Protective measurement of a qubit by a qubit probe

We study the protective measurement of a qubit by a second qubit acting as a probe. Consideration of this model is motivated by the possibility of its experimental implementation in multiqubit systems such as trapped ions. In our scheme, information about the expectation value of an arbitrary observable of the system qubit is encoded in the rotation of the state of the probe qubit. We describe the structure of the Hamiltonian that gives rise to this measurement and analyze the resulting dynamics under a variety of realistic conditions, such as noninfinitesimal measurement strengths, repeated measurements, non-negligible intrinsic dynamics of the probe, and interactions of the system and probe qubits with an environment. We propose an experimental realization of our model in an ion trap. The experiment may be performed with existing technology and makes use of established experimental methods for the engineering and control of Hamiltonians for quantum gates and quantum simulations of spin systems.