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arXiv:1810.03624 · International Journal of Quantum Information

History operators in quantum mechanics

Leonardo Castellani

Published Dec 1, 2019• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

It is convenient to describe a quantum system at all times by means of a “history operator” [Formula: see text], encoding measurements and unitary time evolution between measurements. These operators naturally arise when computing the probability of measurement sequences, and generalize the “sum over position histories” of the Feynman path-integral. As we argue in this work, this description has some computational advantages over the usual state vector description, and may help to clarify some issues regarding nonlocality of quantum correlations and collapse. A measurement on a system described by [Formula: see text] modifies the history operator, [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the projector corresponding to the measurement. We refer to this modification as “history operator collapse”. Thus, [Formula: see text] keeps track of the succession of measurements on a system, and contains all histories compatible with the results of these measurements. The collapse modifies the history content of [Formula: see text], and therefore modifies also the past (relative to the measurement), but never in a way to violate causality. Probabilities of outcomes are obtained as [Formula: see text]. A similar formula yields probabilities for intermediate measurements, and reproduces the result of the two-vector formalism in the case of the given initial and final states. We apply the history operator formalism to a few examples: entangler circuit, Mach–Zehnder interferometer, teleportation circuit and three-box experiment. Not surprisingly, the propagation of coordinate eigenstates [Formula: see text] is described by a history operator [Formula: see text] containing the Feynman path-integral.

DOI
10.1142/s0219749919410016

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It is convenient to describe a quantum system at all times by means of a “history operator” [Formula: see text], encoding measurements and unitary time evolution between measurements. These operators naturally arise when computing the probability of measurement sequences, and generalize the “sum over position histories” of the Feynman path-integral. As we argue in this work, this description has some computational advantages over the usual state vector description, and may help to clarify some issues regarding nonlocality of quantum correlations and collapse. A measurement on a system described by [Formula: see text] modifies the history operator, [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text] is the projector corresponding to the measurement. We refer to this modification as “history operator collapse”. Thus, [Formula: see text] keeps track of the succession of measurements on a system, and contains all histories compatible with the results of these measurements. The collapse modifies the history content of [Formula: see text], and therefore modifies also the past (relative to the measurement), but never in a way to violate causality. Probabilities of outcomes are obtained as [Formula: see text]. A similar formula yields probabilities for intermediate measurements, and reproduces the result of the two-vector formalism in the case of the given initial and final states. We apply the history operator formalism to a few examples: entangler circuit, Mach–Zehnder interferometer, teleportation circuit and three-box experiment. Not surprisingly, the propagation of coordinate eigenstates [Formula: see text] is described by a history operator [Formula: see text] containing the Feynman path-integral.
Abstract A formalism is proposed to describe entangled quantum histories, and their entanglement entropy. We define a history vector, living in a tensor space with basis elements corresponding to the allowed histories, i.e. histories with nonvanishing amplitudes. The amplitudes are the components of the history vector, and contain the dynamical information. Probabilities of measurement sequences, and resulting collapse, are given by generalized Born rules: they are all expressed by means of projections and scalar products involving the history vector. Entangled history states are introduced, and a history density matrix is defined in terms of ensembles of history vectors. The corresponding history entropies (and history entanglement entropies for composite systems) are explicitly computed in two examples taken from quantum computation circuits.
Quantum entanglement is a key resource, which grants quantum systems the ability to accomplish tasks that are classically impossible. Here, we apply Feynman's sum-over-histories formalism to interacting bipartite quantum systems and introduce entanglement measures for bipartite quantum histories. Based on the Schmidt decomposition of the matrix comprised of the Feynman propagator complex coefficients, we prove that bipartite quantum histories are entangled if and only if the Schmidt rank of this matrix is larger than 1. The proposed approach highlights the utility of using a separable basis for constructing the bipartite quantum histories and allows for quantification of their entanglement from the complete set of experimentally measured sequential weak values. We then illustrate the nonclassical nature of entangled histories with the use of Hardy's overlapping interferometers and explain why local hidden variable theories are unable to correctly reproduce all observable quantum outcomes. Our theoretical results elucidate how the composite tensor product structure of multipartite quantum systems is naturally extended across time and clarify the difference between quantum histories viewed as projection operators in the history Hilbert space and those viewed as chain operators and propagators in the standard Hilbert space.
Consider measurements that provide information about the position of a nonrelativistic, one-dimensional, quantum-mechanical system. An outstanding question in quantum mechanics asks how to analyze measurements distributed in time---i.e., measurements that provide information about the position at more than one time. I develop a formulation in terms of a path integral and show that it applies to a large class of measurements distributed in time. For measurements in this class, the path-integral formulation provides the joint statistics of a sequence of measurements. Specialized to the case of instantaneous position measurements, the path-integral formulation breaks down into the conventional machinery of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics: a system quantum state evolving in time according to two rules---between measurements, unitary evolution, and at each measurement, ``collapse of the wave function'' (``reduction of the state vector''). For measurements distributed in time, the path-integral formulation has no similar decomposition; the notion of a system quantum state evolving in time has no place.
To begin with, it is pointed out that the form of the quantum probabil- ity formula originates in the very initial state of the object system as seen when the state is expanded with the eigen-projectors of the measured ob- servable. Making use of the probability reproducibility condition, which is a key concept in unitary measurement theory, one obtains the relevant coher- ent distribution of the complete-measurement results in the final unitary- measurement state in agreement with the mentioned probability formula. Treating the transition from the final unitary, or premeasurement, state, where all possible results are present, to one complete-measurement result sketchily in the usual way, the well-known probability formula is derived. In conclusion it is pointed out that the entire argument is only formal unless one makes it physical assuming that the quantum probability law is valid in the extreme case of probability-one (certain) events (projectors).
The classical notions of continuity and mechanical causality are left in order to reformulate the Quantum Theory starting from two principles: (I) the intrinsic randomness of quantum process at microphysical level, (II) the projective representations of symmetries of the system. The second principle determines the geometry and then a new logic for describing the history of events (Feynman's paths) that modifies the rules of classical probabilistic calculus. The notion of classical trajectory is replaced by a history of spontaneous, random and discontinuous events. So the theory is reduced to determining the probability distribution for such histories accordingly with the symmetries of the system. The representation of the logic in terms of amplitudes leads to Feynman rules and, alternatively, its representation in terms of projectors results in the Schwinger trace formula.
Nonrelativistic quantum theory of noninteracting particles in the spacetime containing a region with closed time-like curves (time-machine spacetime) is considered with the help of the path-integral technique. It is argued that, in certain conditions, a sort of superselection may exist for evolution of a particle in such a spacetime. All types of evolution are classified by the number n defined as the number of times the particle returns back to its past. It corresponds also to the topological class [Formula: see text] of trajectories of a particle. The evolutions corresponding to different values of n are noncoherent. The amplitudes corresponding to such evolutions may not be superposed. Instead of one evolution operator, as in the conventional (coherent) description, evolution of the particle is described by a family Un of partial evolution operators. This is done in analogy with the formalism of quantum theory of measurements, but with essential new features in the dischronal region (the region with closed time-like curves) of the time-machine spacetime. Partial evolution operators Un are equal to integrals Kn over the classes of paths [Formula: see text] if the evolution begins and ends in the chronal regions. If the evolution begins or/and ends in the dischronal region, the integral Kn over the class [Formula: see text] should be multiplied by a certain projector to give the partial evolution operator Un. Thus defined partial evolution operators possess the property of generalized unitarity ∑nUn†Un=1 and multiplicativity Um(t″, t′)Un(t′, t)=Um+n(t″, t). In the last equation however one of the numbers m or n (or both) must be equal to zero. Therefore, the part of evolution containing repeated returning backward in time cannot be factorized: all backward passages of the particle have to be considered as a single act, that cannot be presented as gradually, step by step, passing through “causal loops.” The (generalized) multiplicativity and unitarity take place for arbitrary time intervals including (i) propagating in initial and final chronal regions (containing no time-like closed curves) or from the initial chronal region to the final one, and (ii) propagating within the time machine (in the dischronal region), from the time machine to the final chronal region or from the initial chronal region to the time machine.