When quantum state tomography benefits from willful ignorance

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in certain quantum state tomography scenarios, intentionally ignoring some measurement information can lead to more accurate reconstructions, especially with minimal measurement setups.

Contribution

It reveals that discarding measurement details can outperform perfect knowledge in specific quantum tomography contexts, highlighting a counterintuitive strategy.

Findings

Ignoring measurement details can improve state reconstruction accuracy.

The effect is stronger with minimal informationally complete measurements.

Data pattern tomography benefits from willful ignorance.

Abstract

We show that quantum state tomography with perfect knowledge of the measurement apparatus proves to be, in some instances, inferior to strategies discarding all information about the measurement at hand, as in the case of data pattern tomography. In those scenarios, the larger uncertainty about the measurement is traded for the smaller uncertainty about the reconstructed signal. This effect is more pronounced for minimal or nearly minimal informationally complete measurement settings, which are of utmost practical importance.