Entanglement characterization by single-photon counting with random noise

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the problem of entanglement characterization by polarization measurements combined with maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). A realistic scenario is considered with measurement results distorted by random experimental errors. In particular, by imposing unitary rotations acting on the measurement operators, we can test the performance of the tomographic technique versus the amount of noise. Then, dark counts are introduced to explore the efficiency of the framework in a multi-dimensional noise scenario. The concurrence is used as a figure of merit to quantify how well entanglement is preserved through noisy measurements. Quantum fidelity is computed to quantify the accuracy of state reconstruction. The results of numerical simulations are depicted on graphs and discussed.