English

Reference frames which separately store non-commuting conserved quantities

Quantum Physics 2020-09-02 v2

Abstract

Even in the presence of conservation laws, one can perform arbitrary transformations on a system if given access to a suitable reference frame, since conserved quantities may be exchanged between the system and the frame. Here we explore whether these quantities can be separated into different parts of the reference frame, with each part acting as a `battery' for a distinct quantity. For systems composed of spin-12\frac12 particles, we show that the components of angular momentum SxS_x, SyS_y and SzS_z (non-commuting conserved quantities) may be separated in this way, and also provide several extensions of this result. These results also play a key role in the quantum thermodynamics of non-commuting conserved quantities.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.02713,
  title  = {Reference frames which separately store non-commuting conserved quantities},
  author = {Sandu Popescu and Ana Belén Sainz and Anthony J. Short and Andreas Winter},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.02713},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Comments welcome ! V2 includes a new result on extracting the angular momentum components of an unknown spin

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:42:15.218Z