Probabilistic measurement models with noncommuting and commuting observables

Somshubhro Bandyopadhyay, Prabha Mandayam

Uncertainty relations are often considered to be a measure of incompatibility of noncommuting observables. However, such a consideration is not valid in general, motivating the need for an alternate measure that applies to any set of noncommuting observables. We present an operational approach to quantifying incompatibility without invoking uncertainty relations. Our measure aims to capture the incompatibility of noncommuting observables as manifest in the nonorthogonality of their eigenstates. We prove that this measure has all the desired properties: It is zero when the observables commute, strictly greater than zero when they do not, and is maximum when they are mutually unbiased. We also obtain tight upper bounds on this measure for any $N$ noncommuting observables and compute it exactly when the observables are mutually unbiased.

Jeramy Gordon, W. H. Louisell

ARMEN E. ALLAHVERDYAN, Roger Balian, Theo M. Nieuwenhuizen

Wenbo Su, Manchao Zhang, Chun-Wang Wu +8 more

The expectation value of the product of two noncommuting observables (POTNO) can be used to test the commutation relation and dig out the correlation between two observables. However, since a POTNO is generally a non-Hermitian operator, its average cannot be measured directly according to standard quantum mechanics. Recently, a theoretical scheme has been proposed to obtain POTNOs, but the observables are limited to projection operators. In this paper, we present a scheme that employs weak measurement to directly measure the expectation value of the POTNO, where the observables are arbitrary operators. Our scheme transforms the measurement of this expectation value into the measurements of several single observable weak values. Experimentally we demonstrate our scheme by measuring the expectation value of the product of two Pauli operators and verify their commutation and anticommutation relations in a trapped-ion system. Moreover, our scheme is applicable to the cases with more than two observables.

Holger Friedrich Hofmann

Chao Jiang, Gentaro Watanabe A

We consider simultaneous and continuous measurement of two noncommutative observables of the system whose commutator is not necessarily a $c$-number. We revisit the Arthurs-Kelly model and generalize it to describe the simultaneous measurement of two arbitrary observables of the system. Using this generalized model, we continuously measure the system by following the scheme proposed by Scott and Milburn [Scott and Milburn, Phys. Rev. A 63, 042101 (2001)]. We find that the unconditioned master equation reduces to the Lindblad form in the continuous limit. In addition, we find that the master equation does not contain a cross term of these two measurements. Finally, we propose a scheme to prepare the state of a two-level system in an external field by feedback control based on the simultaneous, continuous measurement of the two observables.