skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: All real projective measurements can be self-tested
Abstract Entangled quantum systems feature non-local correlations that are stronger than could be realized classically. This property makes it possible to perform self-testing, the strongest form of quantum functionality verification, which allows a classical user to deduce the quantum state and measurements used to produce a given set of measurement statistics. While self-testing of quantum states is well understood, self-testing of measurements, especially in high dimensions, remains relatively unexplored. Here we prove that every real projective measurement can be self-tested. Our approach employs the idea that existing self-tests can be extended to verify additional untrusted measurements, known as post-hoc self-testing. We formalize the method of post-hoc self-testing and establish the condition under which it can be applied. Using this condition, we construct self-tests for all real projective measurements. We build on this result to develop an iterative self-testing technique that provides a clear methodology for constructing new self-tests from pre-existing ones.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2348720
PAR ID:
10580437
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Springer Nature
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Nature Physics
Volume:
20
Issue:
10
ISSN:
1745-2473
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1642 to 1647
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Self-testing is a powerful certification of quantum systems relying on measured, classical statistics. This paper considers self-testing in bipartite Bell scenarios with small number of inputs and outputs, but with quantum states and measurements of arbitrarily large dimension. The contributions are twofold. Firstly, it is shown that every maximally entangled state can be self-tested with four binary measurements per party. This result extends the earlier work of Mančinska-Prakash-Schafhauser (2021), which applies to maximally entangled states of odd dimensions only. Secondly, it is shown that every single binary projective measurement can be self-tested with five binary measurements per party. A similar statement holds for self-testing of projective measurements with more than two outputs. These results are enabled by the representation theory of quadruples of projections that add to a scalar multiple of the identity. Structure of irreducible representations, analysis of their spectral features and post-hoc self-testing are the primary methods for constructing the new self-tests with small number of inputs and outputs. 
    more » « less
  2. We demonstrate high fidelity repetitive projective measurements of nuclear spin qubits in an array of neutral ytterbium-171 (171Yb) atoms. We show that the qubit state can be measured with a fidelity of 0.995(4) under a condition that leaves it in the state corresponding to the measurement outcome with a probability of 0.993(6) for a single tweezer and 0.981(4) averaged over the array. This is accomplished by near-perfect cyclicity of one of the nuclear spin qubit states with an optically excited state under a magnetic field of B=58 G, resulting in a bright/dark contrast of ≈105 during fluorescence readout. The performance improves further as ∼1/B2. The state-averaged readout survival of 0.98(1) is limited by off-resonant scattering to dark states and can be addressed via post-selection by measuring the atom number at the end of the circuit, or during the circuit by performing a measurement of both qubit states. We combine projective measurements with high-fidelity rotations of the nuclear spin qubit via an AC magnetic field to explore several paradigmatic scenarios, including the non-commutivity of measurements in orthogonal bases, and the quantum Zeno mechanism in which measurements "freeze" coherent evolution. Finally, we employ real-time feedforward to repetitively deterministically prepare the qubit in the +z or −z direction after initializing it in an orthogonal basis and performing a projective measurement in the z-basis. These capabilities constitute an important step towards adaptive quantum circuits with atom arrays, such as in measurement-based quantum computation, fast many-body state preparation, holographic dynamics simulations, and quantum error correction. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract Self-testing allows one to characterise quantum systems under minimal assumptions. However, existing schemes rely on quantum nonlocality and cannot be applied to systems that are not entangled. Here, we introduce a robust method that achieves self-testing of individual systems by taking advantage of contextuality. The scheme is based on the simplest contextuality witness for the simplest contextual quantum system—the Klyachko-Can-Binicioğlu-Shumovsky inequality for the qutrit. We establish a lower bound on the fidelity of the state and the measurements as a function of the value of the witness under a pragmatic assumption on the measurements. We apply the method in an experiment on a single trapped40Ca+using randomly chosen measurements and perfect detection efficiency. Using the observed statistics, we obtain an experimental demonstration of self-testing of a single quantum system. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract Quantum state discrimination is a central problem in quantum measurement theory, with applications spanning from quantum communication to computation. Typical measurement paradigms for state discrimination involve a minimum probability of error or unambiguous discrimination with a minimum probability of inconclusive results. Alternatively, an optimal inconclusive measurement, a non-projective measurement, achieves minimal error for a given inconclusive probability. This more general measurement encompasses the standard measurement paradigms for state discrimination and provides a much more powerful tool for quantum information and communication. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the optimal inconclusive measurement for the discrimination of binary coherent states using linear optics and single-photon detection. Our demonstration uses coherent displacement operations based on interference, single-photon detection, and fast feedback to prepare the optimal feedback policy for the optimal non-projective quantum measurement with high fidelity. This generalized measurement allows us to transition among standard measurement paradigms in an optimal way from minimum error to unambiguous measurements for binary coherent states. As a particular case, we use this general measurement to implement the optimal minimum error measurement for phase-coherent states, which is the optimal modulation for communications under the average power constraint. Moreover, we propose a hybrid measurement that leverages the binary optimal inconclusive measurement in conjunction with sequential, unambiguous state elimination to realize higher dimensional inconclusive measurements of coherent states. 
    more » « less
  5. The pretty good measurement is a fundamental analytical tool in quantum information theory, giving a method for inferring the classical label that identifies a quantum state chosen probabilistically from an ensemble. Identifying and constructing the pretty good measurement for the class of bosonic Gaussian states is of immediate practical relevance in quantum information processing tasks. Holevo recently showed that the pretty good measurement for a bosonic Gaussian ensemble is a bosonic Gaussian measurement that attains the accessible information of the ensemble [IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory66(9) (2020) 5634]. In this paper, we provide an alternate proof of Gaussianity of the pretty good measurement for a Gaussian ensemble of multimode bosonic states, with a focus on establishing an explicit and efficiently computable Gaussian description of the measurement. We also compute an explicit form of the mean square error of the pretty good measurement, which is relevant when using it for parameter estimation. Generalizing the pretty good measurement is a quantum instrument, called the pretty good instrument. We prove that the post-measurement state of the pretty good instrument is a faithful Gaussian state if the input state is a faithful Gaussian state whose covariance matrix satisfies a certain condition. Combined with our previous finding for the pretty good measurement and provided that the same condition holds, it follows that the expected output state is a faithful Gaussian state as well. In this case, we compute an explicit Gaussian description of the post-measurement and expected output states. Our findings imply that the pretty good instrument for bosonic Gaussian ensembles is no longer merely an analytical tool, but that it can also be implemented experimentally in quantum optics laboratories. 
    more » « less