Abstract

We examine the problem of determining the parameters that describe a quantum channel. It is assumed that the users of the channel have at best only partial knowledge of it and make use of a finite amount of resources to estimate it. We discuss simple protocols for the estimation of the parameters of several classes of channels that are studied in the current literature. A quantitative measures of the quality of the estimation schemes can be given on the basis of the standard deviation or of the fidelity. Protocols that employ entangled particles are also discussed. The use of entangled particles as a nonclassical resource enhances the estimation quality of some classes of quantum channel. Further, the methods presented here can be extended to higher dimensional quantum systems.