Experimental estimation of the dimension of classical and quantum systems

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates an experimental method to estimate the dimension of unknown classical and quantum systems using dimension witnesses, enabling device-independent certification of system size and quantum nature.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental demonstration of dimension witnesses in a prepare-and-measure scenario with entangled photons, certifying system dimensions up to 4 without assumptions.

Findings

Successfully certified the dimension of classical and quantum states up to 4.

Demonstrated the quantum nature of the systems using dimension witnesses.

Enabled device-independent estimation of unknown quantum systems.

Abstract

An overwhelming majority of experiments in classical and quantum physics make a priori assumptions about the dimension of the system under consideration. However, would it be possible to assess the dimension of a completely unknown system only from the results of measurements performed on it, without any extra assumption? The concept of a dimension witness answers this question, as it allows one to bound the dimension of an unknown classical or quantum system in a device-independent manner, that is, only from the statistics of measurements performed on it. Here, we report on the experimental demonstration of dimension witnesses in a prepare and measure scenario. We use pairs of photons entangled in both polarization and orbital angular momentum to generate ensembles of classical and quantum states of dimensions up to 4. We then use a dimension witness to certify their dimensionality as well as their quantum nature. Our results open new avenues for the device-independent estimation of unknown quantum systems and for applications in quantum information science.