Heisenberg in 1929 introduced the "collapse of the wavepacket" into quantum theory. We review here an experiment at Berkeley which demonstrated several aspects of this idea. In this experiment, a pair of daughter photons was produced in an entangled state, in which the sum of their two energies was equal to the sharp energy of their parent photon, in the nonlinear optical process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The wavepacket of one daughter photon collapsed upon a measurement-at-a-distance of the other daughter's energy, in such a way that the total energy of the two-photon system was conserved. Heisenberg's energy-time uncertainty principle was also demonstrated to hold in this experiment.
We investigate the short-, medium-, and long-term time dependence of wave packets in the infinite square well. In addition to emphasizing the appearance of wave packet revivals, i.e., situations where a spreading wave packet reforms with close to its initial shape and width, we also examine in detail the approach to the collapsed phase where the position-space probability density is almost uniformly spread over the well. We focus on visualizing these phenomena in both position- and momentum-space as well as by following the time-dependent expectation values of and uncertainties in position and…
I propose to resolve the controversy over the speed of collapse of quantum-mechanical wavefunctions by means of an experimental test with a modified symmetric Mach-Zehnder atom interferometer, with non-intersecting, parallel, widely separated final beams. According to the conventional collapse scenario, the coherent twin-peak atomic wavefunction in the beams of the interferometer suffers an instantaneous collapse, at infinite speed, when the atom is captured by one of the two detectors at the ends of the beams, but it remains coherent until that instant. In contrast, according to the Hellwig-K…
We show the usefulness of the Fisher-Shannon information product in the study of the sequence of collapses and revivals that take place along the time evolution of quantum wavepackets. This fact is illustrated in two models, the quantum bouncer and a graphene quantum ring.
The time-frequency degree of freedom of the electromagnetic field is the final frontier for single-photon measurements. The temporal and spectral distribution a measurement retrodicts (that is, the state it projects onto) is determined by the detector's intrinsic resonance structure. In this paper, we construct ideal and more realistic positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) that project onto arbitrary single-photon wavepackets with high efficiency and low noise. We discuss applications to super-resolved measurements and quantum communication. In doing so we will give a fully quantum descrip…
Determinism is established in quantum mechanics by tracing the probabilities in the Born rules back to the absolute (overall) phase constants of the wave functions and recognizing these phase constants as pseudorandom numbers. The reduction process (collapse) is independent of measurement. It occurs when two wavepackets overlap in ordinary space and satisfy a certain criterion, which depends on the phase constants of both wavepackets. Reduction means contraction of the wavepackets to the place of overlap. The measurement apparatus fans out the incoming wavepacket into spatially separated eigen…
We apply the formalism of quantum measurement theory to the idealized measurement of the position of a particle with an optical interferometer, finding that the backaction of counting entangled photons systematically collapses the particle's wavefunction toward a narrow Gaussian wavepacket at the location $x_\mathrm{est}$ determined by the measurement without appeal to environmental decoherence or other spontaneous collapse mechanism. Further, the variance in the particle's position, as calculated from the post-measurement wavefunction agrees precisely with shot-noise limited uncertainty of th…
Inofrmation-theoretical restrictions on information transferred in the measurement of object S by information system O are studied. It is shown that such constraints, induced by Heisenberg commutation relations, result in the loss of information about the purity of S state. Consequently, it becomes impossible for O to discriminate pure and mixed S states. In individual events this effect is manifested by the stochastic outcomes of pure S state measurement, i.e. the collapse of pure S state.
We consider the collapse of a macroscopic quantum superposition occurring due to the measurement which optimally distinguishes its branches. Given a macroscopic superposition of N spin-1/2 particles, we use such a Helstrom measurement to construct the local unitary operator which maximizes the usefulness of the superposition for Heisenberg-limited phase estimation (i.e., with quantum Cramér Rao bound proportional to 1/N). In contrast, the collapsed state is not useful as a probe for phase estimation below the standard quantum limit. For the case N=2, we compute the entanglement entropy of the …
Every solution of the Bethe-ansatz equations (BAE) is characterized by a set of quantum numbers, by which we can evaluate it numerically. However, no general rule is known how to give quantum numbers for the physical solutions of BAE. For the spin-1/2 XXX chain we rigorously derive all the quantum numbers for the complete set of the Bethe-ansatz eigenvectors in the two down-spin sector with any chain length $N$. Here we obtain them both for real and complex solutions. Consequently, we prove the completeness of the Bethe ansatz and give an exact expression for the number of real solutions which…
Various thermal correlations as well as the effect of intrinsic decoherence on the correlations are studied in a two-qubit Heisenberg XYZ spin chain with the Dzyaloshinski--Moriya (DM) interaction along the z direction, i.e. Dz. It is found that tunable parameter Dz may play a constructive role on the concurrence (C), classical correlation (CC) and quantum discord (QD) in thermal equilibrium while it plays a destructive role on the correlations in the intrinsic decoherence case. The entanglement and quantum discord exhibit collapse and revival under the phase decoherence. With a proper combina…
Quantum Zeno effect is conventionally interpreted by the assumption of the wave-packet collapse, in which does not involve the duration of measurement. However, we predict duration $τ_m$ of each measurement will appear in quantum Zeno effect by a dynamical approach. Moreover, there exists a model-free critical measurement time, which quantum Zeno effect does not occur when $τ_m$ takes some special values. In order to give these predictions, we first present a description of quantum Zeno effect in the Heisenberg picture, which is based on the expectation value of an observable and its fluctuati…
Information-theoretical restrictions on the information transfer in quantum measurements are studied. They are derived for the measurement of system S by detector D, registrated and processed by information system O. The formalism of inference maps in Hilbert space is used for it; it permit to calculate O restricted state which contains available for O information on S parameters. It's shown that the principal information losses, inevitable in this formalism and induced by Heisenberg commutation relations, stipulate the stochasticity of measurement outcomes, registrated by O in the individual …
Collapse models postulate that space is filled with a collapse noise field, inducing quantum Brownian motions which are dominant during the measurement, thus causing collapse of the wave function. An important manifestation of collapse noise field, if any, is thermal energy generation, thus disturbing the temperature profile of a system. The experimental investigation of collapse-driven heating effect has provided, so far, the most promising test of collapse models against standard quantum theory. In this paper, we calculate the collapse-driven heat generation for a three-dimensional multi-ato…
The global-state fidelity cannot characterize those quantum phase transitions (QPTs) induced by continuous level crossing due to its collapse around each crossing point. In this paper, we take the isotropic Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model and the antiferromagnetic one-dimensional Heisenberg model as examples to show that the partial-state fidelity can signal such level-crossing QPTs. Extending to the thermodynamic limit we introduce the partial-state fidelity susceptibility and study its scaling behavior. The maximum of the partial-state fidelity susceptibility goes like $N$ for the LMG model…
In this paper, we study the quantum properties for a system that consists of a central atom interacting with surrounding spins through the Heisenberg $XX$ couplings of equal strength. Employing the Heisenberg equations of motion we manage to derive an exact solution for the dynamical operators. We consider that the central atom and its surroundings are initially prepared in the excited state and in the coherent spin state, respectively. For this system, we investigate the evolution of variance squeezing and entanglement. The nonclassical effects have been remarked in the behavior of all compon…
It is argued that quantum theory is best understood as requiring an ontological duality of res extensa and res potentia, where the latter is understood per Heisenberg's original proposal, and the former is roughly equivalent to Descartes' 'extended substance.' However, this is not a dualism of mutually exclusive substances in the classical Cartesian sense, and therefore does not inherit the infamous 'mind-body' problem. Rather, res potentia and res extensa are proposed as mutually implicative ontological extants that serve to explain the key conceptual challenges of quantum theory; in particul…
It is widely known that `collapse of the wave function' on a quantum system A may be brought about by an interaction with another quantum system B. We will prove that this is not just a possible, but a necessary consequence of information transfer from A to B. We generalize this in order to explain why coherences are normally not observed in macroscopic quantum systems. Finally, we provide a quantitative insight into the balance between information gain and state disturbance. We define the quality of an information transfer. For all information transfers of a certain quality, we find a minimum…
Time-resolved correlation engineering in DLCZ Raman photon sources
National Cheng Kung University（国立成功大学）；National Tsing Hua University（国立清华大学）；Center for Quantum Science and Technology, National Tsing Hua University（国立清华大学量子科学与技术中心）；National Center for Excellence in Quantum Information Science and Engineering, National Tsing Hua University（国立清华大学国家量子信息与工程卓越中心）
We discuss an alternative version of non- relativistic Newtonian mechanics in terms of a real Hilbert space mathematical framework. It is demonstrated that the physics of this scheme correspondent with the standard formulation. Heisenberg-Schrodinger non-relativistic quantum mechanics is considered adequate and complete. Since the suggested theory is dispersion free, linear superposition principle is not violated but cannot affect results of measurements due to spectral decomposition theorem for self-adjoint operators (the collapse of wave function).
The main distinction between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is the lack in the latter of a full mechanical determinism: different final states can arise from the same physical state, after the measurement. No hidden variable is supposed to exist, nothing can discriminate two apparently identical states even if they give a different result. In this paper we try to put the basis for a more fundamental theory that (approximately) coincides with quantum mechanics when comparing statistics, but it is more fundamental, since it mathematically describes measurement processes giving an expl…
Self-interference embodies the essence of the particle-wave interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). According to the Copenhagen particle-wave interpretation of QM, self-interference by a double slit requires a large transverse coherence of the incident wavepacket such that it covers the separation between the slits. Bohmian dynamics provides a first step in the separation of the particle-wave character of particles by introducing deterministic trajectories guided by a pilot wave that follows the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. In this work, I present a theory for quantum dynamics that i…
We investigate for quantum dynamics in phase-space regions containing ``shearless tori''. We show that the properties of these peculiar classical phase-space structures -- important to the dynamics of tokamaks -- may be exploited for quantum information applications. In particular we show that shearless tori permit the non-dispersive transmission of localized wavepackets. The quantum many-body Hamiltonian of a Heisenberg ferromagnetic spin chain, subjected to an oscillating magnetic field, can be reduced to a classical one-body ``image'' dynamical system which is the well-studied Harper map. T…
Quantum sensors have been shown to be superior to their classical counterparts in terms of resource efficiency. Such sensors have traditionally used the time evolution of special forms of initially entangled states, adaptive measurement basis change, or the ground state of many-body systems tuned to criticality. Here, we propose a different way of doing quantum sensing which exploits the dynamics of a many-body system, initialized in a product state, along with a sequence of projective measurements in a specific basis. The procedure has multiple practical advantages as it: (i) enables remote q…
Developing an earlier proposal (Ne'eman, Damnjanovic, etc), we show herein that there is a Landau continuous phase transition from the exact quantum dynamics to the effectively classical one, occurring via spontaneous superposition breaking (effective hiding), as a special case of the corresponding general formalism (Bernstein). Critical values of the order parameters for this transition are determined by Heisenberg's indeterminacy relations, change continuously, and are in excellent agreement with the recent and remarkable experiments with Bose condensation. It is also shown that such a phase…
The standard quantum formalism introduced at the undergraduate level treats measurement as an instantaneous collapse. In reality however, no physical process can occur over a truly infinitesimal time interval. A more subtle investigation of open quantum systems lead to the theory of continuous measurement and quantum trajectories, in which wave function collapse occurs over a finite time scale associated with an interaction. Within this formalism, it becomes possible to ask many new questions that would be trivial or even ill-defined in the context of the more basic measurement model. In this …
The superposition principle is one of the main tenets of quantum mechanics. Despite its counter-intuitiveness, it has been experimentally verified using electrons, photons, atoms, and molecules. However, a similar experimental demonstration using a nano or a micro particle is non-existent. Here in this Letter, exploiting macroscopic quantum coherence and quantum tunneling, we propose an experiment using levitated magnetic nanoparticle to demonstrate such an effect. It is shown that the spatial separation between the delocalized wavepackets of a $20~$nm ferrimagnetic yttrium iron garnet (YIG) n…
We first consider the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox for the system of two particles with spin 1/2 with entangled spins in first-quantized quantum mechanics (QM). If measurement is governed by wavefunction collapse, then gedanken experiments show that a number of fundamental principles including conservation of angular momentum and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle can be violated. We conclude that the collapse of the spin part of the wavefunction cannot happen and therefore an EPR paradox does not arise for this system. QM unitarity alone is sufficient to rule out "spooky" action at…
A giant Skyrmion collapses to a singular point by emitting spin waves in a thin ferromagnetic film, when external magnetic field is increased beyond the critical one. The remnant is a single-spin flipped (SSF) point. The SSF point has a quantum diffusion dynamics governed by the Heisenberg model. We determine its time evolution and show the diffusion process is a continuous-time quantum walk. We also analyze an interference of two SSF points after two Skyrmion bursts. Quantum walks for $S=1/2$ and 1 are exact solvable. The system presents a new type of quantum walk for $S>1/2$, where a SSF poi…
Classical mechanics is presented here in a unary operator form, constructed using the binary multiplication and Poisson bracket operations that are given in a phase space formalism, then a Gibbs equilibrium state over this unary operator algebra is introduced, which allows the construction of a Hilbert space as a representation space of a Heisenberg algebra, giving a noncommutative operator algebraic variant of the Koopman-von Neumann approach. In this form, the measurement theory for unary classical mechanics can be the same as and inform that for quantum mechanics, expanding classical mechan…
A particle is described as a non-spreading wave packet satisfying a linear equation within the framework of special relativity. Young's and other interference experiments are explained with a hypothesis that there is a coupling interaction between the peaked and non-peaked pieces of the wave packet. This explanation of the interference experiments provides a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. The interpretation implies that there is physical reality of particles and no wave function collapse. It also implies that neither classical mechanics nor current quantum mechanics is a comple…
Scrambling, a process in which quantum information spreads over a complex quantum system becoming inaccessible to simple probes, happens in generic chaotic quantum many-body systems, ranging from spin chains, to metals, even to black holes. Scrambling can be measured using out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs), which are closely tied to the growth of Heisenberg operators. In this work, we present a general method to calculate OTOCs of local operators in local one-dimensional systems based on approximating Heisenberg operators as matrix-product operators (MPOs). Contrary to the common belief …
In this paper we introduce the three main notions of probability used by physicists and discuss how these are to be used when invoking spacelike separated observers in a relativistic format. We discuss a standard EPRB experiment and concentrate upon problems of the interpretation of probabilities. We promote a particularly conservative interpretation of this experiment (which need not invoke an objective notion of collapse) where probabilities are, tentatively, passively Lorentz invariant. We also argue that the Heisenberg picture is preferable in relativistic situations due to a conflict betw…
The dynamics of two coupled spins-1/2 interacting with a spin-bath via the quantum Heisenberg XY coupling is studied. The pair of central spins served as a quantum open subsystem are initially prepared in two types of states: the product states and the Bell states. The bath, which consists of $N$ (in the thermodynamic limit $N\to\infty$) mutually coupled spins-1/2, is in a thermal state at the beginning. By the Holstein-Primakoff transformation, the model can be treated effectively as two spin qubits embedded in a single mode cavity. The time-evolution of the purity, z-component summation and …
We discuss phonon-induced non-Markovian and Markovian features in QD-based optics. We cover lineshapes in linear absorption experiments, phonon-induced incoherence in the Heitler regime, and memory correlations in two-photon coherences. To quantitatively and qualitatively understand the underlying physics, we present several theoretical models which model the non-Markovian properties of the electron-phonon interaction accurately in different regimes. Examples are the Heisenberg equation of motion approach, the polaron master equation, and Liouville-propagator techniques in the independent boso…
