The quantum mechanics of position measurement of a macroscopic object is typically inaccessible because of strong coupling to the environment and classical noise. In this work, we monitor a mechanical resonator subject to an increasingly strong continuous position measurement and observe a quantum mechanical back-action force that rises in accordance with the Heisenberg uncertainty limit. For our optically based position measurements, the back-action takes the form of a fluctuating radiation pressure from the Poisson-distributed photons in the coherent measurement field, termed radiation pressure shot noise. We demonstrate a back-action force that is comparable in magnitude to the thermal forces in our system. Additionally, we observe a temporal correlation between fluctuations in the radiation force and in the position of the resonator.
Continuous quantum displacement measurements are fundamentally limited by a trade-off between readout imprecision and measurement back-action, constrained by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), these two quantum noise components dominate much of the observation band, making it an excellent testbed. We induce a sub-Hz-linewidth optomechanical mode by trapping the differential motion of the 40-kg mirrors in a band where radiation-pressure back-action dominates the motion. Engineering the quantum state entering the dark port creates correlations between imprecision and back-action that partially cancel their contributions, reducing observed motion near resonance by ~47%. A framework resolving the imprecision, back-action, and correlation terms identifies the origin of this suppression. These results demonstrate quantum back-action evasion and quantum reservoir engineering in a macroscopic optomechanical system.
We study the back action on a coupled multiple-qubit system induced by a quantum cavity probe in a non-demolition quantum measurement scheme. The exact quantum state stochastic Schrödinger equation is derived to systematically investigate the dynamics of quantum entanglement of the multiple-qubit system inside the cavity probe. Although quantum entanglement cannot be directly measured through experiments, the back action on quantum entanglement in the multi-qubit system is witnessed by applying the exact quantum state stochastic equations. Our results demonstrate that the analysis on the sensitivity of the quantum measurement should include not only the standard quantum limit of the canonical operators, but also the back action on the quantum entanglement. Our new method proposed a theoretical approach to investigate the effects of the measurement back action on the multi-qubit systems induced by the cavity probe.