Error and Disturbance in Quantum Measurements

Yu Watanabe

Kazuya Okamura

In quantum theory, measuring process is an important physical process; it is a quantum description of the interaction between the system of interest and the measuring device. Error and disturbance are used to quantitatively check the performance of the measurement, and are defined by using measuring process. Uncertainty relations are a general term for relations that provide constraints on them, and actively studied. However, the true error-disturbance bound for position measurements is not known yet. Here we concretely construct linear position measurements with minimum error-disturbance in each minimum uncertainty state. We focus on an error-disturbance relation (EDR), called the Branciard-Ozawa EDR, for position measurements. It is based on a quantum root-mean-square (q-rms) error and a q-rms disturbance. We show the theorem that gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a linear position measurement to achieve its lower bound in a minimum uncertainty state, and explicitly give exactly solvable linear position measurements achieving its lower bound in the state. We then give probability distributions and states after the measurement when using them. It is expected to construct measurements with minimum error-disturbance in a broader class of states in the future, which will lead to a new understanding of quantum limits, including uncertainty relations.

Paul Busch, Teiko Heinonen, PEKKA J. LAHTI

A. Nishizawa, Yanbei Chen

In quantum physics, measurement error and disturbance were first naively thought to be simply constrained by the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. Later, more rigorous analysis showed that the error and disturbance satisfy more subtle inequalities. Several versions of universally valid error-disturbance relations (EDR) have already been obtained and experimentally verified in the regimes where naive applications of the Heisenberg uncertainty relation failed. However, these EDRs were formulated for discrete measurements. In this paper, we consider continuous measurement processes and obtain new EDR inequalities in the Fourier space: in terms of the power spectra of the system and probe variables. By applying our EDRs to a linear optomechanical system, we confirm that a tradeoff relation between error and disturbance leads to the existence of an optimal strength of the disturbance in a joint measurement. Interestingly, even with this optimal case, the inequality of the new EDR is not saturated because of doublely existing standard quantum limits in the inequality.

Yu Watanabe, Masahito Ueda

We formulate the error and disturbance in quantum measurement by invoking quantum estimation theory. The disturbance formulated here characterizes the non-unitary state change caused by the measurement. We prove that the product of the error and disturbance is bounded from below by the commutator of the observables. We also find the attainable bound of the product.

Henry Margenau