Aspects of Complementarity

Tabish Qureshi

Some recent works have introduced a quantum twist to the concept of complementarity, exemplified by a setup in which the which-way detector is in a superposition of being present and absent. It has been argued that such experiments allow measurement of particle-like and wave-like behavior at the same time. Here, we derive an inequality which puts a bound on the visibility of interference and the amount of which-way information that one can obtain, in the context of such modified experiments. As the wave aspect can only be revealed by an ensemble of detections, we argue that, in such experiments, a single detection can contribute only to one subensemble, corresponding to either wave aspect or particle aspect. This way, each detected particle behaves either as particle or as wave, never both, and Bohr's complementarity is fully respected.

Ruth E. Kastner

Marcos L. W. Basso

Bohr’s complementarity principle was introduced as a qualitative statement about quantum systems, which have properties that are equally real, but mutually exclusive. This principle, together with the uncertainty principle, is at the origin of Quantum Mechanics (QM), following the development of the theory since then. Another intriguing aspect of QM is entanglement, which is a type of correlation that is only possible within the mathematical formalism of QM. Its central importance in the Quantum foundations, as well as its important role in the fields of quantum information and quantum computation, has made the theory of entanglement achieve great progress in recent decades. In this dissertation we discuss the aspects and relations among complementarity relations, uncertainty, and entanglement. Such aspects are also investigated in relativistic scenarios, since the interest on how entanglement behaves in relativistic scenarios has grown more and more. First, by exploring the properties of the density operator, we obtain complementarity relations, using coherence measures well known in the literature. Next, we show that it is possible to obtain complete complementarity relations, i.e., relations that also take into account entanglement. For this, we explore the purity of a multipartite quantum system. In addition, we discuss the relation between complementarity and uncertainty of an observable, since it is possible to decompose uncertainty into its classical and quantum parts. We also obtain complementarity relations for uncertainty. Finally, we study the complete complementary relations and its Lorentz invariance. Although it is known that entanglement entropy does not remain invariant under Lorentz transformations, and neither does the measures that quantifies complementarity, we show that theses measures when taken together, in a complete complementarity relation, are Lorentz invariant.

John T. Holmes

Osvaldo Frota Pessoa Junior

Marcos L. W. Basso, Jonas Maziero

We extend complete complementarity relations to curved spacetimes by considering a succession of infinitesimal local Lorentz transformations, which implies that complementarity remains valid as the quanton travels through its world line and the complementarity aspects in different points of spacetime are connected. This result allows the study of these different complementary aspects of a quantum system as it travels through spacetime. In particular, we investigate the behavior of these different complementary properties of massive spin-$1/2$ particles in the Schwarzschild spacetime. For geodetic circular orbits, we find that the spin state of one particle oscillates between a separable and an entangled state. For nongeodetic circular orbits, we notice that the frequency of these oscillations gets bigger as the orbit nears the Schwarzschild radius ${r}_{s}$.