Uncertainty relations and time-frequency distributions for unsharp observables

Paul Busch, C. R. Shilladay

The fundamental principles of complementarity and uncertainty are shown to be related to the possibility of joint unsharp measurements of pairs of noncommuting quantum observables. A joint measurement scheme for complementary observables is proposed. The measured observables are represented as positive operator valued measures (POVMs), whose intrinsic fuzziness parameters are found to satisfy an intriguing pay-off relation reflecting the complementarity. At the same time, this relation represents an instance of a Heisenberg uncertainty relation for measurement imprecisions. A model-independent consideration shows that this uncertainty relation is logically connected with the joint measurability of the POVMs in question.

Günter Ludyk

Kyunghyun Baek, Wonmin Son

Under the scenario of generalized measurements, it can be questioned how much of quantum uncertainty can be attributed to measuring device, independent of the uncertainty in the measured system. On the course to answer the question, we suggest a new class of entropic uncertainty relation that differentiates quantum uncertainty from device imperfection due to the unsharpness of measurement. In order to quantify the unsharpness, we suggest and analyze the quantity that characterizes the uncertainty in the measuring device, based on Shannon entropy. Using the quantity, we obtain a new lower bound of entropic uncertainty with unsharpness and it has been shown that the relation can also be obtained under the scenario that sharp observables are affected by the white noise and amplitude damping.

Bin Chen, Ning-Ping Cao, Shao-Ming Fei +1 more

Guruprasad Kar

Kyunghyun Baek, Wonmin Son

We derive entropic uncertainty relations for successive generalized measurements by using general descriptions of quantum measurement within two distinctive operational scenarios. In the first scenario, by merging two successive measurements into one we consider successive measurement scheme as a method to perform an overall composite measurement. In the second scenario, on the other hand, we consider it as a method to measure a pair of jointly measurable observables by marginalizing over the distribution obtained in this scheme. In the course of this work, we identify that limits on one’s ability to measure with low uncertainty via this scheme come from intrinsic unsharpness of observables obtained in each scenario. In particular, for the Lüders instrument, disturbance caused by the first measurement to the second one gives rise to the unsharpness at least as much as incompatibility of the observables composing successive measurement.