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arXiv:2207.09140 · Fortschritte der Physik

Passive Quantum Measurement: Arrival Time, Quantum Zeno Effect and Gambler's Fallacy

Tajron Jurić, Hrvoje Nikolić

Published Jul 2, 2023• 3 citations

Abstract

Abstract Classical measurements are passive, in the sense that they do not affect the physical properties of the measured system. Normally, quantum measurements are not passive in that sense. In the infinite dimensional Hilbert space, however, it is found that quantum projective measurement can be passive in a way which is impossible in finite dimensional Hilbert spaces. Specifically, it is found that expectation value of a hermitian Hamiltonian can have an imaginary part in the infinite dimensional Hilbert space and that such an imaginary part implies a possibility to avoid quantum Zeno effect, which can physically be realized in quantum arrival experiments. The avoidance of quantum Zeno effect can also be understood as avoidance of a quantum version of gambler's fallacy, leading to the notion of passive quantum measurement that updates information about the physical system without affecting its physical properties. The arrival time probability distribution of a particle is found to be given by the flux of the probability current. Possible negative fluxes correspond to regimes at which there is no arrival at all, physically understood as regimes at which the particle departs rather than arrives.

DOI: 10.1002/prop.202300014

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Repeated measurements of a quantum particle to check its presence in a region of space was proposed long ago [G. R. Allcock, Ann. Phys. 53, 286 (1969)] as a natural way to determine the distribution of times of arrival at the orthogonal subspace, but the method was discarded because of the quantum Zeno effect: in the limit of very frequent measurements the wave function is reflected and remains in the original subspace. We show that by normalizing the small bits of arriving (removed) norm, an ideal time distribution emerges in correspondence with a classical local-kinetic-energy distribution.

Abstract. The evolution of a quantum system subjected to infinitely many measurements in a finite time interval is confined in a proper subspace of the Hilbert space. This phenomenon is called “quantum Zeno effect”: a particle under intensive observation does not evolve. This effect is at variance with the classical evolution, which obviously is not affected by any observations. By a semiclassical analysis we will show that the quantum Zeno effect vanishes at all orders, when the Planck constant tends to zero, and thus it is a purely quantum phenomenon without classical analog, at the same level of tunneling. PACS numbers: 03.65.Sq, 03.65.Xp ar

The evolution of a quantum system subjected to infinitely many measurements in a finite time interval is confined in a proper subspace of the Hilbert space. This phenomenon is called 'quantum Zeno effect': a particle under intensive observation which does not evolve. This effect is at variance with the classical evolution, which obviously is not affected by any observations. By a semiclassical analysis, we will show that the quantum Zeno effect vanishes at all orders, when the Planck constant tends to zero, and thus it is a purely quantum phenomenon without classical analog, at the same level of tunneling.

The problem of the time of arrival of a quantum system in a specified state is considered in the framework of the repeated measurement protocol and in particular the limit of continuous measurements is discussed. It is shown that for a particular choice of system-detector coupling, the Zeno effect is avoided and the system can be described effectively by a non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonian. As a specific example we consider the evolution of a quantum particle on a one-dimensional lattice that is subjected to position measurements at a specific site. By solving the corresponding non-Hermitian wave-function evolution equation, we present analytic closed-form results on the survival probability and the first arrival time distribution. Finally we discuss the limit of vanishing lattice spacing and show that this leads to a continuum description where the particle evolves via the free Schr\"odinger equation with complex Robin boundary conditions at the detector site. Several interesting physical results for this dynamics are presented.

In this paper we study the construction of probability densities for time of arrival in quantum mechanics. Our treatment is based upon the facts that (i) time appears in quantum theory as an external parameter to the system, and (ii) propositions about the time of arrival appear naturally when one considers histories. The definition of time-of-arrival probabilities is straightforward in stochastic processes. The difficulties that arise in quantum theory are due to the fact that the time parameter of the Schrödinger’s equation does not naturally define a probability density at the continuum limit, but also because the procedure one follows is sensitive on the interpretation of the reduction procedure. We consider the issue in Copenhagen quantum mechanics and in history-based schemes like consistent histories. The benefit of the latter is that it allows a proper passage to the continuous limit—there are, however, problems related to the quantum Zeno effect and decoherence. We finally employ the histories-based description to construct Positive-Operator-Valued-Measures (POVMs) for the time-of-arrival, which are valid for a general Hamiltonian. These POVMs typically depend on the resolution of the measurement device; for a free particle, however, this dependence cancels in the physically relevant regime and the POVM coincides with that of Kijowski.

Mielnik's cannonball argument uses the Zeno effect to argue that projective measurements for time of arrival are impossible. If one repeatedly measures the position of a particle (or a cannonball!) that has yet to arrive at a detector, the Zeno effect will repeatedly collapse its wave function away from it: the particle never arrives. Here we introduce quantum stroboscopic measurements where we accumulate statistics of projective position measurements, performed on different copies of the system at different times, to obtain a time-of-arrival distribution. We show that, under appropriate limits, this gives the same statistics as time measurements of conventional "always on" particle detectors that bypass Mielnik's argument using nonprojective, weak continuous measurements. In addition to time of arrival, quantum stroboscopy can describe distributions of general time measurements. It can also be adapted to obtain the conditional probability distribution of arrival times, given that the particle was not previously detected at the detector.