Tomography for quantum diagnostics

Abstract

The quantification of relevant statistical errors is an indispensable but often neglected part of any tomographic scheme used for quantum diagnostic purposes. We introduce a novel resolution measure, which provides error bars' for any inferred quantity of interest. This is illustrated with an example of the diagnostics of non-classical states based on the value of the reconstructed Wigner function at the origin of the phase space. We show that such diagnostics is meaningful only when a lot of prior information on the measured quantum. state is available. Our resolution measure also provides an effective tool for optimization and resolution tuning of tomography schemes. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.