Experimental benchmarking of quantum state overlap estimation strategies with photonic systems

TL;DR

This paper experimentally compares four strategies for estimating quantum state overlap using photonic systems, providing benchmarks that guide the choice of measurement techniques in quantum information tasks.

Contribution

It offers the first experimental benchmarking of multiple quantum overlap estimation strategies, including an adaptive method for improved precision.

Findings

Photon-based implementation of overlap estimation strategies

Performance comparison of four different measurement approaches

Introduction of an adaptive strategy for enhanced accuracy

Abstract

Accurately estimating the overlap between quantum states is a fundamental task in quantum information processing. While various strategies using distinct quantum measurements have been proposed for overlap estimation, the lack of experimental benchmarks on estimation precision limits strategy selection in different situations. Here we compare the performance of four practical strategies for overlap estimation, including tomography-tomography, tomography-projection, Schur collective measurement and optical swap test using photonic quantum systems. We encode the quantum states on the polarization and path degrees of freedom of single photons. The corresponding measurements are performed by photon detection on certain modes following single-photon mode transformation or two-photon interference. We further propose an adaptive strategy with optimized precision in full-range overlap estimation. Our results shed new light on extracting the parameter of interest from quantum systems, prompting the design of efficient quantum protocols.