On the Measurement of Qubits
Abstract
We describe in detail the theory underpinning the measurement of density matrices of a pair of quantum two-level systems (``qubits''). Our particular emphasis is on qubits realized by the two polarization degrees of freedom of a pair of entangled photons generated in a down-conversion experiment; however the discussion applies in general, regardless of the actual physical realization. Two techniques are discussed, namely a tomographic reconstruction (in which the density matrix is linearly related to a set of measured quantities) and a maximum likelihood technique which requires numerical optimization (but has the advantage of producing density matrices which are always non-negative definite). In addition a detailed error analysis is presented, allowing errors in quantities derived from the density matrix, such as the entropy or entanglement of formation, to be estimated. Examples based on down-conversion experiments are used to illustrate our results.
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0103121,
title = {On the Measurement of Qubits},
author = {Daniel F. V. James and Paul G. Kwiat and William J. Munro and Andrew G. White},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0103121},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
23 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys Rev A