Homodyne extimation of quantum states purity by exploiting covariant uncertainty relation

Abstract

We experimentally verify uncertainty relations for mixed states in the tomographic representation by measuring the radiation field tomograms, i.e. homodyne distributions. Thermal states of single-mode radiation field are discussed in details as paradigm of mixed quantum state. By considering the connection between generalised uncertainty relations and optical tomograms is seen that the purity of the states can be retrieved by statistical analysis of the homodyne data. The purity parameter assumes a relevant role in quantum information where the effective fidelities of protocols depend critically on the purity of the information carrier states. In this contest the homodyne detector becomes an easy to handle purity-meter for the state on-line with a running quantum information protocol.Comment: accepted for publication into Physica Script