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Measure of Quantum Macroscopicity for Arbitrary Spin Systems and Quantum Phase Transition as a Genuine Macroscopic Quantum Phenomenon

Minsu Kang, Chang-Woo Lee, Jeongho Bang, Seung-Woo Lee, Chae-Yeun Park, Hyunseok Jeong

Published Oct 10, 2015• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We propose a general and computable measure of quantum macroscopicity for arbitrary spin states by quantifying interference fringes in phase space. It effectively discriminates genuine macroscopic quantum effects from mere accumulations of microscopic quantum effects in large systems. The measure is applied to several examples and it is found to be consistent with some previous proposals. In particular, we investigate many-body spin systems undergoing the quantum phase transition (QPT) and the QPT turns out to be a genuine macroscopic quantum phenomenon. Our result suggests that a macroscopic quantum superposition of an extremely large size may appear during the QPT.

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We propose a general and computable measure of quantum macroscopicity for arbitrary spin states by quantifying interference fringes in phase space. It effectively discriminates genuine macroscopic quantum effects from mere accumulations of microscopic quantum effects in large systems. The measure is applied to several examples and it is found to be consistent with some previous proposals. In particular, we investigate many-body spin systems undergoing the quantum phase transition (QPT) and the QPT turns out to be a genuine macroscopic quantum phenomenon. Our result suggests that a macroscopic quantum superposition of an extremely large size may appear during the QPT.
We explore a previously unknown connection between two important problems in physics, i.e., quantum macroscopicity and the quantum phase transition. We devise a general and computable measure of quantum macroscopicity that can be applied to arbitrary spin states. We find that a macroscopic quantum superposition of an extremely large size arises during the quantum phase transition of the transverse Ising model in contrast to some seeming macroscopic quantum phenomena such as superconductivity, superfluidity, and Bose-Einstein condensates. Our result may be an important step forward in understanding macroscopic quantum properties of many-body systems.
Based on phase-space structures of quantum states, we propose a novel measure to quantify macroscopic quantum superpositions. Our measure simultaneously quantifies two different kinds of essential information for a given quantum state in a harmonious manner: the degree of quantum coherence and the effective size of the physical system that involves the superposition. It enjoys remarkably good analytical and algebraic properties. It turns out to be the most general and inclusive measure ever proposed that it can be applied to any types of multipartite states and mixed states represented in phase space.
It is well known that in a quantum phase transition (QPT), entanglement remains short ranged [Osterloh et al., Nature (London) 416, 608 (2005)]. We ask if there is a quantum property entailing the whole system which diverges near this point. Using the recently proposed measures of quantum macroscopicity, we show that near a quantum critical point, it is the effective size of macroscopic superposition between the two symmetry breaking states which grows to the scale of system size, and its derivative with respect to the coupling shows both singular behavior and scaling properties.
We investigate a measure of quantum coherence and its extension to quantify quantum macroscopicity. The coherence measure can also quantify the asymmetry of a quantum state with respect to a given group transformation. We then show that a weighted sum of asymmetry in each mode can be applied as a measure of macroscopic coherence. To exclude the effects of microscopic superpositions, we suggest a method to introduce a cutoff to the weighted sum that will specify the macroscopic portion of the coherence. This cutoff may be interpreted as the fuzziness for a given measurement outcome. Based on the suggested measures, we investigate the quantum macroscopicity for particular concrete examples in NNN-partite spin systems.
The notion of a macroscopic quantum state must be pinned down in order to assess how well experiments probe the large-scale limits of quantum mechanics. However, the issue of quantifying so-called quantum macroscopicity is fraught with multiple approaches having varying interpretations and levels of computability and measurability. Here, we introduce two measures that capture independent macroscopic properties: i) extensive size, measuring the degree of coherence in position or momentum observables relative to atomic-scale units, and ii) entangled size, quantifying the number of entangled subsystems. These measures unify many desirable features of past proposals while having rigorously justified interpretations from quantum information theory in terms of coherence and multipartite entanglement. We demonstrate how to estimate them and obtain lower-bounds using experimental data from micro-mechanical oscillators and diffracting molecules. Notably, we find evidence for genuine multipartite entanglement of 10 5 to 10 7 atoms in recent mechanical superposition states.
A model of quantum measurement, illustrated using the spin--boson model, is formulated in terms of a cascading pair of quantum phase transitions. The first produces the desired superposition of macroscopic responses to the microscopic state under investigation, while the second provides a mechanism for subsequent "wavefunction collapse," suppressing superpositions of distinct macroscopic states, producing instead a density matrix that implements the expected classical observation outcome via the Born probability rule. Motivated by numerous carefully designed measurements that may occur during the course of a quantum computation, effects of entanglement are investigated when the measurement is performed on only a subset of the microscopic degrees of freedom.