Abstract

The spin-coherent-state positive-operator-valued-measure (POVM) is a fundamental measurement in quantum science, with applications including tomography, metrology, teleportation, benchmarking, and measurement of Husimi phase space probabilities. We prove that this POVM is achieved by collectively measuring the spin projection of an ensemble of qubits weakly and isotropically. We apply this in the context of optimal tomography of pure qubits. We show numerically that through a sequence of weak measurements of random directions of the collective spin component, sampled discretely or in a continuous measurement with random controls, one can approach the optimal bound.

Publication Details
Publication Type
Journal Article
Year of Publication
2018
Volume
121
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.130404
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.01012
Journal
Phys. Rev. Lett.
Contributors
Groups
Date Published
09/2018