Towards reconstructing quantum structured light on a quantum computer

Abstract

We introduce a variational quantum computing approach for quantum state reconstruction within a discretized logical framework, using experimental measurement data as input. By mapping the reconstruction cost function onto an Ising model, the problem can be solved using a variational eigensolver on present-day quantum hardware identifying dominant logical elements of the density matrix. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate the method on quantum structured light, in particular, entangled photons carrying orbital angular momentum and show that the reconstruction procedure can yield reliable performance even on noisy devices. Our results highlight the potential of variational algorithms as a complementary approach to quantum state tomography, particularly for high-dimensional structured light, where classical approaches can face bottlenecks.