English

Typicality of pure states randomly sampled according to the Gaussian adjusted projected measure

Statistical Mechanics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

Consider a mixed quantum mechanical state, describing a statistical ensemble in terms of an arbitrary density operator ρ\rho of low purity, \trρ21\tr\rho^2\ll 1, and yielding the ensemble averaged expectation value \tr(ρA)\tr(\rho A) for any observable AA. Assuming that the given statistical ensemble ρ\rho is generated by randomly sampling pure states ψ>|\psi> according to the corresponding so-called Gaussian adjusted projected measure [[Goldstein et al., J. Stat. Phys. 125, 1197 (2006)]], the expectation value <ψAψ><\psi|A|\psi> is shown to be extremely close to the ensemble average \tr(ρA)\tr(\rho A) for the overwhelming majority of pure states ψ>|\psi> and any experimentally realistic observable AA. In particular, such a `typicality' property holds whenever the Hilbert space \hr\hr of the system contains a high dimensional subspace \hr+\hr\hr_+\subset\hr with the property that all ψ>\hr+|\psi>\in\hr_+ are realized with equal probability and all other ψ>\hr|\psi> \in\hr are excluded.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0805.3102,
  title  = {Typicality of pure states randomly sampled according to the Gaussian adjusted projected measure},
  author = {Peter Reimann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0805.3102},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

accepted for publication in J. Stat. Phys