Experimental construction of generic three-qubit states and their reconstruction from two-party reduced states on an NMR quantum information processor

Abstract

We experimentally explore the state space of three qubits on a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum-information processor. We construct a scheme to experimentally realize a canonical form for general three-qubit states up to single-qubit unitaries. This form involves a nontrivial combination of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and $W$-type maximally entangled states of three qubits. The general circuit that we have constructed for the generic state reduces to those for GHZ and $W$ states as special cases. The experimental construction of a generic state is carried out for a nontrivial set of parameters and the good fidelity of preparation is confirmed by complete state tomography. The GHZ and $W$ states are constructed as special cases of the general experimental scheme. Further, we experimentally demonstrate a curious fact about three-qubit states, where for almost all pure states, the two-qubit reduced states can be used to reconstruct the full three-qubit state. For the case of a generic state and for the $W$ state, we demonstrate this method of reconstruction by comparing it to the directly tomographed three-qubit state.