No Arabic abstract
An important task for quantum information processing is optimal discrimination between two non-orthogonal quantum states, which until now has only been realized optically. Here, we present and compare experimental realizations of optimal quantum measurements for distinguishing between two non-orthogonal quantum states encoded in a single ^14 N nuclear spin. Implemented measurement schemes are the minimum-error measurement (known as Helstrom measurement), unambiguous state discrimination using a standard projective measurement, and optimal unambiguous state discrimination (known as IDP measurement), which utilizes a three-dimensional Hilbert space. Measurement efficiencies are found to be above 80% for all schemes and reach a value of 90% for the IDP measurement
Quantum walks have by now been realized in a large variety of different physical settings. In some of these, particularly with trapped ions, the walk is implemented in phase space, where the corresponding position states are not orthogonal. We develop a general description of such a quantum walk and show how to map it into a standard one with orthogonal states, thereby making available all the tools developed for the latter. This enables a variety of experiments, which can be implemented with smaller step sizes and more steps. Tuning the non-orthogonality allows for an easy preparation of extended states such as momentum eigenstates, which travel at a well-defined speed with low dispersion. We introduce a method to adjust their velocity by momentum shifts, which allows to investigate intriguing effects such as the analog of Bloch oscillations.
We propose a classical to quantum information encoding system using non--orthogonal states and apply it to the problem of searching an element in a quantum list. We show that the proposed encoding scheme leads to an exponential gain in terms of quantum resources and, in some cases, to an exponential gain in the number of runs of the protocol. In the case where the output of the search algorithm is a quantum state with some particular physical property, the searched state is found with a single query to the introduced oracle. If the obtained quantum state must be converted back to classical information, our protocol demands a number of repetitions that scales polynomially with the number of qubits required to encode a classical string.
In this article we extend results from our previous work [Bendersky, de la Torre, Senno, Figueira and Acin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 230406 (2016)] by providing a protocol to distinguish in finite time and with arbitrarily high success probability any algorithmic mixture of pure states from the maximally mixed state. Moreover, we introduce a proof-of-concept experiment consisting in a situation where two different random sequences of pure states are prepared; these sequences are indistinguishable according to quantum mechanics, but they become distinguishable when randomness is replaced with pseudorandomness within the preparation process.
Variational algorithms for strongly correlated chemical and materials systems are one of the most promising applications of near-term quantum computers. We present an extension to the variational quantum eigensolver that approximates the ground state of a system by solving a generalized eigenvalue problem in a subspace spanned by a collection of parametrized quantum states. This allows for the systematic improvement of a logical wavefunction ansatz without a significant increase in circuit complexity. To minimize the circuit complexity of this approach, we propose a strategy for efficiently measuring the Hamiltonian and overlap matrix elements between states parametrized by circuits that commute with the total particle number operator. We also propose a classical Monte Carlo scheme to estimate the uncertainty in the ground state energy caused by a finite number of measurements of the matrix elements. We explain how this Monte Carlo procedure can be extended to adaptively schedule the required measurements, reducing the number of circuit executions necessary for a given accuracy. We apply these ideas to two model strongly correlated systems, a square configuration of H$_4$ and the $pi$-system of Hexatriene (C$_6$H$_8$).
Several proposed techniques for distinguishing between optical coherent states are analyzed under a physically realistic model of photodetection. Quantum error probabilities are derived for the Kennedy receiver, the Dolinar receiver and the unitary rotation scheme proposed by Sasaki and Hirota for sub-unity detector efficiency. Monte carlo simulations are performed to assess the effects of detector dark counts, dead time, signal processing bandwidth and phase noise in the communication channel. The feedback strategy employed by the Dolinar receiver is found to achieve the Helstrom bound for sub-unity detection efficiency and to provide robustness to these other detector imperfections making it more attractive for laboratory implementation than previously believed.