7 research outputs found
A proposed testbed for detector tomography
Measurement is the only part of a general quantum system that has yet to be
characterized experimentally in a complete manner. Detector tomography provides
a procedure for doing just this; an arbitrary measurement device can be fully
characterized, and thus calibrated, in a systematic way without access to its
components or its design. The result is a reconstructed POVM containing the
measurement operators associated with each measurement outcome. We consider two
detectors, a single-photon detector and a photon-number counter, and propose an
easily realized experimental apparatus to perform detector tomography on them.
We also present a method of visualizing the resulting measurement operators.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Quantum nature of laser light
All compositions of a mixed-state density operator are equivalent for the
prediction of the probabilities of future outcomes of measurements. For
retrodiction, however, this is not the case. The retrodictive formalism of
quantum mechanics provides a criterion for deciding that some compositions are
fictional. Fictional compositions do not contain preparation device operators,
that is operators corresponding to states that could have been prepared. We
apply this to Molmer's controversial conjecture that optical coherences in
laser light are a fiction and find agreement with his conjecture. We generalise
Molmer's derivation of the interference between two lasers to avoid the use of
any fictional states. We also examine another possible method for
discriminating between conerent states and photon number states in laser light
and find that it does not work, with the equivalence for prediction saved by
entanglement
Advances in quantum metrology
The statistical error in any estimation can be reduced by repeating the measurement and averaging the results. The central limit theorem implies that the reduction is proportional to the square root of the number of repetitions. Quantum metrology is the use of quantum techniques such as entanglement to yield higher statistical precision than purely classical approaches. In this Review, we analyse some of the most promising recent developments of this research field and point out some of the new experiments. We then look at one of the major new trends of the field: analyses of the effects of noise and experimental imperfections
Experimental Quantum Detector Tomography
We present the first quantum tomography of a detector, using as examples an avalanche photodiode and a photon-number resolving detector. The resulting POVM set agrees well with one derived from a model of the detector. © 2008 Optical Society of America
Full characterization of quantum optical detectors
Full characterization of detectors in the quantum regime is presented. We determine the POVM elements of a photon-number-resolving detector. A method for precise calibration of detector efficiency is demonstrated