Majorana representation, qutrit Hilbert space and NMR implementation of qutrit gates

We report a study of the Majorana geometrical representation of a qutrit, where a pair of points on a unit sphere represents its quantum states. A canonical form for qutrit states is presented, where every state can be obtained from a one-parameter family of states via SO(3) action. The notion of spin-1 magnetization which is invariant under SO(3) is geometrically interpreted on the Majorana sphere. Furthermore, we describe the action of several quantum gates in the Majorana picture and experimentally implement these gates on a spin-1 system (an NMR qutrit) oriented in a liquid crystalline environment. We study the dynamics of the pair of points representing a qutrit state under various useful quantum operations and connect them to different NMR operations. Finally, using the Gell Mann matrix picture we experimentally implement a scheme for complete qutrit state tomography. (paper)