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Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics

Tomography of two-particle spin states

V. A. Andreev, Vladimir I. Man’ko

Published Aug 1, 1998• 41 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A new “classical” formulation of conventional quantum mechanics is used to construct a description of quantum states with spin j =1/2 which uses only positive classical probabilities of observables instead of a complex density matrix. These probabilities are functions of points on a unit sphere which determine the directions relative to which the spin projections are measured. The proposed construction is a generalization of a system for tomography of the spin states of a single particle and may be used as a new method of measuring two-particle spin states. For pure spin states this method is exactly the same as the case of a single particle. Additional probabilities must be defined to describe mixed states.

DOI
10.1134/1.558651

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A new “classical” formulation of conventional quantum mechanics is used to construct a description of quantum states with spin j =1/2 which uses only positive classical probabilities of observables instead of a complex density matrix. These probabilities are functions of points on a unit sphere which determine the directions relative to which the spin projections are measured. The proposed construction is a generalization of a system for tomography of the spin states of a single particle and may be used as a new method of measuring two-particle spin states. For pure spin states this method is exactly the same as the case of a single particle. Additional probabilities must be defined to describe mixed states.
The new tomographic formulation of quantum mechanics is used to develop a method which can reconstruct the entire density matrix of a two-particle spin state in terms of positive classical distributions of probabilities of the values of certain observables. It is shown that to obtain a complete description of the mixed spin state it is necessary to know not only the probabilities of the spin projections as functions of the coordinates of the points on a unit sphere but also the probabilities defining the contributions of the pure states to the mixed ones. With the help of this method the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox is analysed. It is shown that to remove the paradox the observer must strictly fix at every moment the set of observables and describe the transformation of one set into another. Such a description is performed with the help of the technique of selective and nonselective measurements as defined by Schwinger.
The review of new formulation of conventional quantum mechanics where the quantum states are identified with probability distributions is presented. The invertible map of density operators and wave functions onto the probability distributions describing the quantum states in quantum mechanics is constructed both for systems with continuous variables and systems with discrete variables by using the Born's rule and recently suggested method of dequantizer-quantizer operators. Examples of discussed probability representations of qubits (spin-1/2, two-level atoms), harmonic oscillator and free particle are studied in detail. Schrödinger and von Neumann equations, as well as equations for the evolution of open systems, are written in the form of linear classical-like equations for the probability distributions determining the quantum system states. Relations to phase-space representation of quantum states (Wigner functions) with quantum tomography and classical mechanics are elucidated.
A new formulation of quantum mechanics (probability representation) is discussed. In this representation, a quantum state is described by a standard positive definite probability distribution (tomogram) rather than by a wave function. An unambiguous relation (analog of Radon transformation) between the density operator and a tomogram is constructed both for continuous coordinates and for spin variables. A novel feature of a state, tomographic entropy, is considered, and its connection with von Neumann entropy is discussed. A one-to-one map of quantum observables (Hermitian operators) on positive probability distributions is found.
We show that the density matrix of a spin-lll system can be described entirely in terms of the measurement statistics of projective spin measurements along a minimum of 4l+14l+14l+1 different spin directions. It is thus possible to represent the complete quantum statistics of any NNN-level system within the spherically symmetric three-dimensional space defined by the spin vector. An explicit method for reconstructing the density matrix of a spin-1 system from the measurement statistics of five nonorthogonal spin directions is presented and the generalization to spin-lll systems is discussed.
It is now well established that quantum tomography provides an alternative picture of quantum mechanics. It is common to introduce tomographic concepts starting with the Schrödinger–Dirac picture of quantum mechanics on Hilbert spaces. In this picture, states are a primary concept and observables are derived from them. On the other hand, the Heisenberg picture, which has evolved in the C ⋆ -algebraic approach to quantum mechanics, starts with the algebra of observables and introduces states as a derived concept. The equivalence between these two pictures amounts, essentially, to the Gelfand–Naimark–Segal construction. In this construction, the abstract C ⋆ -algebra is realized as an algebra of operators acting on a constructed Hilbert space. The representation that is defined may be reducible or irreducible, but in either case it allows us to identify a unitary group associated with the C ⋆ -algebra by means of its invertible elements. In this picture both states and observables are appropriate functions on the group; it also follows that quantum tomograms are strictly related with appropriate functions (positive-type) on the group. In this paper we present, using very simple examples, a tomographic description emerging from the set of ideas connected with the C ⋆ -algebra picture of quantum mechanics. In particular, we introduce the tomographic probability distributions for finite and compact groups, and formulate an autonomous criterion to recognize a given probability distribution as a tomogram of quantum state.
We present a new formulation of conventional quantum mechanics, in which the notion of a quantum state is identified via a fair probability distribution of the position measured in a reference frame of the phase space with rotated axes. In this formulation, the quantum evolution equation as well as the equation for finding energy levels are expressed as linear equations for the probability distributions that determine the quantum states. We also give the integral transforms relating the probability distribution (called the tomographic-probability distribution or the state tomogram) to the density matrix and the Wigner function and discuss their connection with the Radon transform. Qudit states are considered and the invertible map of the state density operators onto the probability vectors is discussed. The tomographic entropies and entropic uncertainty relations are reviewed. We demonstrate the uncertainty relations for the position and momentum and the entropic uncertainty relations in the tomographic-probability representation, which is suitable for an experimental check of the uncertainty relations.