This article was written for the Logic in Computer Science column in the February 2015 issue of the Bulletin of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science. The intended audience is general computer science audience.
The uncertainty principle asserts a limit to the precision with which position x and momentum p of a particle can be known simultaneously. You may know the probability distributions of x and p individually but the joint distribution makes no physical sense. Yet Wigner exhibited such a joint distribution f(x,p). There was, however, a little trouble with it: some of its values were negative. Nevertheless Wigner's discovery attracted attention and found applications. There are other joint distribution, all with negative values, which produce the correct marginal distributions of x and p. But only Wigner's distribution produces the correct marginal distributions for all linear combinations of position and momentum. We offer a simple proof of the uniqueness and discuss related issues.
Weak measurements, non-classicality and negative probability
本文在(i)各种量子特征的非经典性检验之间建立了一个直接的、鲁棒的和密切的联系,例如,非布尔逻辑,量子相干性,非定域性,量子纠缠,量子不和谐;(ii)负概率,和(iii)异常弱值。已经显示[Adhikary等人,Eur. Phys. J. D,74(68):68,2020]经典联合概率方案的不存在产生了非定域性的充分条件,非定域性是一种不限于量子力学的非经典特征。利用伪概率得到了量子力学具有非经典特征的条件,伪概率是母伪投影的期望值。本文的关键是,可以取负值的伪概率可以直接作为异常弱值来度量。我们期望这为通过弱测量来测试非经典性开辟了新的途径,并且还对可测量的负伪概率提供了更深入的了解。一个量子游戏,违反经典概率规则的基础上,也提出了可以发挥通过采用弱测量。
Weak values, 'negative probability' and the uncertainty principle
量子跃迁可以看作是各种路径(例如费曼路径)之间干涉的结果,这些路径可以用变量$f$标记。试图确定f的值而不破坏通路之间的相干性会产生$\bar{f}$的弱值。我们表明$\bar{f}$是一个平均值,得到的振幅分布,可以在一般情况下,采取负值,按照不确定原理,不需要包含信息的实际范围内的值$f$,有助于过渡。我们还证明了这种交替分布的矩具有一些不寻常的性质,这可能会导致对弱测量结果的误解。我们提供了一个详细的分析,弱测量后选择和不后选择。例子包括双缝衍射实验、弱冯·诺依曼和类冯·诺依曼测量、弹性碰撞的穿越时间、相位时间、局部角动量(LAM)和{ \it Aharonov et al}的“三箱情况”
Negative probabilities and Counterfactual Reasoning on the double-slit Experiment
本文试图从基本原理出发,建立负(准)几率分布理论,并将其应用于量子力学双缝实验的研究。我们这样做的方式保留了主要概念问题的完整性,但通过用马赫-曾德干涉仪来表示双缝实验,可以进行更清晰的分析,并表明与双缝相关的量子系统的主要特征也存在于马赫-曾德干涉仪中。这将问题从连续随机变量表示转换为离散随机变量表示。然后,我们表明,马赫-曾德尔干涉仪,不存在负概率是一致的干扰和哪些路径的信息,相反,费曼认为。然而,与Scully et al.的实验,如果我们减少有关系统的实验信息量,并依靠反事实推理,可以为Mach-Zehnder实验构造一个联合负概率分布。