Experimental Quantification of Coherence of a Tunable Quantum Detector

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Huichao Xu - (Author)
  • Feixiang Xu - (Author)
  • Thomas Theurer - (Author)
  • Dario Egloff - , TUD Dresden University of Technology, Ulm University (Author)
  • Zi-Wen Liu - (Author)
  • Nengkun Yu - (Author)
  • Martin B. Plenio - (Author)
  • Lijian Zhang - (Author)

Abstract

Quantum coherence is a fundamental resource that quantum technologies exploit to achieve performance beyond that of classical devices. A necessary prerequisite to achieve this advantage is the ability of measurement devices to detect coherence from the measurement statistics. Based on a recently developed resource theory of quantum operations, here we quantify experimentally the ability of a typical quantum-optical detector, the weak-field homodyne detector, to detect coherence. We derive an improved algorithm
for quantum detector tomography and apply it to reconstruct the positive-operator-valued measures of the detector in different configurations. The reconstructed positive-operator-valued measures are then employed to evaluate how well the detector can detect coherence using two computable measures. As the first experimental investigation of quantum measurements from a resource theoretical perspective, our work sheds new light on the rigorous evaluation of the performance of a quantum measurement apparatus.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-7
Number of pages7
JournalPhys. Rev. Lett.
Issue number060404
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85089967619

Keywords

Keywords

  • quantum detector, quantum coherence