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arXiv:1104.2096 · Journal of Mathematical Physics

Uncertainty relations for joint localizability and joint measurability in finite-dimensional systems

Takayuki Miyadera

Published Jul 1, 2011• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Two quantities quantifying uncertainty relations are examined. Busch and Pearson [J. Math. Phys. 48, 082103 (2007)] investigated the limitation on joint localizability and joint measurement of position and momentum by introducing overall width and error bar width. In this paper, we show a simple relationship between these quantities for finite-dimensional systems. Our result indicates that if there is a bound on joint localizability, it is possible to obtain a similar bound on joint measurability. For finite-dimensional systems, uncertainty relations for a pair of general projection-valued measures are obtained as by-products.

DOI
10.1063/1.3614503

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Two quantities quantifying uncertainty relations are examined. Busch and Pearson [J. Math. Phys. 48, 082103 (2007)] investigated the limitation on joint localizability and joint measurement of position and momentum by introducing overall width and error bar width. In this paper, we show a simple relationship between these quantities for finite-dimensional systems. Our result indicates that if there is a bound on joint localizability, it is possible to obtain a similar bound on joint measurability. For finite-dimensional systems, uncertainty relations for a pair of general projection-valued measures are obtained as by-products.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has recently led to general measurement uncertainty relations for quantum systems: incompatible observables can be measured jointly or in sequence only with some unavoidable approximation, which can be quantified in various ways. The relative entropy is the natural theoretical quantifier of the information loss when a `true’ probability distribution is replaced by an approximating one. In this paper, we provide a lower bound for the amount of information that is lost by replacing the distributions of the sharp position and momentum observables, as they could be obtained with two separate experiments, by the marginals of any smeared joint measurement. The bound is obtained by introducing an entropic error function, and optimizing it over a suitable class of covariant approximate joint measurements. We fully exploit two cases of target observables: (1) n-dimensional position and momentum vectors; (2) two components of position and momentum along different directions. In (1), we connect the quantum bound to the dimension n; in (2), going from parallel to orthogonal directions, we show the transition from highly incompatible observables to compatible ones. For simplicity, we develop the theory only for Gaussian states and measurements.
The focus of the present investigation is uncertainty relations for quantum particles, which quantify the fundamental limitations on some of their properties due to their incompatibility. In the first, longer part, we are concerned with preparational uncertainty \nrelations, while in the second we touch upon measurement inequalities through a generalisation of a model of joint measurement of position and momentum. \nSpecifically, starting from a triple of canonical operators, we prove product and sum inequalities for their variances with bounds larger than those following from combining the pairwise ones. We extend these results to N observables for a quantum particle and prove uncertainty relations for the sums and products of their variances \nin terms of the commutators. \nFurthermore, we present a general theory of preparational uncertainty relations for a quantum particle in one dimension and derive conditions for a smooth function of the second moments to assume a lower bound. The Robertson-Schroedinger inequality \nis found to be of special significance and we geometrically study the space of second moments. We prove new uncertainty relations for various functions of the variances and covariance of position and momentum of a quantum particle. Some of our findings are shown to extend to more than one spatial degree of freedom and we derive \nvarious types of inequalities. \nFinally, we propose a generalisation of the Arthurs-Kelly model of joint measurement of position and momentum to incorporate the case of more than two observables and derive joint-measurement inequalities for the statistics of the probes. For the case of \nthree canonical observables and suitable definitions of error and disturbance we obtain a number of error-error-error and error-error-disturbance inequalities and show that the lower bound is identical to the preparational one.
Measurement uncertainty relations are lower bounds on the errors of any approximate joint measurement of two or more quantum observables. The aim of this paper is to provide methods to compute optimal bounds of this type. The basic method is semidefinite programming, which we apply to arbitrary finite collections of projective observables on a finite dimensional Hilbert space. The quantification of errors is based on an arbitrary cost function, which assigns a penalty to getting result x rather than y, for any pair ( x , y ) . This induces a notion of optimal transport cost for a pair of probability distributions, and we include an Appendix with a short summary of optimal transport theory as needed in our context. There are then different ways to form an overall figure of merit from the comparison of distributions. We consider three, which are related to different physical testing scenarios. The most thorough test compares the transport distances between the marginals of a joint measurement and the reference observables for every input state. Less demanding is a test just on the states for which a “true value” is known in the sense that the reference observable yields a definite outcome. Finally, we can measure a deviation as a single expectation value by comparing the two observables on the two parts of a maximally-entangled state. All three error quantities have the property that they vanish if and only if the tested observable is equal to the reference. The theory is illustrated with some characteristic examples.
Uncertainty relations are usually stated as bounds on selected combinations of variances, but the full covariance matrix contains substantially richer information about the geometry of quantum state space and about the operational capabilities of quantum systems. Here we characterize the covariance matrices attainable by a finite-dimensional canonical pair of observables related by the discrete Fourier transform, the natural analogue of position and momentum in a finite Hilbert space. We combine analytic arguments with convex-geometric and semidefinite-programming methods based on joint numerical ranges to describe the admissible region through unitary invariants, in particular the trace and determinant of the covariance matrix. This provides a systematic way to identify extremal states, generalizing the notion of minimum-uncertainty states, and to quantify how the discrete uncertainty geometry approaches its continuous counterpart with increasing dimension. We further show that the resulting covariance-matrix characterization has direct consequences for applications: it yields accuracy bounds for multi parameter estimation protocols and separability criteria for finite-dimensional bipartite systems, including discrete analogues of continuous-variable EPR-type witnesses. Our results establish a systematic and versatile platform for connecting uncertainty relations, convex quantum geometry, metrology, and entanglement detection in finite-dimensional systems.
We prove an uncertainty relation, which imposes a bound on any joint measurement of position and momentum. It is of the form (\Delta P)(\Delta Q)\geq C\hbar, where the `uncertainties' quantify the difference between the marginals of the joint measurement and the corresponding ideal observable. Applied to an approximate position measurement followed by a momentum measurement, the uncertainties become the precision \Delta Q of the position measurement, and the perturbation \Delta P of the conjugate variable introduced by such a measurement. We also determine the best constant C, which is attained for a unique phase space covariant measurement.