We formulate a new error-disturbance relation, which is free from explicit dependence upon variances in observables. This error-disturbance relation shows improvement over the one provided by the Branciard inequality and the Ozawa inequality for some initial states and for a particular class of joint measurements under consideration. We also prove a modified form of Ozawa's error-disturbance relation. The latter relation provides a tighter bound compared to the Ozawa and the Branciard inequalities for a small number of states.
We formulate a new error-disturbance relation, which is free from explicit dependence upon variances in observables. This error-disturbance relation shows improvement over the one provided by the Branciard inequality and the Ozawa inequality for some initial states and for a particular class of joint measurements under consideration. We also prove a modified form of Ozawa's error-disturbance relation. The latter relation provides a tighter bound compared to the Ozawa and the Branciard inequalities for a small number of states.
The quantification of the ``measurement uncertainty''aspect of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle---that is, the study of trade-offs between accuracy and disturbance, or between accuracies in an approximate joint measurement on two incompatible observables---has regained a lot of interest recently. Several approaches have been proposed and debated. In this paper we consider Ozawa's definitions for inaccuracies (as root-mean-square errors) in approximate joint measurements, and study how these are constrained in different cases, whether one specifies certain properties of the approximations---namely their standard deviations and/or their bias---or not. Extending our previous work [C. Branciard, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 110, 6742 (2013)], we derive error-trade-off relations, which we prove to be tight for pure states. We show explicitly how all previously known relations for Ozawa's inaccuracies follow from ours. While our relations are in general not tight for mixed states, we show how these can be strengthened and how tight relations can still be obtained in that case.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was originally formulated in 1927 as a quantitative relation between the "mean error" of a measurement of one observable and the disturbance thereby caused on another observable. Heisenberg derived this famous relation under an additional assumption on quantum measurements that has been abandoned in the modern theory, and its universal validity was questioned in a debate on the sensitivity limit to gravitational-wave detectors in 1980s. A universally valid form of the error-disturbance relation was shown to be derived in the modern framework of general quantum measurements in 2003. We have experienced a considerable progress in theoretical and experimental study of error-disturbance relations in the last decade. In 2013 Branciard showed a new stronger form of universally valid error-disturbance relations, one of which is proved tight for spin measurements carried out in "pure" states. Nevertheless, a recent information-theoretical study of error-disturbance relations has suggested that Branciard relations can be considerably strengthened for measurements in mixed states. Here, we show a method for strengthening Branciard relations in mixed states and derive several new universally valid and stronger error-disturbance relations in mixed states. In particular, it is proved that one of them gives an ultimate error-disturbance relation for spin measurements, which is tight in any state. The new relations will play an important role in applications to state estimation problems including quantum cryptographic scenarios.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is one of the main tenets of quantum theory. Nevertheless, and despite its fundamental importance for our understanding of quantum foundations, there has been some confusion in its interpretation: Although Heisenberg's first argument was that the measurement of one observable on a quantum state necessarily disturbs another incompatible observable, standard uncertainty relations typically bound the indeterminacy of the outcomes when either one or the other observable is measured. In this paper, we quantify precisely Heisenberg's intuition. Even if two incompatible observables cannot be measured together, one can still approximate their joint measurement, at the price of introducing some errors with respect to the ideal measurement of each of them. We present a tight relation characterizing the optimal tradeoff between the error on one observable vs. the error on the other. As a particular case, our approach allows us to characterize the disturbance of an observable induced by the approximate measurement of another one; we also derive a stronger error-disturbance relation for this scenario.
The indeterminacy inherent in quantum measurements is an outstanding character of quantum theory, which manifests itself typically in the uncertainty principle. In the last decade, several universally valid forms of error-disturbance uncertainty relations were derived for completely general quantum measurements for arbitrary states. Subsequently, Branciard established a form that is optimal for spin measurements for some pure states. However, the bound in his inequality is not stringent for mixed states. One of the present authors recently derived a new bound tight in the corresponding mixed state case. Here, a neutron-optical experiment is carried out to investigate this new relation: it is tested whether error and disturbance of quantum measurements disappear or persist in mixing up the measured ensemble. The attainability of the new bound is experimentally observed, falsifying the tightness of Branciard's bound for mixed spin states.
The uncertainty relation, which displays an elementary property of quantum theory, was originally described by Heisenberg as the relation between error and disturbance. Ozawa presented a more rigorous expression of the uncertainty relation, which was later verified experimentally. Nevertheless, the operators corresponding to error and disturbance should be measurable in the identical state if we follow the presupposition of Heisenberg’s thought experiment. In this letter, we discuss simultaneous measurability of error and disturbance and present a new inequality using error and disturbance in the identical state. A testable example of this inequality is also suggested.
In quantum theory, measuring process is an important physical process; it is a quantum description of the interaction between the system of interest and the measuring device. Error and disturbance are used to quantitatively check the performance of the measurement, and are defined by using measuring process. Uncertainty relations are a general term for relations that provide constraints on them, and actively studied. However, the true error-disturbance bound for position measurements is not known yet. Here we concretely construct linear position measurements with minimum error-disturbance in each minimum uncertainty state. We focus on an error-disturbance relation (EDR), called the Branciard-Ozawa EDR, for position measurements. It is based on a quantum root-mean-square (q-rms) error and a q-rms disturbance. We show the theorem that gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a linear position measurement to achieve its lower bound in a minimum uncertainty state, and explicitly give exactly solvable linear position measurements achieving its lower bound in the state. We then give probability distributions and states after the measurement when using them. It is expected to construct measurements with minimum error-disturbance in a broader class of states in the future, which will lead to a new understanding of quantum limits, including uncertainty relations.