arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to J. Rehacek.
We propose a complete tomographic reconstruction of any vortex state carrying orbital angular momentum. The scheme determines the angular probability distribution of the state at different times under free evolution. To represent the quantum state we introduce a bona fide Wigner function defined on the discrete cylinder, which is the natural phase space for the pair angle-angular momentum. The feasibility of the proposal is addressed.
A comprehensive theory of the Weyl-Wigner formalism for the canonical pair angle-angular momentum is presented, with special emphasis in the implications of rotational periodicity and angular-momentum discreteness.
We rederive uncertainty relations for the angular position and momentum of a particle on a circle by employing the exponential of the angle instead of the angle itself, which leads to circular variance as a natural measure of resolution. Intelligent states minimizing the uncertainty product under the constraint of a given uncertainty in angle or in angular momentum turn out to be given by Mathieu wave functions. We also discuss a number of physically feasible approximations to these optimal states. The theory is applied to the orbital angular momentum of a beam of photons and verified in an experiment that employs computer-controlled spatial light modulators both at the state preparation and analyzing stages.
We report on an intrinsic relationship between the maximum-likelihood quantum-state estimation and the representation of the signal. A quantum analogy of the transfer function determines the space where the reconstruction should be done without the need for any ad hoc truncations of the Hilbert space. An illustration of this method is provided by a simple yet practically important tomography of an optical signal registered by realistic binary detectors.
The uncertainty relations for angle and angular momentum are revisited. We use the exponential of the angle instead of the angle itself and adopt dispersion as a natural measure of resolution. We find states that minimize the uncertainty product under the constraint of a given uncertainty in angle or in angular momentum. These states are described in terms of Mathieu wave functions and may be approximated by a von Mises distribution, which is the closest analogous of the Gaussian on the unit circle. We report experimental results using beam optics that confirm our predictions.
A tomographic technique is introduced in order to determine the quantum state of the center of mass motion of neutrons. An experiment is proposed and numerically analyzed.
Maximum likelihood estimation is a valuable tool often applied to inverse problems in quantum theory. Estimation from small data sets can, however, have non unique solutions. We discuss this problem and propose to use Jaynes maximum entropy principle to single out the most unbiased maximum-likelihood guess.
A general protocol in Quantum Information and Communication relies in the ability of producing, transmitting and reconstructing, in general, qunits. In this letter we show for the first time the experimental implementation of these three basic steps on a pure state in a three dimensional space, by means of the orbital angular momentum of the photons. The reconstruction of the qutrit is performed with tomographic techniques and a Maximum-Likelihood estimation method. In this way we also demonstrate that we can perform any transformation in the three dimensional space.
We show that the resolution "per absorbed particle" of standard absorption tomography can be outperformed by a simple interferometric setup, provided that the different levels of "gray" in the sample are not uniformly distributed. The technique hinges upon the quantum Zeno effect and has been tested in numerical simulations. The scheme we propose could be implemented in experiments with UV-light, neutrons or X-rays.
Diffraction on the slit can be interpreted in accordance with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This elementary example hints at the importance of the information theory for the quantum physics. The role played by one particularly interesting measure of information -- the Fisher information -- in quantum measurements is further discussed in the context of quantum interferometry.
We show first reconstructions of the photon-number distribution obtained with a multi-channel fiber-loop detector. Apart from analyzing the statistics of light pulses this device can serve as a sophisticated postselection device for experiments in quantum optics and quantum information. We quantify its efficiency by means of the Fisher information and compare it to the efficiency of the ideal photodetector.
Maximum-likelihood methods are applied to the problem of absorption tomography. The reconstruction is done with the help of an iterative algorithm. We show how the statistics of the illuminating beam can be incorporated into the reconstruction. The proposed reconstruction method can be considered as a useful alternative in the extreme cases where the standard ill-posed direct-inversion methods fail.
We propose a numerical algorithm for finding optimal measurements for quantum-state discrimination. The theory of the semidefinite programming provides a simple check of the optimality of the numerically obtained results.
The invariant information introduced by Brukner and Zeilinger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 3354 (1999), is reconsidered from the point of view of quantum state estimation. We show that it is directly related to the mean error of the standard reconstruction from the measurement of a complete set of mutually complementary observables. We give its generalization in terms of the Fisher information. Provided that the optimum reconstruction is adopted, the corresponding quantity loses its invariant character.
We study general teleportation scheme with an arbitrary state of the pair of particles (2 and 3) shared by Alice and Bob, and arbitrary measurements on the input particle 1 and one of the members (2) of the pair on Alice's side. We find an efficient iterative algorithm for identifying optimum local operations on Bob's side. In particular we find that simple unitary transformations on his side are not always optimal even if particles 2 and 3 are perfectly entangled. We describe the most interesting protocols in the language of extremal completely-positive maps.
The coherence properties of two downconversion processes continuously coupled via idler beams are analyzed. We find that the amount of which-way information about a signal photon carried by idler beams periodically attains its maximum and minimum in the course of evolution. In correspondence with the famous experiments by Mandel's group on the induced coherence without induced emission the coherence of signal beams is governed by that information. The ideal which-way measurement is constructed.
An iterative algorithm for the reconstruction of an unknown quantum state from the results of incompatible measurements is proposed. It consists of Expectation-Maximization step followed by a unitary transformation of the eigenbasis of the density matrix. The procedure has been applied to the reconstruction of the entangled pair of photons.
A quantum mechanical version of a classical inverted pendulum is analyzed. The stabilization of the classical motion is reflected in the bounded evolution of the quantum mechanical operators in the Heisenberg picture. Interesting links with the quantum Zeno effect are discussed.