English

Quantization and noiseless measurements

Quantum Physics 2015-06-26 v1

Abstract

In accordance with the fact that quantum measurements are described in terms of positive operator measures (POMs), we consider certain aspects of a quantization scheme in which a classical variable f:R2Rf:\R^2\to \R is associated with a unique positive operator measure (POM) EfE^f, which is not necessarily projection valued. The motivation for such a scheme comes from the well-known fact that due to the noise in a quantum measurement, the resulting outcome distribution is given by a POM and cannot, in general, be described in terms of a traditional observable, a selfadjoint operator. Accordingly, we notice that the noiseless measurements are the ones which are determined by a selfadjoint operator. The POM EfE^f in our quantization is defined through its moment operators, which are required to be of the form Γ(fk)\Gamma(f^k), kNk\in \N, with Γ\Gamma a fixed map from classical variables to Hilbert space operators. In particular, we consider the quantization of classical \emph{questions}, that is, functions f:R2Rf:\R^2\to\R taking only values 0 and 1. We compare two concrete realizations of the map Γ\Gamma in view of their ability to produce noiseless measurements: one being the Weyl map, and the other defined by using phase space probability distributions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0612054,
  title  = {Quantization and noiseless measurements},
  author = {J. Kiukas and P. Lahti},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0612054},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

15 pages, submitted to Journal of Physics A