Null weak values and the past of a quantum particle
Quantum Physics
2017-03-22 v2
Abstract
Non-destructive weak measurements (WM) made on a quantum particle allow to extract information as the particle evolves from a prepared state to a finally detected state. The physical meaning of this information has been open to debate, particularly in view of the apparent discontinuous trajectories of the particle recorded by WM. In this work we investigate the properties of vanishing weak values for projection operators as well as general observables. We then analyze the implications when inferring the past of a quantum particle. We provide a novel (non-optical) example for which apparent discontinuous trajectories are obtained by WM. Our approach is compared to previous results.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1611.02780,
title = {Null weak values and the past of a quantum particle},
author = {Q. Duprey and A. Matzkin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.02780},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
Minor changes; to be published in Phys Rev A