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Physical Review A

Simultaneous histories, path sums, and measurements for noncommuting variables

D. Sokolovski, R. Sala Mayato

Published May 26, 2006• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We analyze von Neumann-like quantum measurements in terms of simultaneous virtual paths constructed for two noncommuting variables. The approach is applied to measurements of operator functions of conjugate variables and to the joint measurements of such variables. The limits of applicability of the restricted phase space path integral are studied. We demonstrate that, for a simple joint measurement, using entangled meter states allows one to manipulate the order in which the measurements are conducted. The effects of ``weakening'' a measurement by choosing unsharp meter states are also discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.73.052115

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We analyze von Neumann-like quantum measurements in terms of simultaneous virtual paths constructed for two noncommuting variables. The approach is applied to measurements of operator functions of conjugate variables and to the joint measurements of such variables. The limits of applicability of the restricted phase space path integral are studied. We demonstrate that, for a simple joint measurement, using entangled meter states allows one to manipulate the order in which the measurements are conducted. The effects of ``weakening'' a measurement by choosing unsharp meter states are also discussed.
We demonstrate how a general von Neumann--like measurement can be analyzed in terms of histories (paths) constructed for the measured variable AAA. The Schr\"odinger state of a system in a Hilbert space of arbitrary dimensionality is decomposed into a set of substates, each of which corresponds to a particular detailed history of the system. The coherence between the substates may then be destroyed by meter(s) to a degree determined by the nature and the accuracy of the measurement(s) which may be of von Neumann, finite-time, or continuous type. The cases of a particle described by Feynman paths in the coordinate space and a qubit in a two-dimensional Hilbert space are studied in some detail.
We propose a general theoretical approach to quantum measurements based on the path (histories) summation technique. For a given dynamical variable A, the Schrödinger state of a system in a Hilbert space of arbitrary dimensionality is decomposed into a set of substates, each of which corresponds to a particular detailed history of the system. The coherence between the substates may then be destroyed by meter(s) to a degree determined by the nature and the accuracy of the measurement(s) which may be of von Neumann, finite-time or continuous type. Transformations between the histories obtained for non-commuting variables and construction of simultaneous histories for non-commuting observables are discussed. Important cases of a particle described by Feynman paths in the coordinate space and a qubit in a two dimensional Hilbert space are studied in some detail.
We analyze the connection between the path integral and operator approaches to the quantum measurement problem. In general, an act of measurement is shown to destroy interference between components of the wave function related to the particle's histories. Classically, there exist a class of meters suitable for measuring the value of a given dynamical variable F. Quantally, different meters produce different results. The standard von Neumann measurement is one particular case. Rearranging Feynman paths according to the value of (time average of) F defines a different type of meter. The two methods disagree if the duration of the measurement is very short. Possible ways to measure the particle's momentum are studied in detail. The semiclassical limit of a measurement is analyzed.
The state of a quantum-mechanical system after a simultaneous measurement of conjugate variables such as coordinate and momentum is derived. In the case of the minimum-uncertainty, or ideal, simultaneous measurement, the state of the system after the measurement is a coherent state corresponding to that representing a minimum-uncertainty wave packet. An operator formalism to describe simultaneous measurements of noncommuting observables is introduced which parallels that familiar for a single measurement, and an expression for the joint probability distribution predicting the results of an ideal simultaneous measurement is derived and applied to the example of a harmonic oscillator. It is found that the minimum uncertainty in a simultaneous measurement of noncommuting variables has two causes: (1) the unavoidable perturbations introduced by the measuring process, and (2) the unavoidable lack of precision in the state of the system itself. For position and momentum measurements, these two independent uncertainties contribute to give a net minimum uncertainty of $\ensuremath{\Delta}{q}^{\ensuremath{'}}\ensuremath{\Delta}{p}^{\ensuremath{'}}=\ensuremath{\hbar}$. It is also shown that the formalism of simultaneous measurement leads to a well-defined quantum-mechanical phase space.
We propose a possible experiment aimed at a joint measurement of two noncommuting spin-1/2 components and analyze its physical meaning. We demonstrate that switching of a strong spin-orbit interaction, e.g., in a solid-state or a cold-atom system, for a short time interval simulates a simultaneous von Neumann measurement of the operators ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}$ and ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{y}$. With the spin dynamics mapped onto the quantum coordinate-space motion, such an experiment determines averages of ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}$ and ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{y}$ over the duration of the measurement, however short the latter may be. These time averages, unlike the instantaneous values of ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{x}$ and ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{y}$, may be evaluated simultaneously to an arbitrary accuracy.
Joint, or simultaneous, measurements of noncommuting observables are possible within quantum mechanics, if one accepts an increase in the variances of the jointly measured observables. In this paper, we discuss joint measurements of a spin-1∕21∕21∕2 particle along any two directions. Starting from an operational locality principle, it is shown how to obtain a bound on how sharp the joint measurement can be. We give a direct interpretation of this bound in terms of an uncertainty relation.