Experimental realization of gerneralized qubit measurement based on quantum walks

Abstract

We report an experimental implementation of a single-qubit generalized measurement scenario, the positive-operator valued measure (POVM), based on a quantum walk model. The qubit is encoded in a single-photon polarization. The photon performs a quantum walk on an array of optical elements, where the polarization-dependent translation is performed via birefringent beam displacers and a change of the polarization is implemented with the help of wave plates. We implement: (i) trine POVM, i.e., the POVM elements uniformly distributed on an equatorial plane of the Bloch sphere; (ii) symmetric-informationally-complete (SIC) POVM; and (iii) unambiguous discrimination of two nonorthogonal qubit states.

Publication
Physical Review A

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