English

Informational completeness in bounded-rank quantum-state tomography

Quantum Physics 2016-05-11 v2

Abstract

We consider the problem of quantum-state tomography under the assumption that the state is pure, and more generally that its rank is bounded by a given value. In this scenario, new notions of informationally complete POVMs emerge, which allow for high-fidelity state estimation with fewer measurement outcomes than are required for an arbitrary rank state. We study this in the context of matrix completion, where the POVM outcomes determine only a few of the density matrix elements. We give an analytic solution that fully characterizes informational completeness and elucidates the important role that the positive-semidefinite property of density matrices plays in tomography. We show how positivity can impose a stricter notion of information completeness and allow us to use convex optimization programs to robustly estimate bounded-rank density matrices in the presence of statistical noise.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.02736,
  title  = {Informational completeness in bounded-rank quantum-state tomography},
  author = {Charles H. Baldwin and Ivan H. Deutsch and Amir Kalev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.02736},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages, 1 figure. This submission was combined with arXiv:1511.01433 to produce arXiv:1605.02109, which is published in Phys. Rev. A

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:16:43.931Z