Quantum measurements are crucial for observing the properties of a quantum system, which, however, unavoidably perturb its state and dynamics in an irreversible way. Here we study the dynamics of a quantum system being subjected to a sequence of projective measurements applied at random times. In the case of independent and identically distributed intervals of time between consecutive measurements, we analytically demonstrate that the survival probability of the system to remain in the projected state assumes a large deviation (exponentially decaying) form in the limit of an infinite number of measurements. This allows us to estimate the typical value of the survival probability, which can therefore be tuned by controlling the probability distribution of the random time intervals. Our analytical results are numerically tested for Zeno-protected entangled states, which also demonstrate that the presence of disorder in the measurement sequence further enhances the survival probability when the Zeno limit is not reached (as it happens in experiments). Our studies provide a new tool for protecting and controlling the amount of quantum coherence in open complex quantum systems by means of tunable stochastic measurements.
Quantum measurements are crucial for observing the properties of a quantum system, which, however, unavoidably perturb its state and dynamics in an irreversible way. Here we study the dynamics of a quantum system being subjected to a sequence of projective measurements applied at random times. In the case of independent and identically distributed intervals of time between consecutive measurements, we analytically demonstrate that the survival probability of the system to remain in the projected state assumes a large deviation (exponentially decaying) form in the limit of an infinite number of measurements. This allows us to estimate the typical value of the survival probability, which can therefore be tuned by controlling the probability distribution of the random time intervals. Our analytical results are numerically tested for Zeno-protected entangled states, which also demonstrate that the presence of disorder in the measurement sequence further enhances the survival probability when the Zeno limit is not reached (as it happens in experiments). Our studies provide a new tool for protecting and controlling the amount of quantum coherence in open complex quantum systems by means of tunable stochastic measurements.
Abstract Quantum measurements play a crucial role in quantum mechanics since they perturb, unavoidably and irreversibly, the state of the measured quantum system. More extremely, the constant observation of a quantum system can even freeze its dynamics to a subspace, effectively truncating the Hilbert space of the system. It represents the quantum version of the famous flying arrow Zeno paradox, and is called quantum Zeno dynamics. In general, it can be obtained by applying frequent consecutive quantum measurements that are equally spaced in time. Here, we introduce time disorder in the measurement sequence, and analytically investigate how this temporal stochasticity may affect the confinement probability of the system in the subspace. As main result, we then exploit how different dissipative and coherent Zeno protocols can be generalized to this stochastic scenario. Finally, our analytical predictions are numerically tested on a paradigmatic spin chain where we find a trade‐off between a probabilistic scheme with high fidelity (compared to perfect subspace dynamics) and a deterministic one with a slightly lower fidelity, moving further steps towards new schemes of Zeno‐based control for future quantum technologies.
Abstract What happens when a quantum system undergoing unitary evolution in time is subject to repeated projective measurements to the initial state at random times? A question of general interest is: how does the survival probability S m , namely, the probability that an initial state survives even after m number of measurements, behave as a function of m ? We address these issues in the context of two paradigmatic quantum systems, one, the quantum random walk evolving in discrete time, and the other, the tight-binding model evolving in continuous time, with both defined on a one-dimensional periodic lattice with a finite number of sites N . For these two models, we present several numerical and analytical results that hint at the curious nature of quantum measurement dynamics. In particular, we unveil that when evolution after every projective measurement continues with the projected component of the instantaneous state, the average and the typical survival probability decay as an exponential in m for large m . By contrast, if the evolution continues with the leftover component, namely, what remains of the instantaneous state after a measurement has been performed, the survival probability exhibits two characteristic m values, namely, m 1 ⋆ ( N ) ∼ N and m 2 ⋆ ( N ) ∼ N δ with δ > 1. These scales are such that (i) for m large and satisfying m < m 1 ⋆ ( N ) , the decay of the survival probability is as m −2 , (ii) for m satisfying m 1 ⋆ ( N ) ≪ m < m 2 ⋆ ( N ) , the decay is as m −3/2 , while (iii) for m ≫ m 2 ⋆ ( N ) , the decay is as an exponential. The results for the dynamics with the leftover component, already known for the case of measurements at regular intervals, are being extended here to the case of measurements at random intervals. We find that our results hold independently of the choice of the distribution of times between successive measurements, as have been corroborated by our resu
The quantum Zeno effect is a distinctive phenomenon in quantum mechanics, describing the nontrivial effect of frequent projective measurements on hindering the evolution of a quantum system. However, when subjected to environmental noise, the quantum system may dissipate, and the quantum Zeno effect no longer works. This research starts from the physical mechanism for the decay of the quantum Zeno effect in the presence of noise and investigates the effect of coherent quantum controls on mitigating the decrease of the survival probability that the system stays in the initial state induced by the noise. We derive the decay rate of the survival probability with and without coherent quantum controls in general, and show that when the frequency of the projective measurements is large but finite, proper coherent controls by sufficiently strong Hamiltonians can be designed to decrease the decay rate of the survival probability. A two-level quantum system suffering from typical unitary and nonunitary noise is then considered to demonstrate the effect of the proposed coherent quantum control scheme in protecting the quantum Zeno effect against the noise. The decay rate of the survival probability is obtained in the presence of noise, and the control Hamiltonian is further optimized analytically to minimize the decay rate by a variational approach. The evolution paths of the quantum system with the optimal coherent controls are illustrated numerically for different scenarios to explicitly show how the coherent control scheme works in lowering the decay of survival probability.
What happens when a quantum system undergoing unitary evolution in time is subject to repeated projective measurements to the initial state at random times? A question of general interest is: How does the survival probability Sm, namely, the probability that an initial state survives even after m number of measurements, behave as a function of m? In the context of two paradigmatic quantum systems, one evolving in discrete and the other in continuous time, we present a wealth of numerical and analytical results that hint at the curious nature of quantum measurement dynamics. In particular, we unveil that when evolution after every projective measurement continues with the projected component of the instantaneous state, the average and the typical survival probability decay as an exponential in m for large m. By contrast, if the evolution continues with the leftover component, namely, what remains of the instantaneous state after a measurement has been performed, the survival probability decays asymptotically as a power law in m with exponent 3/2. These results hold independently of the choice of the distribution of times between successive measurements, implying robustness and ubiquity of our derived results.
Abstract The theoretical cornerstone of statistical mechanics is the ergodic assumption, i.e. the assumption that the time average of an observable equals its ensemble average. Here, we show how such a property is present when an open quantum system is continuously perturbed by an external environment effectively observing the system at random times while the system dynamics approaches the quantum Zeno regime. In this context, by large deviation theory we analytically show how the most probable value of the probability for the system to be in a given state eventually deviates from the non-stochastic case when the Zeno condition is not satisfied. We experimentally test our results with ultra-cold atoms prepared on an atom chip.
We address here the issue of quantum measurement in which the interaction between the system at hand and the measuring apparatus causes a collapse of the wave function or the density operator. The analysis is carried out for the prototypical tight-binding chain involving a quantum particle hopping between nearest-neighbour sites on a lattice, with the system subject to repeated projective measurements to a detector site. However, unlike previous work, the measurements are performed at random times. In the absence of measurement, the particle while starting from a site is known to spread out to farther sites as time progresses, leading to complete delocalization of the particle in time. In presence of measurements, we derive exact results for the probability at a given time for the particle to be found on different sites and averaged with respect to different realizations of the dynamics. We consider the representative case in which the time gap between successive measurements are sampled independently from an exponential distribution. The novel result of our findings is the revelation of the striking effect of Stochastic Localization, whereby the particle has at long times time-independent probabilities to be on different sites. This implies localization of the particle at long times, achieved through classical stochasticity involved with the random times for measurements. An extreme case of such localization is attained if the measurements are done very frequently, when the particle is completely localized at the detector site! We also point out the stochastic version of the Zeno effect, whereby dynamical evolution of a quantum system is arrested through repeated measurements at frequent-enough times. In the wake of recent experiments on projective measurements at random times achieved through randomly-pulsed sequences, our proposition is amenable to experimental realization.