2017/06/02 by Yong Siah Teo, Hyunseok Jeong, L. L. Sánchez-Soto +1 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Algorithm #Benchmark (surveying) #Computer science #Detector #Estimator #Mathematics #Observable #Optics #Photodetector #Photonics #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Quantum state #Quantum tomography #Sampling (signal processing) #Statistical physics #Statistics #Tomography #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.96.042333
published in Physical Review A 96(4) (American Physical Society) · 9 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2017/06/02 · openalex created_date 2017/06/09 · openalex publication_date 2017/10/25 · arxiv updated 2019/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Balanced homodyning, heterodyning, and unbalanced homodyning are three well-known sampling techniques used in quantum optics to characterize photonic sources in the continuous-variable regime. We show that for all quantum states and all observable-parameter tomography schemes, which includes reconstructions of arbitrary operator moments and phase-space quasidistributions, localized sampling with unbalanced homodyning is always tomographically more powerful (gives more accurate estimators) than delocalized sampling with heterodyning. The latter is recently known to often give more accurate parameter reconstructions than conventional marginalized sampling with balanced homodyning. This result also holds for realistic photodetectors with subunit efficiency. With examples from first- through fourth-moment tomography, we demonstrate that unbalanced homodyning can outperform balanced homodyning when heterodyning fails to do so. This new benchmark takes us one step towards optimal continuous-variable tomography with conventional photodetectors and minimal experimental components.