the computational basis of the system plus ancilla transform the initial system states according to the optimal positive-operator-valued measure.