Confidence polytopes for quantum process tomography

In the present work, we propose a generalization of the confidence polytopes approach for quantum state tomography (QST) to the case of quantum process tomography (QPT). Our approach allows obtaining a confidence region in the polytope form for a Choi matrix of an unknown quantum channel based on the measurement results of the corresponding QPT experiment. The method uses the improved version of the expression for confidence levels for the case of several positive operator-valued measures (POVMs). We then show how confidence polytopes can be employed for calculating confidence intervals for affine functions of quantum states (Choi matrices), such as fidelities and observables mean values, which are used both in QST and QPT settings. As we discuss this problem can be efficiently solved using linear programming tools. We also demonstrate the performance and scalability of the developed approach on the basis of simulation and experimental data collected using IBM cloud quantum processor.

Experimental demonstration of optimized quantum process tomography on the IBM quantum experience

We experimentally performed complete and optimized quantum process tomography of quantum gates implemented on superconducting qubit-based IBM QX2 quantum processor via two constrained convex optimization (CCO) techniques: least squares optimization and compressed sensing optimization. We studied the performance of these methods by comparing the experimental complexity involved and the experimental fidelities obtained. We experimentally characterized several two-qubit quantum gates: identity gate, a controlled-NOT gate, and a SWAP gate. The general quantum circuit is efficient in the sense that the data needed to perform CCO-based process tomography can be directly acquired by measuring only a single qubit. The quantum circuit can be extended to higher dimensions and is also valid for other experimental platforms.