Towards reconstructing quantum structured light on a quantum computer (2509.21804v1)

Abstract: We introduce a variational quantum computing approach for reconstructing quantum states from measurement data. By mapping the reconstruction cost function onto an Ising model, the problem can be solved using a variational eigensolver on present-day quantum hardware. 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 for efficient quantum state tomography, particularly for high-dimensional structured light, where classical approaches can face bottlenecks.