Quantum State Reconstruction Research Articles

Quantum state tomography with informationally complete POVMs generated in the time domain

The article establishes a framework for dynamic generation of informationally complete POVMs in quantum state tomography. Assuming that the evolution of a quantum system is given by a dynamical map in the Kraus representation, one can switch to the Heisenberg picture and define the measurements in the time domain. Consequently, starting with an incomplete set of positive operators, one can obtain sufficient information for quantum state reconstruction by multiple measurements. The framework has been demonstrated on qubits and qutrits. For some types of dynamical maps, it suffices to initially have one measurement operator. The results demonstrate that quantum state tomography is feasible even with limited measurement potential.

On the Experimental Feasibility of Quantum State Reconstruction via Machine Learning

We determine the resource scaling of machine learning-based quantum state reconstruction methods, in terms of inference and training, for systems of up to four qubits when constrained to pure states. Further, we examine system performance in the low-count regime, likely to be encountered in the tomography of high-dimensional systems. Finally, we implement our quantum state reconstruction method on an IBM Q quantum computer, and compare against both unconstrained and constrained MLE state reconstruction.

True experimental reconstruction of quantum states and processes via convex optimization

We use a constrained convex optimization (CCO) method to experimentally characterize arbitrary quantum states and unknown quantum processes on a two-qubit NMR quantum information processor. Standard protocols for quantum state and quantum process tomography are based on linear inversion, which often result in an unphysical density matrix and hence an invalid process matrix. The CCO method, on the other hand, produces physically valid density matrices and process matrices, with significantly improved fidelity as compared to the standard methods. We use the CCO method to estimate the Kraus operators and characterize gates in the presence of errors due to decoherence. We then assume Markovian system dynamics and use a Lindblad master equation in conjunction with the CCO method, to completely characterize the noise processes present in the NMR system.

Quantum Semantic Learning by Reverse Annealing of an Adiabatic Quantum Computer

AbstractRestricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) constitute a class of neural networks for unsupervised learning with applications ranging from pattern classification to quantum state reconstruction. Despite the potential representative power, the diffusion of RBMs is quite limited since their training process proves to be hard. The advent of commercial adiabatic quantum computers (AQCs) raised the expectation that the implementations of RBMs on such quantum devices can increase the training speed with respect to conventional hardware. Here, the feasibility of a complete RBM on AQCs is demonstrated, thanks to an embedding that associates the nodes of the neural networks to virtual qubits. A semantic quantum search is implemented thanks to a reverse annealing schedule. Such an approach exploits more information from the training data, mimicking the behavior of the classical Gibbs sampling algorithm. The semantic training is shown to quickly raise the sampling probability of a subset of the set of the configurations. Even without a proper optimization of the annealing schedule, the RBM semantically trained achieves good scores on reconstruction tasks. The development of such techniques paves the way toward the establishment of a quantum advantage of adiabatic quantum computers, especially given the foreseen improvement of such hardware.

Assumption-free measurement of the quantum state of light: Exploring the sidebands of intense fields

The quantum noise in photocurrent fluctuations usually gives incomplete information about the quantum state of spectral sideband modes of bright light beams involved in the detection. Each frequency component of the noise spectrum corresponds to two sideband modes symmetrically located around the bright optical field. In the case of the usual homodyne detection, it limits the ability to recover discriminated information of each mode involved. We theoretically show that complete reconstruction of the two-mode quantum state can be obtained by using phase-locked (coherent) resonator detection, even for non-Gaussian states. We experimentally demonstrate the technique by measuring a two-mode displaced coherent state.

Signatures of avoided energy-level crossings in entanglement indicators obtained from quantum tomograms

Extensive theoretical and experimental investigations on multipartite systems close to an avoided energy-level crossing reveal interesting features such as the extremisation of entanglement. Conventionally, the estimation of entanglement directly from experimental observation involves either one of two approaches: uncertainty-relation-based estimation that captures the linear correlation between relevant observables, or rigorous but error-prone quantum state reconstruction on tomograms obtained from homodyne measurements. We investigate the behaviour, close to avoided crossings, of entanglement indicators that can be calculated directly from a numerically-generated tomogram. The systems we study are two generic bipartite continuous-variable systems: a Bose–Einstein condensate trapped in a double-well potential, and a multi-level atom interacting with a radiation field. We also consider a multipartite hybrid quantum system of superconducting qubits interacting with microwave photons. We carry out a quantitative comparison of the indicators with a standard measure of entanglement, the subsystem von Neumann entropy (SVNE). It is shown that the indicators that capture the nonlinear correlation between relevant subsystem observables are in excellent agreement with the SVNE.

Ptychographic reconstruction of pure quantum states.

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.

Wigner function and photon number distribution of a superradiant state in semiconductor heterostructures

Advanced quantum technologies require sources of non-Gaussian and non-classical light. For the understanding of properties of quantum light it is necessary to reconstruct its quantum state. Here, we use time-domain optical homodyne tomography for the quantum state recognition and reconstruction of the femtosecond optical field from a nonequilibrium superradiant coherent electron–hole state formed in a semiconductor GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. We observe severe deviations from the Poissonian statistics of the photons associated with the coherent state when the transformation from lasing to superradiance occurs. The estimated Mandel parameter Q of the superradiant states is in the range of 1.08–1.89. The reconstructed Wigner functions show large areas of negative values, a characteristic sign of non-classicality, demonstrating the quantum nature of the generated superradiant emission. The photon number distribution and Wigner function of the superradiant state are very similar to those of the displaced Fock state.

Reconstructing quantum molecular rotor ground states

Nanomolecular assemblies of C$_{60}$ can be synthesized to enclose dipolar molecules. The low-temperature states of such endofullerenes are described by quantum mechanical rotors, which are candidates for quantum information devices with higher-dimensional local Hilbert spaces. The experimental exploration of endofullerene arrays comes at a time when machine learning techniques are rapidly being adopted to characterize, verify, and reconstruct quantum states from measurement data. In this paper, we develop a strategy for reconstructing the ground state of chains of dipolar rotors using restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) adapted to train on data from higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces. We demonstrate accurate generation of energy expectation values from an RBM trained on data in the free-rotor eigenstate basis, and explore the learning resources required for various chain lengths and dipolar interaction strengths. Finally, we show evidence for fundamental limitations in the accuracy achievable by RBMs due to the difficulty in imposing symmetries in the sampling procedure. We discuss possible avenues to overcome this limitation in the future, including the further development of autoregressive models such as recurrent neural networks for the purposes of quantum state reconstruction.

Hyper-Poisson Photon Statistics

The statistical distribution for the number of bosons in a specified subsystem of a finite-dimensional multilevel system is obtained and investigated under conditions for which the total number of particles is a random variable characterized by the Poisson distribution. The resulting hyper-Poisson distribution is determined by the confluent hypergeometric function and contains as its particular limiting cases the Poisson distribution, as well as the single-mode and multimode thermal distributions. The developed model can be efficiently used to describe the thermal characteristics of bounded quantum systems, as well as in the problems of statistical reconstruction of optical quantum states, processes, and detectors.

On the role of the local oscillator intensity in optical homodyne-like tomography

In a recent research (Olivares et al., 2019 [18]) we have demonstrated that a homodyne-like scheme, exploiting a “low-intensity” local oscillator, can be used to perform optical state tomography of both quantum and classical states of light. The reconstruction method directly uses the homodyne-like probability distribution retrieved from the detector. Here, we further investigate the role played by the local oscillator in this respect. In particular, we study to some extent how its intensity affects the quantum-state reconstruction procedure by focusing on the case of the Fock states |1〉 and |2〉, whose homodyne-like probability distributions are sensibly affected by the actual value of the LO intensity. The analysis is performed on Monte Carlo simulated experiments taking also into account the quantum detection efficiency.

Mapping Atomic Motions with Electrons: Toward the Quantum Limit to Imaging Chemistry

Recent advances in ultrafast electron and X-ray diffraction have pushed imaging of structural dynamics into the femtosecond time domain, that is, the fundamental time scale of atomic motion. New physics can be reached beyond the scope of traditional diffraction or reciprocal space imaging. By exploiting the high time resolution, it has been possible to directly observe the collapse of nearly innumerable possible nuclear motions to a few key reaction modes that direct chemistry. It is this reduction in dimensionality in the transition state region that makes chemistry a transferable concept, with the same class of reactions being applicable to synthetic strategies to nearly arbitrary levels of complexity. The ability to image the underlying key reaction modes has been achieved with resolution to relative changes in atomic positions to better than 0.01 Å, that is, comparable to thermal motions. We have effectively reached the fundamental space-time limit with respect to the reaction energetics and imaging the acting forces. In the process of ensemble measured structural changes, we have missed the quantum aspects of chemistry. This perspective reviews the current state of the art in imaging chemistry in action and poses the challenge to access quantum information on the dynamics. There is the possibility with the present ultrabright electron and X-ray sources, at least in principle, to do tomographic reconstruction of quantum states in the form of a Wigner function and density matrix for the vibrational, rotational, and electronic degrees of freedom. Accessing this quantum information constitutes the ultimate demand on the spatial and temporal resolution of reciprocal space imaging of chemistry. Given the much shorter wavelength and corresponding intrinsically higher spatial resolution of current electron sources over X-rays, this Perspective will focus on electrons to provide an overview of the challenge on both the theory and the experimental fronts to extract the quantum aspects of molecular dynamics.

Quantum tomography of light states by photon-number-resolving detectors

We address state reconstruction by photon-number-resolving detectors, and demonstrate that they may be effectively exploited to perform quantum tomography of states of light. In particular, we find that the pattern function technique, originally developed for optical homodyne tomography, may be also applied to discrete data. Our results open new perspectives for quantum-state reconstruction in the mesoscopic regime, and pave the way to the use of photon-number-resolving-based detection schemes in Quantum Information science.

Benchmarking Maximum-Likelihood State Estimation with an Entangled Two-Cavity State.

The efficient quantum state reconstruction algorithm described by Six etal. [Phys. Rev. A 93, 012109 (2016)PLRAAN2469-992610.1103/PhysRevA.93.012109] is experimentally implemented on the nonlocal state of two microwave cavities entangled by a circular Rydberg atom. We use information provided by long sequences of measurements performed by resonant and dispersive probe atoms over timescales involving the system decoherence. Moreover, we benefit from the consolidation, in the same reconstruction, of different measurement protocols providing complementary information. Finally, we obtain realistic error bars for the matrix elements of the reconstructed density operator. These results demonstrate the pertinence and precision of the method, directly applicable to any complex quantum system.

Twenty Years of Quantum State Teleportation at the Sapienza University in Rome.

Quantum teleportation is one of the most striking consequence of quantum mechanics and is defined as the transmission and reconstruction of an unknown quantum state over arbitrary distances. This concept was introduced for the first time in 1993 by Charles Bennett and coworkers, it has then been experimentally demonstrated by several groups under different conditions of distance, amount of particles and even with feed forward. After 20 years from its first realization, this contribution reviews the experimental implementations realized at the Quantum Optics Group of the University of Rome La Sapienza.

Quantum state tomography with time-continuous measurements: reconstruction with resource limitations

We propose and analyze quantum state estimation (tomography) using continuous quantum measurements with resource limitations, allowing the global state of many qubits to be constructed from only measuring a few. We give a proof-of-principle investigation demonstrating successful tomographic reconstruction of an arbitrary initial quantum state for three different situations: single qubit, remote qubit, and two interacting qubits. The tomographic reconstruction utilizes only a continuous weak probe of a single qubit observable, a fixed coupling Hamiltonian, together with single-qubit controls. In the single qubit case, a combination of the continuous measurement of an observable and a Rabi oscillation is sufficient to find all three unknown qubit state components. For two interacting qubits, where only one observable of the first qubit is measured, the control Hamiltonian can be implemented to transfer all quantum information to the measured observable, via the qubit-qubit interaction and Rabi oscillation controls applied locally on each qubit. We discuss different sets of controls by analyzing the unitary dynamics and the Fisher information matrix of the estimation in the limit of weak measurement, and simulate tomographic results numerically. As a result, we obtained reconstructed state fidelities in excess of 0.98 with a few thousand measurement runs.

Inline detection and reconstruction of multiphoton quantum states

Integrated single-photon detectors open new possibilities for monitoring inside quantum photonic circuits. We present a concept for the in-line measurement of spatially-encoded multi-photon quantum states, while keeping the transmitted ones undisturbed. We theoretically establish that by recording photon correlations from optimally positioned detectors on top of coupled waveguides with detuned propagation constants, one can perform robust reconstruction of the density matrix describing the amplitude, phase, coherence and quantum entanglement. We report proof-of-principle experiments using classical light, which emulates single-photon regime. Our method opens a pathway towards practical and fast in-line quantum measurements for diverse applications in quantum photonics.

Approximate quantum state reconstruction without a quantum channel

We investigate the optimal quantum state reconstruction from the cloud to many spatially separated users by a measure-broadcast-prepare scheme without the availability of the quantum channel. The quantum state equally distributed from the cloud to an arbitrary number of users is generated at each port by an ensemble of known quantum states with assistance from classical information of measurement outcomes by broadcasting. The obtained quantum state for each user is optimal in the sense that the fidelity universally achieves the upper bound. We present the universal quantum state distribution by providing physical realizable measurement bases in the cloud as well as the reconstruction method for each user. The quantum state reconstruction scheme works for arbitrary many identical pure input states in the general dimensional system.

Direct Reconstruction of the Quantum Density Matrix by Strong Measurements.

New techniques based on weak measurements have recently been introduced to the field of quantum state reconstruction. Some of them allow the direct measurement of each matrix element of an unknown density operator and need only O(d) different operations, compared to d^{2} linearly independent projectors in the case of standard quantum state tomography, for the reconstruction of an arbitrary mixed state. However, due to the weakness of these couplings, these protocols are approximated and prone to large statistical errors. We propose a method which is similar to the weak measurement protocols but works regardless of the coupling strength: our protocol is not approximated and thus improves the accuracy and precision of the results with respect to weak measurement schemes. We experimentally apply it to the polarization state of single photons and compare the results to those of preexisting methods for different values of the coupling strength. Our results show that our method outperforms previous proposals in terms of accuracy and statistical errors.

Reconstruction of quantum state of mechanical mirror via polariton-phonon coupling**This work has been inspired by the work on ‘Quantum State Endoscopy’ by Wolfgang Schleich and his colleagues [36]. We dedicate this paper to Wofgang on his 60th birthday and wish him and Kathy many delightful and productive years ahead. One of us (MSZ) is particularly grateful to him for a

When an atom is coupled to an opto-mechanical system, the evolution of the atom can be significantly modified by the mechanical phonon state. Previously, we showed that the anomalous population inversion can occur in this hybrid system. Here, we show that the quantum state (pure or mixed) of the mechanical mirror can be reconstructed with very high fidelity by measuring the population dynamics of the atom passing through the opto-mechanical cavity. This method may find important applications in the opto-mechanical-based quantum devices.