Characterizing a statistical arrow of time in quantum measurement dynamics
Quantum Physics
2019-07-17 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Statistical Mechanics
Atomic Physics
Abstract
In both thermodynamics and quantum mechanics the arrow of time is characterized by the statistical likelihood of physical processes. We characterize this arrow of time for the continuous quantum measurement dynamics of a superconducting qubit. By experimentally tracking individual weak measurement trajectories, we compare the path probabilities of forward and backward-in-time evolution to develop an arrow of time statistic associated with measurement dynamics. We compare the statistics of individual trajectories to ensemble properties showing that the measurement dynamics obeys both detailed and integral fluctuation theorems thus establishing the consistency between microscopic and macroscopic measurement dynamics.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1811.07708,
title = {Characterizing a statistical arrow of time in quantum measurement dynamics},
author = {P. M. Harrington and D. Tan and M. Naghiloo and K. W. Murch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.07708},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
10 pages 5 figures