Orthogonality relations in Quantum Tomography

Quantum estimation of the operators of a system is investigated by analyzing its Liouville space of operators. In this way it is possible to easily derive some general characterization for the sets of observables (i.e. the possible quorums) that are measured for the quantum estimation. In particular we analyze the reconstruction of operators of spin systems.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Bell Measurements and Observables

A general matrix approach to study entangled states is presented, based on operator completeness relations. Bases of unitary operators are considered, with focus on irreducible representations of groups. Bell measurements for teleportation are considered, and robustness of teleportation to various kinds of non idealities is shown.Comment: 11 pages. Elsart styl

On the general problem of quantum phase estimation

The problem of estimating a generic phase-shift experienced by a quantum state is addressed for a generally degenerate phase shift operator. The optimal positive operator-valued measure is derived along with the optimal input state. Two relevant examples are analyzed: i) a multi-mode phase shift operator for multipath interferometry; ii) the two mode heterodyne phase detection.Comment: 11 pages. Elsart package use

Optical von Neumann measurement

We present an optical scheme that realizes the standard von Neumann measurement model, providing an indirect measurement of a quadrature of the field with controllable Gaussian state-reduction. The scheme is made of simple optical elements, as laser sources, beam splitters, and phase sensitive amplifiers, along with a feedback mechanism that uses a Pockels cell. We show that the von Neumann measurement is achieved without the need of working in a ultra-short pulsed regime.Comment: One latex figure. Accepted on Phys. Lett.

Optimal realization of the transposition maps

We solve the problem of achieving the optimal physical approximation of the transposition for pure states of arbitrary quantum systems for finite and infinite dimensions. A unitary realization is also given for any finite dimension, which provides the optimal quantum cloning map of the ancilla as well.Comment: 10 pages. No figures. Elsart styl

Homodyne detection for measuring internal quantum correlations of optical pulses

A new method is described for determining the quantum correlations at different times in optical pulses by using balanced homodyne detection. The signal pulse and sequences of ultrashort test pulses are superimposed, where for chosen distances between the test pulses their relative phases and intensities are varied from measurement to measurement. The correlation statistics of the signal pulse is obtained from the time-integrated difference photocurrents measured.Comment: 7 pages, A4.sty include

Direct sampling of the Susskind-Glogower phase distributions

Coarse-grained phase distributions are introduced that approximate to the Susskind--Glogower cosine and sine phase distributions. The integral relations between the phase distributions and the phase-parametrized field-strength distributions observable in balanced homodyning are derived and the integral kernels are analyzed. It is shown that the phase distributions can be directly sampled from the field-strength distributions which offers the possibility of measuring the Susskind--Glogower cosine and sine phase distributions with sufficiently well accuracy. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the applicability of the method.Comment: 10 figures using a4.st

Renormalized quantum tomography

The core of quantum tomography is the possibility of writing a generally unbounded complex operator in form of an expansion over operators that are generally nonlinear functions of a generally continuous set of spectral densities--the so-called "quorum" of observables. The expansion is generally non unique, the non unicity allowing further optimization for given criteria. The mathematical problem of tomography is thus the classification of all such operator expansions for given (suitably closed) linear spaces of unbounded operators--e.g. Banach spaces of operators with an appropriate norm. Such problem is a difficult one, and remains still open, involving the theory of general basis in Banach spaces, a still unfinished chapter of analysis. In this paper we present new nontrivial operator expansions for the quorum of quadratures of the harmonic oscillator, and introduce a first very preliminary general framework to generate new expansions based on the Kolmogorov construction. The material presented in this paper is intended to be helpful for the solution of the general problem of quantum tomography in infinite dimensions, which corresponds to provide a coherent mathematical framework for operator expansions over functions of a continuous set of spectral densities.Comment: 23 pages, no figure

Optical Bell measurement by Fock filtering

We describe a nonlinear interferometric setup to perform a complete optical Bell measurement, i.e. to unambigously discriminate the four polarization entangled EPR-Bell photon pairs. The scheme is robust against detector inefficiency