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arXiv:1903.10730 · Physical Review Letters

Error-Disturbance Trade-off in Sequential Quantum Measurements

Ya-Li Mao, Zhihao Ma, Rui‐Bo Jin, Qi-Chao Sun, Shao-Ming Fei, Qiang Zhang, Jingyun Fan, Jian-Wei Pan

Published Mar 8, 2019• 23 citations
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Abstract

We derive a state-dependent error-disturbance trade-off based on a statistical distance in the sequential measurements of a pair of noncommutative observables and experimentally verify the relation with a photonic qubit system. We anticipate that this Letter may further stimulate the study on the quantum uncertainty principle and related applications in quantum measurements.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.122.090404

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We relate two operational facets of noncommutativity in sequential quantum measurements: error-disturbance (how much one instrument perturbs another) and order effects (how outcome statistics change under permutation of instruments). Fixing the l1 distance on outcome distributions, we prove a per-state inequality that lower bounds the order-effect magnitude by the sum of two directional disturbances. A minimal qubit family shows tightness for all rotation angles. The inequality is directly testable from finite counts and also connects to discussions of order effects beyond physics.
The origin of non-classical correlations is difficult to identify since the uncertainty principle requires that information obtained about one observable invariably results in the disturbance of any other non-commuting observable. Here, this problem is addressed by investigating the uncertainty trade-off between measurement errors and disturbance for measurement interactions controlled by the state of a single qubit, where the measurement is described by a quantum coherent superposition of a fully projective measurement and the identity operation. It is shown that the measurement statistics obtained from a quantum controlled measurement of followed by a projective measurement of can be explained in terms of a simple combination of resolution and back-action errors acting on an intrinsic joint probability of the non-commuting observables defined by the input state of the system. These intrinsic joint probabilities are consistent with the complex-valued joint probabilities recently observed in weak measurements of quantum systems and provide direct evidence of non-commutativity in the form of imaginary correlations between the non-commuting operators. In quantum controlled measurements, these imaginary correlations can be converted into well-defined contributions to the real measurement statistics, allowing a direct experimental observation of the less intuitive aspects of quantum theory.
The origin of non-classical correlations is difficult to identify since the uncertainty principle requires that information obtained about one observable invariably results in the disturbance of any other non-commuting observable. Here, this problem is addressed by investigating the uncertainty trade-off between measurement errors and disturbance for measurement interactions controlled by the state of a single qubit, where the measurement is described by a quantum coherent superposition of a fully projective measurement and the identity operation. It is shown that the measurement statistics obtained from a quantum controlled measurement of followed by a projective measurement of can be explained in terms of a simple combination of resolution and back-action errors acting on an intrinsic joint probability of the non-commuting observables defined by the input state of the system. These intrinsic joint probabilities are consistent with the complex-valued joint probabilities recently observed in weak measurements of quantum systems and provide direct evidence of non-commutativity in the form of imaginary correlations between the non-commuting operators. In quantum controlled measurements, these imaginary correlations can be converted into well-defined contributions to the real measurement statistics, allowing a direct experimental observation of the less intuitive aspects of quantum theory.
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.