An invitation to quantum tomography (II)

Abstract

The quantum state of a light beam can be represented as an infinite dimensional density matrix or equivalently as a density on the plane called the Wigner function. We describe quantum tomography as an inverse statistical problem in which the state is the unknown parameter and the data is given by results of measurements performed on identical quantum systems. We present consistency results for Pattern Function Projection Estimators as well as for Sieve Maximum Likelihood Estimators for both the density matrix of the quantum state and its Wigner function. Finally we illustrate via simulated data the performance of the estimators. An EM algorithm is proposed for practical implementation. There remain many open problems, e.g. rates of convergence, adaptation, studying other estimators, etc., and a main purpose of the paper is to bring these to the attention of the statistical community.