The fact that not all quantum observables are jointly measurable is one of the major differences between quantum and classical theory. In the former, non-commuting observables can only be simultaneously measured with limited precision. We report on an experimental implementation of such a simultaneous measurement of two non-commuting observables based on the framework of weak von Neumann measurements. We use a photonic setup where the polarisation degree of freedom acts as the system and the two components of the transversal position correspond to the pointers of the measurement apparatuses. In addition, the theory shows that these weak measurements demonstrate a counter-intuitive non-monotonicity: weaker measurements can potentially reveal more information than stronger ones.
Heisenberg uncertainty relation in quantum mechanics sets the limit on the measurement precision of non-commuting observables, which prevents us from measuring them accurately at the same time. In some applications, however, the information are embedded in two or more non-commuting observables. On the other hand, quantum entanglement allows us to infer through Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations two conjugate observables with precision better than what is allowed by Heisenberg uncertainty relation. With the help of the newly developed SU(1,1) interferometer, we implement a scheme to measure j…
Sequential weak measurements of non-commuting observables is not only fundamentally interesting in quantum measurement but also shown potential in various applications. The previous reported methods, however, can only realize limited sequential weak measurements experimentally. In this Letter, we propose the realization of sequential measurements of arbitrary observables and experimentally demonstrate for the first time the measurement of sequential weak values of three non-commuting Pauli observables by using genuine single photons. The results presented here will not only improve our underst…
In quantum mechanics, measurements cause wavefunction collapse that yields precise outcomes, for non-commuting observables such as position and momentum Heisenberg's uncertainty principle limits the intrinsic precision of a state. Although theoretical work has demonstrated the possibility to perform simultaneous non-commuting measurements and has revealed the limits on measurement outcomes, only recently has the dynamics of the quantum state been discussed. To realize this unexplored regime, we simultaneously apply two continuous quantum non-demolition probes of non-commuting observables to a …
We consider the state determination problem using Mutually Unbiased Bases(MUBs). For spin-1, spin-3/2 and spin-2 systems, analogous to Pauli operators of spin-1/2 system, which are experimentally implementable and correspond to the optimum measurement in characterizing the density matrix, we describe a procedure to construct an orthonormal set of operators from MUBs. The constructed operators are maximally commuting, can be physically realized, and correspond to physical observables. The method of construction is general enough to allow for extensions to higher-dimensional spin systems and arb…
It is known that non-commuting observables in quantum mechanics do not have joint probability. This statement refers to the precise (additive) probability model. I show that the joint distribution of any non-commuting pair of variables can be quantified via upper and lower probabilities, i.e. the joint probability is described by an interval instead of a number (imprecise probability). I propose transparent axioms from which the upper and lower probability operators follow. They depend only on the non-commuting observables and revert to the usual expression for the commuting case.
In the study of Heisenberg's error-disturbance relation, it is commonly believed that the non-unitary change of states hinders us from deducing the information encoded in original states about subsequently measured observable. However, we find that the disturbance can be corrected iff the pre-measurement is non-projective. In this work, by analysing the effect of decoherence on statistics of the subsequential measurement, we find the acquired information from pre-measurement can be used to developed a correction strategy, and then the information about post-measured observable can be recovered…
In contrast to a projective quantum measurement in which the system is projected onto an eigenstate of the measured operator, in a weak measurement the system is only weakly perturbed while only partial information on the measured observable is obtained. A full description of such measurement should describe the measurement protocol and provide an explicit form of the measurement operator that transform the quantum state to its post measurement form. A simultaneous measurement of non-commuting observables cannot be projective, however the strongest possible such measurement can be defined as p…
Estimation of expectation values of incompatible observables is an essential practical task in quantum computing, especially for approximating energies of chemical and other many-body quantum systems. In this work we introduce a method for this purpose based on performing a single joint measurement that can be implemented locally and whose marginals yield noisy (unsharp) versions of the target set of non-commuting Pauli observables. We derive bounds on the number of experimental repetitions required to estimate energies up to a certain precision. We compare this strategy to the classical shado…
We analyze the continuous measurement of two non-commuting observables for a qubit, and investigate whether the simultaneously observed noisy signals are consistent with the evolution of an equivalent classical system. Following the approach outlined by Leggett and Garg, we show that the readouts violate macrorealistic inequalities for arbitrarily short temporal correlations. Moreover, the derived inequalities are manifestly violated even in the absence of Hamiltonian evolution, unlike for Leggett-Garg inequalities that use a single continuous measurement. Such a violation should indicate the …
We consider the temporal correlations of the quantum state of a qubit subject to simultaneous continuous measurement of two non-commuting qubit observables. Such qubit state correlators are defined for an ensemble of qubit trajectories, which has the same fixed initial state and can also be optionally constrained by a fixed final state. We develop a stochastic path integral description for the continuous quantum measurement and use it to calculate the considered correlators. Exact analytic results are possible in the case of ideal measurements of equal strength and are also shown to agree with…
According to Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, there is an ultimate limit to how precisely we may predict the outcome of position and momentum measurements on a quantum system. We show that this limit may be violated by an arbitrarily large factor if one aims, instead, to guess the unknown value of a past measurement. For experiments on a single quantum system, the precise assignment of past position and momentum measurement outcomes is accompanied by large uncertainty about their linear combinations, while we show that entanglement with an ancillary system permits accurate retrodiction of an…
In this article, we revisit the century-old question of the minimal set of observables needed to identify a quantum state: here, we replace the natural coincidences in their spectra by effective ones, induced by an imperfect measurement. We show that if the detection error is smaller than the mean level spacing, then two observables with Poisson spectra will suffice, no matter how large the system is. The primary target of our findings is the integrable (i.e. exactly solvable) quantum systems whose spectra do obey the Poisson statistics. We also consider the implications of our findings for cl…
Quantum systems usually travel a multitude of different paths when evolving through time from an initial to a final state. In general, the possible paths will depend on the future and past boundary conditions, as well as the system's dynamics. We present a gedanken experiment where a single system apparently follows mutually exclusive paths simultaneously, each with probability one, depending on which measurement was performed. This experiment involves the measurement of observables that do not correspond to Hermitian operators. Our main result is a scheme for measuring these operators. The sc…
Considering the simultaneous measurement of non-commuting observables, we define a geometric measure for the degree of non-commuting behavior of quantum measurements coming from the initial and final states of the measurements. The rationality of our geometric measure is demonstrated and the application of it is presented. The connection between our measure and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is discussed as well. Our work deepens the understanding of quantum non-commuting measurement.
We consider the simultaneous and continuous measurement of qubit observables $σ_z$ and $σ_z\cosφ+ σ_x\sinφ$, focusing on the temporal correlations of the two output signals. Using quantum Bayesian theory, we derive analytical expressions for the correlators, which we find to be in very good agreement with experimentally measured output signals. We further discuss how the correlators can be applied to parameter estimation, and use them to infer a small residual qubit Hamiltonian arising from calibration inaccuracy in the experimental data.
We give an overview of joint unsharp measurements of non-commuting observables using positive operator valued measures (POVMs). We exemplify the role played by joint measurability of POVMs in entropic uncertainty relation for Alice's pair of non-commuting observables in the presence of Bob's entangled quantum memory. We show that Bob should record the outcomes of incompatible (non-jointly measurable) POVMs in his quantum memory so as to beat the entropic uncertainty bound. In other words, in addition to the presence of entangled Alice-Bob state, implementing incompatible POVMs at Bob's end is …
We develop a general framework to investigate fluctuations of non-commuting observables. To this end, we consider the Keldysh quasi-probability distribution (KQPD). This distribution provides a measurement-independent description of the observables of interest and their time-evolution. Nevertheless, positive probability distributions for measurement outcomes can be obtained from the KQPD by taking into account the effect of measurement back-action and imprecision. Negativity in the KQPD can be linked to an interference effect and acts as an indicator for non-classical behavior. Notable example…
Although quantum metrology allows us to make precision measurement beyond the standard quantum limit, it mostly works on the measurement of only one observable due to Heisenberg uncertainty relation on the measurement precision of non-commuting observables for one system. In this paper, we study the schemes of joint measurement of multiple observables which do not commute with each other by using the quantum entanglement between two systems. We focus on analyzing the performance of newly developed SU(1,1) interferometer on fulfilling the task of joint measurement. The results show that the inf…
The existence of a real linear-space structure on the set of observables of a quantum system -- i.e., the requirement that the linear combination of two generally non-commuting observables $A,B$ is an observable as well -- is a fundamental postulate of the quantum theory yet before introducing any structure of algebra. However, it is by no means clear how to choose the measuring instrument of the composed observable $aA+bB$ ($a,b\in \mathbb{R}$) if such measuring instruments are given for the addends observables $A$ and $B$ when they are incompatible observables. A mathematical version of this…
Strong subadditivity goes beyond the tensored subsystem and commuting operator models. As previously noted by Petz and later by Araki and Moriya, two subalgebras of observables satisfy a generalized SSA-like inequality if they form a commuting square. We explore the interpretation and consequences in finite dimensions, connecting various entropic uncertainty relations for mutually unbiased bases with the positivity of a generalized conditional mutual information (CMI), and with inequalities on relative entropies of coherence and asymmetry. We obtain a bipartite resource theory of operations un…
In 1940 Naimark showed that if a set of quantum observables are positive semi-definite and sum to the identity then, on a larger space, they have a joint resolution as commuting projectors. In 1955 Sz.-Nagy showed that any set of observables could be so resolved, with the resolution respecting all linear sums. Crucially, both resolutions return the correct Born probabilities for the original observables. Here, an alternative proof of the Sz.-Nagy result is given using elementary inner product spaces. A version of the resolution is then shown to respect all products of observables on the base s…
We prove uncertainty relations that quantitatively express the impossibility of jointly sharp preparation of pre- and post-selected quantum states for measuring incompatible observables during the weak measurement. By defining a suitable operator whose average in the pre-selected quantum state gives the weak value, we show that one can have new uncertainty relations for variances of two such operators corresponding to two non-commuting observables. These generalize the recent stronger uncertainty relations that give non-trivial lower bounds for the sum of variances of two observables which ful…
Enhanced measurements on quantum computers via the simultaneous probing of non-commuting Pauli operators
University of Exeter（埃克塞特大学）；Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学量子计算研究所）；Department of Combinatorics & Optimization, University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学组合优化系）
We analyse our recently proposed experiment to witness indirectly non-commuting degrees of freedom in gravity, in the light of the analogy between the electromagnetic and the gravitational field. We thereby identify the non-commuting gravitational degrees of freedom in the linear regime of Einstein's General Relativity. They are the electric-like and the magnetic-like components of the Christoffel symbol, in the weak limit of gravity. The equivalence principle can then be used to suggest further experiments of the quantum nature of gravity, exploiting acceleration only.
Quantum non-locality is normally defined via violations of Bell's inequalities that exclude certain classical hidden variable theories from explaining quantum correlations. Another definition of non-locality refers to the wave-function collapse thereby one can prepare a quantum state from arbitrary far away. In both cases one can debate on whether non-locality is a real physical phenomenon, e.g. one can employ formulations of quantum mechanics that does not use collapse, or one can simply refrain from explaining quantum correlations via classical hidden variables. Here we point out that there …
We propose a new measure of relative incompatibility for a quantum system with respect to two non-commuting observables, and call it quantumness of relative incompatibility. In case of a classical state, order of observation is inconsequential, hence probability distribution of outcomes of any observable remains undisturbed. We define relative entropy of the two marginal probability distributions as a measure of quantumness in the state, which is revealed only in presence of two non-commuting observables. Like all other measures, we show that the proposed measure satisfies some basic axioms. A…
A tight information-theoretic measurement uncertainty relation is experimentally tested with neutron spin-1/2 qubits. The noise associated to the measurement of an observable is defined via conditional Shannon entropies and a tradeoff relation between the noises for two arbitrary spin observables is demonstrated. The optimal bound of this tradeoff is experimentally obtained for various non-commuting spin observables. For some of these observables this lower bound can be reached with projective measurements, but we observe that, in other cases, the tradeoff is only saturated by general quantum …
