Reconstruction of quantum channel via convex optimization

Quantum process tomography is often used to completely characterize an unknown quantum process. However, it may lead to an unphysical process matrix, which will cause the loss of information with respect to the tomography result. Convex optimization, widely used in machine learning, is able to generate a global optimum that best fits the raw data while keeping the process tomography in a legitimate region. Only by correctly revealing the original action of the process can we seek deeper into its properties like its phase transition and its Hamiltonian. Here, we reconstruct the seawater channel using convex optimization and further test it on the seven fundamental gates. We compare our method to the standard-inversion and norm-optimization approaches using the cost function value and our proposed state deviation. The advantages convince that our method enables a more precise and robust estimation of the elements of the process matrix with less demands on preliminary resources. In addition, we examine on a set of non-unitary channels and the reconstructions reach up to 99.5% accuracy. Our method offers a more universal tool for further analyses on the components of the quantum channels and we believe that the crossover between quantum process tomography and convex optimization may help us move forward to machine learning of quantum channels. (C) 2019 Science China Press. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science China Press. All rights reserved.