Abstract What happens when a quantum system undergoing unitary evolution in time is subject to repeated projective measurements to the initial state at random times? A question of general interest is: how does the survival probability S m , namely, the probability that an initial state survives even after m number of measurements, behave as a function of m ? We address these issues in the context of two paradigmatic quantum systems, one, the quantum random walk evolving in discrete time, and the other, the tight-binding model evolving in continuous time, with both defined on a one-dimensional periodic lattice with a finite number of sites N . For these two models, we present several numerical and analytical results that hint at the curious nature of quantum measurement dynamics. In particular, we unveil that when evolution after every projective measurement continues with the projected component of the instantaneous state, the average and the typical survival probability decay as an exponential in m for large m . By contrast, if the evolution continues with the leftover component, namely, what remains of the instantaneous state after a measurement has been performed, the survival probability exhibits two characteristic m values, namely, m 1 ⋆ ( N ) ∼ N and m 2 ⋆ ( N ) ∼ N δ with δ > 1. These scales are such that (i) for m large and satisfying m < m 1 ⋆ ( N ) , the decay of the survival probability is as m −2 , (ii) for m satisfying m 1 ⋆ ( N ) ≪ m < m 2 ⋆ ( N ) , the decay is as m −3/2 , while (iii) for m ≫ m 2 ⋆ ( N ) , the decay is as an exponential. The results for the dynamics with the leftover component, already known for the case of measurements at regular intervals, are being extended here to the case of measurements at random intervals. We find that our results hold independently of the choice of the distribution of times between successive measurements, as have been corroborated by our resu
What happens when a quantum system undergoing unitary evolution in time is subject to repeated projective measurements to the initial state at random times? A question of general interest is: How does the survival probability
Sm, namely, the probability that an initial state survives even after
m number of measurements, behave as a function of
m? In the context of two paradigmatic quantum systems, one evolving in discrete and the other in continuous time, we present a wealth of numerical and analytical results that hint at the curious nature of quantum measurement dynamics. In particular, we unveil that when evolution after every projective measurement continues with the projected component of the instantaneous state, the average and the typical survival probability decay as an exponential in
m for large
m. By contrast, if the evolution continues with the leftover component, namely, what remains of the instantaneous state after a measurement has been performed, the survival probability decays asymptotically as a power law in
m with exponent
3/2. These results hold independently of the choice of the distribution of times between successive measurements, implying robustness and ubiquity of our derived results.
The Fermi-decay law of Bose—Einstein condensate, which is trapped by a cigar-shaped anharmonic trap and subjected to a weak random perturbation, is investigated by numerically calculating quantum fidelity (Loschmidt echo), to reveal the coherence loss of the condensate. We find that there are three indispensable factors, anharmonic trap, weak random perturbation and nonlinear interaction, in charging of the Fermi-decay law. The anharmonic trap creates anharmonic oscillations, and the weak random perturbation causes coherence loss by disturbing their coherent oscillations, while the nonlinear interaction enhances the loss to the Fermi-decay law. Based on the Fermi-decay law, some suggestions are presented to prolong the coherent time during coherently manipulating condensates.