Wigner tomography of multispin quantum states

Abstract

We study the tomography of multispin quantum states in the context of finite-dimensional Wigner representations. An arbitrary operator can be completely characterized and visualized using multiple shapes assembled from linear combinations of spherical harmonics [A. Garon, R. Zeier, and S. J. Glaser, Phys. Rev. A 91, 042122 (2015)]. We develop a general methodology to experimentally recover these shapes by measuring expectation values of rotated axial spherical tensor operators and provide an interpretation in terms of fictitious multipole potentials. Our approach is experimentally demonstrated for quantum systems consisting of up to three spins using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.