Reexamination of optimal quantum state estimation of pure states
A. Hayashi, Takaaki HASHIMOTO, M. Horibe · Physical Review A · 2005
A direct derivation is given for the optimal mean fidelity of quantum state estimation of a $d$-dimensional unknown pure state with its $N$ copies given as input, which was first obtained by Hayashi in terms of an infinite set of covariant positive operator valued measures (POVM's) and by Bru\ss{} and Macchiavello establishing a connection to optimal quantum cloning. An explicit condition for POVM measurement operators for optimal estimators is obtained, by which we construct optimal estimators with finite POVMs using exact quadratures on a hypersphere. These finite optimal estimators are not generally universal, where universality means the fidelity is independent of input states. However, any optimal estimator with finite POVM for $M(>N)$ copies is universal if it is used for $N$ copies as input.