There exists a commonly accepted viewpoint that a movable mirror in an interferometer should cause interference breakdown due to a quantum jump to one of the two components of a photon mode. That effect goes back to Dirac. We argue that the conventional reasoning is inadequate: First, it would be more circumspect to interpret interference breakdown as being due to the entanglement of the photon with the mirror, not referring to quantum jumps. Second--and crucial--even in such an interpretation, the reasoning does not take into account the uncertainty of the mirror momentum. The effect of the entanglement and interference breakdown would take place if the uncertainty were much less than the recoil momentum, which is of the order of the photon momentum. However, an examination leads to the conclusion that for an actual mirror the opposite situation occurs. Thus there should be no such effect.
Recently it has been proposed to use parity as a measure of the mechanism behind decoherence or the transformation from quantum to classical. Here, we show that the proposed experiment is more feasible than previously thought, as even an initial thermal state would exhibit the hypothesized symmetry breaking.
Following almost a century of debate on possible `independent of measurement' elements of reality, or `induced' elements of reality - originally invoked as an ad-hoc collapse postulate, we propose a novel line of interference experiments which may be able to examine the regime of induced elements of reality. At the basis of the proposed experiment, lies the hypothesis that all models of 'induced' elements of reality should exhibit symmetry breaking within quantum evolution. The described {\em symmetry experiment} is thus aimed at being able to detect and resolve symmetry breaking signatures.
We propose a quantum optical version of Schrödinger's famous gedanken experiment in which the state of a microscopic system (a cavity field) becomes entangled with and disentangled from the state of a massive object (a movable mirror). Despite the fact that a mixture of Schrödinger cat states is produced during the evolution (due to the fact that the macroscopic mirror starts off in a thermal state), this setup allows us to systematically probe the rules by which a superposition of spatially separated states of a macroscopic object decoheres. The parameter regime required to test environment-i…
We demonstrate that a classical emulation of quantum gate operations, here represented by an actual analog electronic device, can be modeled accurately as a quantum operation in terms of a universal set of Pauli operators. This observation raises the possibility that quantum error correction methods may be applied to classical systems to improve fault tolerance.
We show that the quantum description of measurement based on decoherence fixes the bug in quantum theory discussed in [D. Frauchiger and R. Renner, {\em Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself}, Nat. Comm. {\bf 9}, 3711 (2018)]. Assuming that the outcome of a measurement is determined by environment-induced superselection rules, we prove that different agents acting on a particular system always reach the same conclusions about its actual state.
This paper is concerned with quantum dynamics of a system coupled to a critical reservoir. In this context, we employ the Dicke model which is known to exhibit a super radiant quantum phase transition (QPT) and we allow one of the mirrors to move under a linear restoring force. The electromagnetic field couples to the movable mirror though radiation pressure just like in typical optomechanical setups. We show that, in the thermodynamical limit, the super-radiant phase induces a classical driving force on the mirror without causing decoherence.
In addition to being a very interesting quantum phenomenon, Schrödinger cat swapping has the potential for application in the preparation of quantum states that could be used in metrology and other quantum processing. We study in detail the effects of field decoherence on a cat-swapping system comprising a set of identical qubits, or spins, all coupled to a field mode. We demonstrate that increasing the number of spins actually mitigates the effects of field decoherence on the collapse and revival of a spin Schrödinger cat, which could be of significant utility in quantum metrology and other q…
We study the quantum dynamics of a Michelson interferometer with Fabry-Perot cavity arms and one movable end mirror, and driven by a single photon --- an optomechanical device previously studied by Marshall et al. as a device that searches for gravity decoherence. We obtain an exact analytical solution for the system's quantum mechanical equations of motion, including details about the exchange of the single photon between the cavity mode and the external continuum. The resulting time evolution of the interferometer's fringe visibility displays interesting new features when the incoming photon…
Decoherence is studied in an attractive proposal for an actual implementation of a quantum computer based on trapped ions. Emphasis is placed on the decoherence arising from the vibrational motion of the ions, which is compared with that due to spontaneous emission from excited states of the ions. The calculation is made tractable by exploiting the vast difference in time scales between the vibrational excitations and the intra-ionic electronic excitations. Since the latter are several orders of magnitude faster, an adiabatic approximation is used to integrate them out and find the inclusive p…
We study the spontaneous decoherence of the coupled harmonic oscillators confined in a ring container, where the nearest-neighbor harmonic potentials are taken into consideration. Without any external symmetry breaking field or surrounding environment, the quantum superposition state prepared in the relative degrees of freedom gradually loses its quantum coherence spontaneously. This spontaneous decoherence is interpreted by the hidden couplings between the center-of-mass and relative degrees of freedoms, which actually originates from the symmetries of the ring geometry and corresponding nont…
This paper provides a general theory for characterizing and constructing a decoherence-free (DF) subsystem for an infinite dimensional linear open quantum system. The main idea is that, based on the Heisenberg picture of the dynamics rather than the commonly-taken Schrodinger picture, the notions of controllability and observability in control theory are employed to characterize a DF subsystem. A particularly useful result is a general if and only if condition for a linear system to have a DF component; this condition is used to demonstrate how to actually construct a DF dynamics in some speci…
Decoherence is widely felt to have something to do with the quantum measurement problem, but getting clear on just what is made difficult by the fact that the "measurement problem", as traditionally presented in foundational and philosophical discussions, has become somewhat disconnected from the conceptual problems posed by real physics. This, in turn, is because quantum mechanics as discussed in textbooks and in foundational discussions has become somewhat removed from scientific practice, especially where the analysis of measurement is concerned. This paper has two goals: firstly (sections …
We theoretically introduce a new kind of non-Gaussian state-----Laguerre polynomial excited coherent states by using the multiphoton catalysis which actually can be considered as a block comprising photon number operator. It is found that the normalized factor is related to the two-variable Hermite polynomials. We then investigate the nonclassical properties in terms of Mandel's Q parameter, quadrature squeezing, second correlation, and the negativity of Wigner function (WF). It is shown that all these properties are related to the amplitude of coherent state, catalysis number and unbalanced b…
Entangled states can potentially be used to outperform the standard quantum limit which every classical sensor is bounded by. However, entangled states are very susceptible to decoherence, and so it is not clear whether one can really create a superior sensor to classical technology via a quantum strategy which is subject to the effect of realistic noise. This paper presents an investigation of how a quantum sensor composed of many spins is affected by independent dephasing. We adopt general noise models including non-Markovian effects, and in these noise models the performance of the sensor d…
In this paper we use the Fano representation of two-qubit states from which we can identify a correlation matrix containing the information about the classical and quantum correlations present in the bipartite quantum state. To illustrate the use of this matrix, we analyze the behavior of the correlations under non-dissipative decoherence in two-qubit states with maximally mixed marginals. From the behavior of the elements of the correlation matrix before and after making measurements on one of the subsystems, we identify the classical and quantum correlations present in the Bell-diagonal stat…
We investigate a Bell-type inequality for probabilities of detected atoms formulated using atom-photon interactions in a cavity. We consider decoherence brought about by both atomic decay, as well as cavity photon loss, and study its quantitative action in diminishing the atom-field and the resultant atom-atom secondary correlations. We show that the effects of decoherence on nonlocality can be observed in a controlled manner in actual experiments involving the micromaser and also the microlaser.
Quantum computing promises to provide exponential speed-ups to certain classes of problems. In many such algorithms, a classical vector $\mathbf{b}$ is encoded in the amplitudes of a quantum state $\left |b \right >$. However, efficiently preparing $\left |b \right >$ is known to be a difficult problem because an arbitrary state of $Q$ qubits generally requires approximately $2^Q$ entangling gates, which results in significant decoherence on today's Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers. We present a deterministic (nonvariational) algorithm that allows one to flexibly reduce the qu…
It is shown that many dissipative phenomena of "old" quantum mechanics which appeared 100 years ago in the form of the statistics of quantum thermal noise and quantum spontaneous jumps, have never been explained by the "new" conservative quantum mechanics discovered 75 years ago by Heisenberg and Schroedinger. This led to numerous quantum paradoxes which are reconsidered in this paper. The development of quantum measurement theory, initiated by von Neumann, indicated a possibility for resolution of this interpretational crisis by divorcing the algebra of the dynamical generators from the algeb…
In quantum computation, it is of paramount importance to locate the parameter space where maximal coherence can be preserved in the qubit system. In recent years environment-induced decoherence based the quantum Brownian motion (QBM) models have been applied to two level systems (2LS) interacting with an electromagnetic field, leading to the general belief that 2LS are easily decohered. In a recent paper C. Anastopoulos and B. L. Hu [Phys. Rev. A62, (2000) 033821] derived a new exact non-Markovian master equation at zero temperature, from which they showed that this belief is actually misplace…
The problem of measurement is often considered as an inconsistency inside the quantum formalism. Many attempts to solve (or to dissolve) it have been made since the inception of quantum mechanics. The form of these attempts depends on the philosophical position that their authors endorse. I will review some of them and analyze their relevance. The phenomenon of decoherence is often presented as a solution lying inside the pure quantum formalism and not demanding any particular philosophical assumption. Nevertheless, a widely debated question is to decide between two different interpretations. …
Methods for quantifying environmentally induced decoherence in quantum systems are investigated. We formulate criteria for measuring the degree of decoherence and consider several representative examples, including a spin interacting with the modes of a bosonic, e.g., phonon, bath. We formulate an approach based on the operator norm measuring the deviation of the actual density matrix from the ideal one which would describe the system without environmental interactions.
Laser control of Open Quantum Systems (OQS) is a challenging issue as compared to its counterpart in isolated small size molecules, basically due to very large numbers of degrees of freedom to be accounted for. Such a control aims at appropriately optimizing decoherence processes of a central two-level system (a given vibrational mode, for instance) towards its environmental bath (including, for instance, all other normal modes). A variety of applications could potentially be envisioned, either to preserve the central system from decaying (long duration molecular alignment or orientation, qubi…
The quantum measurement problem still finds no consensus. Nonlocal interferometry provides an unprecedented experimental probe by entangling two photons in the "measurement state" (MS). The experiments show that each photon "measures" the other; the resulting entanglement decoheres both photons; decoherence collapses both photons to unpredictable but definite outcomes; and the two-photon MS continues evolving coherently. Thus, contrary to common opinion, when a two-part system is in the MS, the outcomes actually observed at both subsystems are definite. Although standard quantum physics postul…
Quantum annealing (QA) is one of the efficient methods to calculate the ground-state energy of a problem Hamiltonian. In the absence of noise, QA can accurately estimate the ground-state energy if the adiabatic condition is satisfied. However, in actual physical implementation, systems suffer from decoherence. On the other hand, much effort has been paid into the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computation research. For practical NISQ computation, many error mitigation (EM) methods have been devised to remove noise effects. In this paper, we propose a QA strategy combined with the EM m…
Schemes of gravitationally induced decoherence are being actively investigated as possible mechanisms for the quantum-to-classical transition. Here, we introduce a decoherence process due to quantum gravity effects. We assume a foamy quantum spacetime with a fluctuating minimal length coinciding on average with the Planck scale. Considering deformed canonical commutation relations with a fluctuating deformation parameter, we derive a Lindblad master equation that yields localization in energy space and decoherence times consistent with the currently available observational evidence. Compared t…
Carpet-type structures constitute an ideal laboratory to study and analyze the robustness of the interference process that underlies this phenomenon against the harmful effects of decoherence. Here, without losing any generality, for simplicity, the case of a particle with a mass m is considered and described by a localized state corresponding to the ground state of a square box of width w, which is released inside a wider cavity (with a width L > w). The effects of decoherence are then numerically investigated by means of a simple dynamical model that captures the essential features of the ph…
We employ the theoretical framework of positive operator valued measures, to study Markovian open quantum systems. In particular, we discuss how a quantum system influences its environment. Using the theory of indirect measurements, we then draw conclusions about the information we could hypothetically obtain about the system by observing the environment. Although the environment is not actually observed, we can use these results to describe the change of the quantum system due to its interaction with the environment. We apply this technique to two different problems. In the first part, we stu…
The present work reports on an extended research endeavor focused on the theoretical and experimental realization of a macroscopic quantum superposition (MQS) made up with photons. As it is well known, this intriguing, fundamental quantum condition is at the core of a famous argument conceived by Erwin Schroedinger, back in 1935. The main experimental challenge to the actual realization of this object resides generally on the unavoidable and uncontrolled interactions with the environment, i.e. the decoherence leading to the cancellation of any evidence of the quantum features associated with t…
A theory recently proposed by the author aims to explain decoherence and the thermodynamical behaviour of closed systems within a conservative, unitary, framework for quantum gravity by assuming that the operators tied to the gravitational degrees of freedom are unobservable and equating physical entropy with matter-gravity entanglement entropy. Here we obtain preliminary results on the extent of decoherence this theory predicts. We treat first a static state which, if one were to ignore quantum gravitational effects, would be a quantum superposition of two spatially displaced states of a sing…
How Quantum Contextuality disappears in the Classical Limit
Instituto de Matemática, Estatística e Computação Científica, Universidade Estadual de Campinas（坎皮纳斯州立大学数学、统计与科学计算研究所）；Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics（理论物理前沿研究所）
Qubits, the quantum mechanical bits required for quantum computing, must retain their fragile quantum states over long periods of time. In many types of electron spin qubits, the primary source of decoherence is the interaction between the electron spins and nuclear spins of the host lattice. For electrons in gate defined GaAs quantum dots, previous spin echo measurements have revealed coherence times of about 1 $μ$s at low magnetic fields below 100 mT. Here, we show that coherence in such devices can actually survive to much longer times, and provide a detailed understanding of the measured n…
Starting with unitary quantum dynamics, we investigate how to add quantum measurements. Quantum measurements have four essential components: the furcation, the witness production, an alignment projection, and the actual choice decision. The first two components still lie in the domain of unitary quantum dynamics. The decoherence concept explains the third contribution. It can be based on the requirement that witnesses reaching the end of time on the wave function side and the conjugate one have to be identical. In this way, it also stays within the quantum dynamics domain. The surjection hypot…
In this essay a quantum-dualistic, perspectival and synchronistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is further developed in which the classical world-from-decoherence which is perceived (decoherence) and the perceived world-in-consciousness which is classical (collapse) are not necessarily identified. Thus, Quantum Reality or "{\it unus mundus}" is seen as both i) a physical non-perspectival causal Reality where the quantum-to-classical transition is operated by decoherence, and as ii) a quantum linear superposition of all classical psycho-physical perspectival Realities which are governed b…
Quantum systems are always subject to interactions with an environment, typically resulting in decoherence and distortion of quantum correlations. It has been recently shown that a controlled interaction with the environment may actually help to create a state, dubbed as {\em ``dark''}, which is immune to decoherence. To encode quantum information in the dark states, they need to span a space with a dimensionality larger than one, so different orthogonal states act as a computational basis. We devise a symmetry-based conceptual framework to engineer such degenerate dark spaces (DDS), protected…
The essential feature of weak measurements on quantum systems is the reduction of measurement back-action to negligible levels. To observe the non-classical features of weak measurements, it is therefore more important to avoid additional back-action errors than it is to avoid errors in the actual measurement outcome. In this paper, it is shown how an optical weak measurement of diagonal (PM) polarization can be realized by path interference between the horizontal (H) and vertical (V) polarization components of the input beam. The measurement strength can then be controlled by rotating the H a…
The von Neumann theory of measurement, based on an entanglement of the quantum observable with a classical machine followed by decoherence or collapse, does not readily apply to most measurements of momentum. Indeed, how we measure the momentum of a quantum particle is not even discussed in most quantum mechanics textbooks. Instead, we often teach the lore that position and momentum cannot be measured at the same time. Yet, most ways to measure momentum actually involve measuring position to infer momentum. In this tutorial review, I examine real experiments that measure momentum and describe …
In this paper we analyze the interaction of a uniformly accelerated detector with a quantum field in (3+1)D spacetime, aiming at the issue of how kinematics can render vacuum fluctuations the appearance of thermal radiance in the detector (Unruh effect) and how they engender flux of radiation for observers afar. Two basic questions are addressed in this study: a) How are vacuum fluctuations related to the emitted radiation? b) Is there emitted radiation with energy flux in the Unruh effect? We adopt a method which places the detector and the field on an equal footing and derive the two-point c…
