Minimax estimation of the Wigner function in quantum homodyne tomography with ideal detectors

Abstract

We estimate the quantum state of a light beam from results of quantum homodyne measurements performed on identically prepared pulses. The state is represented through the Wigner function, a ``quasi-probability density'' on $\mathbb{R}^{2}$ which may take negative values and must respect intrinsic positivity constraints imposed by quantum physics. The data consists of $n$ i.i.d. observations from a probability density equal to the Radon transform of the Wigner function. We construct an estimator for the Wigner function, and prove that it is minimax efficient for the pointwise risk over a class of infinitely differentiable functions. A similar result was previously derived by Cavalier in the context of positron emission tomography. Our work extends this result to the space of smooth Wigner functions, which is the relevant parameter space for quantum homodyne tomography.Comment: 15 page