No Arabic abstract
Experimental determination of an unknown quantum state usually requires several incompatible measurements. However, it is also possible to determine the full quantum state from a single, repeated measurement. For this purpose, the quantum system whose state is to be determined is first coupled to a second quantum system (the assistant) in such a way that part of the information in the quantum state is transferred to the assistant. The actual measurement is then performed on the enlarged system including the original system and the assistant. We discuss in detail the requirements of this procedure and experimentally implement it on a simple quantum system consisting of nuclear spins.
Conventionally, unknown quantum states are characterized using quantum-state tomography based on strong or weak measurements carried out on an ensemble of identically prepared systems. By contrast, the use of protective measurements offers the possibility of determining quantum states from a series of weak, long measurements performed on a single system. Because the fidelity of a protectively measured quantum state is determined by the amount of state disturbance incurred during each protective measurement, it is crucial that the initial quantum state of the system is disturbed as little as possible. Here we show how to systematically minimize the state disturbance in the course of a protective measurement, thus enabling the maximization of the fidelity of the quantum-state measurement. Our approach is based on a careful tuning of the time dependence of the measurement interaction and is shown to be dramatically more effective in reducing the state disturbance than the previously considered strategy of weakening the measurement strength and increasing the measurement time. We describe a method for designing the measurement interaction such that the state disturbance exhibits polynomial decay to arbitrary order in the inverse measurement time $1/T$. We also show how one can achieve even faster, subexponential decay, and we find that it represents the smallest possible state disturbance in a protective measurement. In this way, our results show how to optimally measure the state of a single quantum system using protective measurements.
When deriving exact generalized master equations for the evolution of a reduced set of degrees of freedom, one is free to choose what quantities are relevant by specifying projection operators. Different choices of projectors can lead to master equations that are structurally dissimilar and have different memory kernels, despite the resulting dynamics being necessarily the same. This owes to the interplay between projections and explicit imposition of dynamical constraints. We give a simple example to show this point and prove how different memory kernels can yield the same dynamics.
The ultimate goal and the theoretical limit of weak signal detection is the ability to detect a single photon against a noisy background. [...] In this paper we show, that a combination of a quantum metamaterial (QMM)-based sensor matrix and quantum non-demolition (QND) readout of its quantum state allows, in principle, to detect a single photon in several points, i.e., to observe its wave front. Actually, there are a few possible ways of doing this, with at least one within the reach of current experimental techniques for the microwave range. The ability to resolve the quantum-limited signal from a remote source against a much stronger local noise would bring significant advantages to such diverse fields of activity as, e.g., microwave astronomy and missile defence. The key components of the proposed method are 1) the entangling interaction of the incoming photon with the QMM sensor array, which produces the spatially correlated quantum state of the latter, and 2) the QND readout of the collective observable (e.g., total magnetic moment), which characterizes this quantum state. The effects of local noise (e.g., fluctuations affecting the elements of the matrix) will be suppressed relative to the signal from the spatially coherent field of (even) a single photon.
Quantum algorithms designed for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices usually require repeatedly perform a large number of quantum measurements in estimating observable expectation values of a many-qubit quantum state. Exploiting the ideas of importance sampling, observable compatibility, and classical shadows of quantum states, different advanced quantum measurement schemes have been proposed to greatly reduce the large measurement cost. Yet, the underline cost reduction mechanisms seem distinct to each other, and how to systematically find the optimal scheme remains a critical theoretical challenge. Here, we address this challenge by firstly proposing a unified framework of quantum measurements, incorporating the advanced measurement methods as special cases. Our framework further allows us to introduce a general scheme -- overlapped grouping measurement, which simultaneously exploits the advantages of the existing methods. We show that an optimal measurement scheme corresponds to partitioning the observables into overlapped groups with each group consisting of compatible ones. We provide explicit grouping strategies and numerically verify its performance for different molecular Hamiltonians. Our numerical results show great improvements to the overall existing measurement schemes. Our work paves the way for efficient quantum measurement with near-term quantum devices.
Quantum mechanics, one of the keystones of modern physics, exhibits several peculiar properties, differentiating it from classical mechanics. One of the most intriguing is that variables might not have definite values. A complete quantum description provides only probabilities for obtaining various eigenvalues of a quantum variable. These and corresponding probabilities specify the expectation value of a physical observable, which is known to be a statistical property of an ensemble of quantum systems. In contrast to this paradigm, we demonstrate a unique method allowing to measure the expectation value of a physical variable on a single particle, namely, the polarisation of a single protected photon. This is the first realisation of quantum protective measurements.