Two new papers were recently posted on the arXiv with my first two official PhD students since becoming a faculty member! The earlier paper is titled Efficient online quantum state estimation using a matrix-exponentiated gradient method by Akram Youssry and the more recent paper is Minimax quantum state estimation under Bregman divergence by Maria Quadeer. Both papers are co-authored by Marco Tomamichel and are on the topic of quantum tomography. If you want an expert’s summary of each, look no further than the abstracts. Here, I want to give a slightly more popular summary of the work.
Efficient online quantum state estimation using a matrix-exponentiated gradient method
This work is about a practical algorithm for online quantum tomography. Let’s unpack that. First, the term work. Akram did most of that. Algorithm can be understood to be synonymous with method or approach. It’s just a way, among many possibilities, to do a thing. The thing is called quantum tomography. It’s online because it works on-the-fly as opposed to after-the-fact.
Quantum tomography refers to the problem of assigning a description to physical system that is consistent with the laws of quantum physics. The context of the problem is one of data analysis. It is assumed that experiments on this to-be-determine physical system will be made and the results of measurements are all that will be available. From those measurement results, one needs to assign a mathematical object to the physical system, called the quantum state. So, another phrase for quantum tomography is quantum state estimation.
The laws of quantum physics are painfully abstract and tricky to deal with. Usually, then, quantum state estimation proceeds in two steps: first, get a crude idea of what’s going on, and then find something nearby which satisfies the quantum constraints. The new method we propose automatically satisfies the quantum constraints and is thus more efficient. Akram proved this and performed many simulations of the algorithm doing its thing.
Minimax quantum state estimation under Bregman divergence
This work is more theoretical. You might call it mathematical quantum statistics… quantum mathematical statistics? It doesn’t yet have a name. Anyway, it definitely has those three things in it. The topic is quantum tomography again, but the focus is different. Whereas for the above paper the problem was to devise an algorithm that works fast, the goal here was to understand what the best algorithm can achieve (independent of how fast it might be).
Work along these lines in the past considered a single figure of merit, the thing the defines what “best” means. In this work Maria looked at general figures of merit called Bregman divergences. She proved several theorems about the optimal algorithm and the optimal measurement strategy. For the smallest quantum system, a qubit, a complete answer was worked out in concrete detail.
Both Maria and Akram are presenting their work next week at AQIS 2018 in Nagoya, Japan.
