English

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.

Keywords

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

R2 v1 2026-06-23T05:20:32.295Z