Abstract Photon's dual nature, manifesting as both wave-like and particle-like behavior, is a phenomenon known as wave-particle duality and remains one of the most perplexing mysteries in quantum mechanics. In this work, we explore the relationships among the wave behavior, particle behavior, and entanglement of quantum states. We show the strong complementary relationships for bipartite isolated systems in terms of the generalized quantum entropic measures. This provides a measure-independent result going beyond all the existing complementary results based on specific measures. We further extend the results for non-isolated systems.
Abstract Photon's dual nature, manifesting as both wave-like and particle-like behavior, is a phenomenon known as wave-particle duality and remains one of the most perplexing mysteries in quantum mechanics. In this work, we explore the relationships among the wave behavior, particle behavior, and entanglement of quantum states. We show the strong complementary relationships for bipartite isolated systems in terms of the generalized quantum entropic measures. This provides a measure-independent result going beyond all the existing complementary results based on specific measures. We further extend the results for non-isolated systems.
One of the most remarkable features of quantum physics is that attributes of quantum objects, such as the wavelike and particlelike behaviors of single photons, can be complementary in the sense that they are equally real but cannot be observed simultaneously. Quantum measurements, serving as windows providing views into the abstract edifice of quantum theory, are basic tools for manifesting the intrinsic behaviors of quantum objects. However, a quantitative formulation of complementarity that highlights its manifestations in general measurement scenarios remains elusive. Here we develop a general framework for demonstrating quantum complementarity in the form of information exclusion relations (IERs), which incorporates the wave-particle duality relations as particular examples. Moreover, we explore the applications of our theory in entanglement detection and elucidate that our IERs lead to an extended form of entropic uncertainty relations, providing insights into the connection between quantum complementarity and the preparation uncertainty.
Abstract Wave-particle duality as one of the expression of Bohr complementarity is a significant concept in the field of quantum mechanics. Quantitative analysis of wave-particle duality aims to establish a complementary relation between the particle and wave properties. Beyond the conventional quantitative analysis depending on special choice of quantum information measures, we are aimed to provide a measure-independent complementary relation via coherence. By employing maximally coherent states in the set of all states with fixed diagonal elements, we give a measure-independent description of wave-particle-mixedness triality in d -path interferometers. Our complementary relations reveal the relationship between wave-particle duality and quantum coherence, and also give a justification to coherence as it truly brings out the wave nature of quantum systems at its heart.
We introduce a complete set of complementary quantities in bipartite, two-dimensional systems. Complementarity then relates the quantitative entanglement measure concurrence which is a bipartite property to the single-particle quantum properties predictability and visibility, for the most general quantum state of two qubits. Consequently, from an interferometric point of view, the usual wave-particle duality relation must be extended to a ``triality'' relation containing, in addition, the quantitative entanglement measure concurrence, which has no classical counterpart and manifests a genuine quantum aspect of bipartite systems. A generalized duality relation, that also governs possible violations of the Bell's inequality, arises between single- and bipartite properties.
Quantum theory reveals astonishing and counterintuitive phenomena not found in classical physics, such as wave-particle duality, where entities like electrons and photons exhibit both wave-like and particle-like behaviors. In this paper, we leverage advancements in quantum information science to gain new insights into this phenomenon. We specifically examine negative conditional entropy in quantum entanglement, where the selection of the measurement basis appears to ripple backward in time, akin to Dirac's model of an infinite sea of negative energy states filled with electrons, where holes in this sea appear as positrons. We propose that an observer's knowledge of the measurement choice, analogous to a hole in the negative information sea, corresponds to the wave aspect of the system, while the classical outcome aligns with its particle nature. This exploration of the relationship between microscopic quantum phenomena and macroscopic observations offers new perspectives on the mind-matter duality.
Abstract The wave-particle duality, as a manifestation of Bohr’s complementarity, is usually quantified in terms of path predictability and interference visibility. Various characterizations of the wave-particle duality have been proposed from an operational perspective, most of them are in forms of inequalities, and some of them are expressed in forms of equalities by incorporating entanglement or coherence. In this work, we shed different insights into the nature of the wave-particle duality by casting it into a form of information conservation in a multi-path interferometer, with uncertainty as a unified theme. More specifically, by employing the simple yet fundamental concept of variance, we establish a resolution of unity, which can be interpreted as a complementarity relation among wave feature, particle feature, and mixedness of a quantum state. This refines or reinterprets some conventional approaches to wave-particle duality, and highlights informational aspects of the issue. The key idea of our approach lies in that a quantum state, as a Hermitian operator, can also be naturally regarded as an observable, with measurement uncertainty (in a state) and state uncertainty (in a measurement) being exploited to quantify particle feature and wave feature of a quantum state, respectively. These two kinds of uncertainties, although both are defined via variance, have fundamentally different properties and capture different features of a state. Together with the mixedness, which is a kind of uncertainty intrinsic to a quantum state, they add up to unity, and thus lead to a characterization of the wave-particle-mixedness complementarity. This triality relation is further illustrated by examples and compared with some popular wave-particle duality or triality relations.
Wave-particle duality is a bizarre feature at the heart of quantum mechanics which refers to the mutually exclusive dual attributes of quantum objects as the wave and the particle. Quantum eraser presents a counterintuitive aspect of the wave-particle duality. In this paper, we show that quantum eraser can be quantitatively understood in terms of the recently developed duality-entanglement relation. In other words, we show that wave-particle-entanglement triality captures all the physics of the quantum erasure. We find that a controllable partial erasure of the which-path information is attainable, enabling the partial recovery of the quantum interference and extending the scope of the conventional quantum eraser protocols.