Heralded Polynomial-Time Quantum State Tomography

Abstract: We describe an algorithm for quantum state tomography that converges in polynomial time to an estimate, together with a rigorous error bound on the fidelity between the estimate and the true state. The result suggests that state tomography on large quantum systems may be much more feasible than the exponential size of state space suggests. In many situations, the correctness of the state estimate can be certified from the data alone, with no a priori assumptions on the form of the measured state.