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Title: Ancilla dimensions needed to carry out positive-operator-valued measurement

Journal Article · · Physical Review. A
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [3]
  1. Department of Physics, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong (China)
  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Hunter College, City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021 (United States)
  3. Key Laboratory of Quantum Communication and Quantum Computation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 (China)

To implement a positive-operator-valued measurement (POVM), which is defined on the d{sub S}-dimensional Hilbert space of a physical system, one has to extend the Hilbert space to include d{sub A} additional dimensions (called the ancilla). This is done via either the tensor product extension (TPE) or the direct sum extension (DSE). The implementation of a POVM utilizes the available resources more efficiently if it requires fewer additional dimensions. To determine how to implement a POVM with the least additional dimensions is, therefore, an important task in quantum information. We have determined the necessary and sufficient (hence minimal) number of the additional dimensions needed to implement the same POVM by the TPE and the DSE, respectively. If the POVM has n elements and r{sub i} is the rank of the ith element, then the dimension of the minimal ancilla is d{sub A}={sigma}{sub i=1}{sup n}r{sub i}-d{sub S} for the DSE implementation, and this represents a lower bound for the added dimensions in the TPE implementation. In the proof, we explicitly construct the DSE implementation of a general POVM with elements of arbitrary rank. As an example, we determine d{sub A} for the unambiguous discrimination of N linearly independent states and provide the full DSE implementation of a state-discriminating POVM for N=2.

OSTI ID:
21140596
Journal Information:
Physical Review. A, Vol. 76, Issue 6; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.76.060303; (c) 2007 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English