English

Geometry of the Hilbert space and the Quantum Zeno Effect

Quantum Physics 2009-10-31 v1

Abstract

We show that the quadratic short time behaviour of transition probability is a natural consequence of the inner product of the Hilbert space of the quantum system. We prove that Schr\"odinger time evolution between two successive measurements is not a necessary but only a sufficient condition for predicting quantum Zeno effect. We provide a relation between the survival probability and the underlying geometric structure such as the Fubini-Study metric defined on the projective Hilbert space of the quantum system. This predicts the quantum Zeno effect even for systems described by non-linear and non-unitary evolution equations, within the collapse mechanism of the wavefunction during measurement process. Two examples are studied, one is non-linear Schr\"odinger equation and other is Gisin's equation and it is shown that one can observe quantum Zeno effect for systems described by these equations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/9803082,
  title  = {Geometry of the Hilbert space and the Quantum Zeno Effect},
  author = {A. K. Pati and S. V. Lawande},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/9803082},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

10 pages, Latex, no figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. A