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Quantum Uncertainty Principles for Measurements with Interventions

Quantum Physics 2023-06-21 v1

Abstract

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle implies fundamental constraints on what properties of a quantum system can we simultaneously learn. However, it typically assumes that we probe these properties via measurements at a single point in time. In contrast, inferring causal dependencies in complex processes often requires interactive experimentation - multiple rounds of interventions where we adaptively probe the process with different inputs to observe how they affect outputs. Here we demonstrate universal uncertainty principles for general interactive measurements involving arbitrary rounds of interventions. As a case study, we show that they imply an uncertainty trade-off between measurements compatible with different causal dependencies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.07914,
  title  = {Quantum Uncertainty Principles for Measurements with Interventions},
  author = {Yunlong Xiao and Yuxiang Yang and Ximing Wang and Qing Liu and Mile Gu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.07914},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

7 pages (main text) + 47 pages (supplemental material), 5 figures (main text) + 17 figures (supplemental material). Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:33:40.345Z