Christian Schwemmer

Fisher information and multiparticle entanglement

The Fisher information F gives a limit to the ultimate precision achievable in a phase estimation protocol. It has been shown recently that the Fisher information for a linear two-mode interferometer cannot exceed the number of particles if the input state is separable. As a direct consequence, with such input states the shot-noise limit is the ultimate limit of precision. In this work, we go a step further by deducing bounds on F for several multiparticle entanglement classes. These bounds imply that genuine multiparticle entanglement is needed for reaching the highest sensitivities in quantum interferometry. We further compute similar bounds on the average Fisher information F for collective spin operators, where the average is performed over all possible spin directions. We show that these criteria detect different sets of states and illustrate their strengths by considering several examples, also using experimental data. In particular, the criterion based on F is able to detect certain bound entangled states.

Permutationally Invariant Quantum Tomography

We present a scalable method for the tomography of large multiqubit quantum registers. It acquires information about the permutationally invariant part of the density operator, which is a good approximation to the true state in many relevant cases. Our method gives the best measurement strategy to minimize the experimental effort as well as the uncertainties of the reconstructed density matrix. We apply our method to the experimental tomography of a photonic four-qubit symmetric Dicke state.

Useful Multiparticle Entanglement and Sub-Shot-Noise Sensitivity in Experimental Phase Estimation

We experimentally demonstrate a general criterion to identify entangled states useful for the estimation of an unknown phase shift with a sensitivity higher than the shot-noise limit. We show how to exploit this entanglement on the examples of a maximum likelihood as well as of a Bayesian phase estimation protocol. Using an entangled four-photon state we achieve a phase sensitivity clearly beyond the shot-noise limit. Our detailed comparison of methods and quantum states for entanglement enhanced metrology reveals the connection between multiparticle entanglement and sub-shot-noise uncertainty, both in a frequentist and in a Bayesian phase estimation setting.

Experimental Comparison of Efficient Tomography Schemes for a Six-Qubit State

Quantum state tomography suffers from the measurement effort increasing exponentially with the number of qubits. Here, we demonstrate permutationally invariant tomography for which, contrary to conventional tomography, all resources scale polynomially with the number of qubits both in terms of the measurement effort as well as the computational power needed to process and store the recorded data. We demonstrate the benefits of combining permutationally invariant tomography with compressed sensing by studying the influence of the pump power on the noise present in a six-qubit symmetric Dicke state, a case where full tomography is possible only for very high pump powers.

Systematic errors in current quantum state tomography tools.

Common tools for obtaining physical density matrices in experimental quantum state tomography are shown here to cause systematic errors. For example, using maximum likelihood or least squares optimization to obtain physical estimates for the quantum state, we observe a systematic underestimation of the fidelity and an overestimation of entanglement. Such strongly biased estimates can be avoided using linear evaluation of the data or by linearizing measurement operators yielding reliable and computational simple error bounds.

Permutationally invariant state reconstruction

Feasible tomography schemes for large particle numbers must possess, besides an appropriate data acquisition protocol, an efficient way to reconstruct the density operator from the observed finite data set. Since state reconstruction typically requires the solution of a nonlinear large-scale optimization problem, this is a major challenge in the design of scalable tomography schemes. Here we present an efficient state reconstruction scheme for permutationally invariant quantum state tomography. It works for all common state-of-the-art reconstruction principles, including, in particular, maximum likelihood and least squares methods, which are the preferred choices in todays experiments. This high efficiency is achieved by greatly reducing the dimensionality of the problem employing a particular representation of permutationally invariant states known from spin coupling combined with convex optimization, which has clear advantages regarding speed, control and accuracy in comparison to commonly employed numerical routines. First prototype implementations easily allow reconstruction of a state of 20 qubits in a few minutes on a standard computer.

Weak value beyond conditional expectation value of the pointer readings

It is argued that a weak value of an observable is a robust property of a single pre- and postselected quantum system rather than a statistical property. During an infinitesimal time a system with a given weak value affected other systems as if it had been in an eigenstate with eigenvalue equal to the weak value. This differs significantly from the action of a system preselected only and possessing a numerically equal expectation value. The weak value has a physical meaning beyond a conditional average of a pointer in the weak measurement procedure. The difference between the weak value and the expectation value has been demonstrated on the example of photon polarization. In addition, the weak values for systems pre- and postselected in mixed states are considered.

Multipartite Entanglement Detection with Minimal Effort

Certifying entanglement of a multipartite state is generally considered a demanding task. Since an N qubit state is parametrized by 4^{N}-1 real numbers, one might naively expect that the measurement effort of generic entanglement detection also scales exponentially with N. Here, we introduce a general scheme to construct efficient witnesses requiring a constant number of measurements independent of the number of qubits for states like, e.g., Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states, cluster states, and Dicke states. For four qubits, we apply this novel method to experimental realizations of the aforementioned states and prove genuine four-partite entanglement with two measurement settings only.

Genuine Multipartite Entanglement without Multipartite Correlations

Nonclassical correlations between measurement results make entanglement the essence of quantum physics and the main resource for quantum information applications. Surprisingly, there are n-particle states which do not exhibit n-partite correlations at all but still are genuinely n-partite entangled. We introduce a general construction principle for such states, implement them in a multiphoton experiment and analyze their properties in detail. Remarkably, even without multipartite correlations, these states do violate Bell inequalities showing that there is no classical, i.e., local realistic model describing their properties.

Optimized state-independent entanglement detection based on a geometrical threshold criterion

Experimental procedures are presented for the rapid detection of entanglement of unknown arbitrary quantum states. The methods are based on the entanglement criterion using accessible correlations and the principle of correlation complementarity. Our first scheme essentially establishes the Schmidt decomposition for pure states, with few measurements only and without the need for shared reference frames. The second scheme employs a decision tree to speed up entanglement detection. We analyze the performance of the methods using numerical simulations and verify them experimentally for various states of two, three, and four qubits.