Coarse-grained quantum state estimation for noisy measurements

Abstract

We introduce a straightforward numerical coarse-graining scheme to estimate quantum states for a set of noisy measurement outcomes, which are difficult to calibrate, that is based solely on the measurement data collected from these outcomes. This scheme involves the maximization of a weighted entropy function that is simple to implement and can readily be extended to any number of ill-calibrated noisy outcomes in a measurement set-up, thus offering practical applicability for general tomography experiments without additional knowledge or assumptions about the structures of the noisy outcomes. Simulation results for two-qubit quantum states show that coarse-graining can improve the tomographic efficiencies for noise levels ranging from low to moderately high values.