English

Weak values are universal in von Neumann measurements

Quantum Physics 2013-01-16 v1

Abstract

We refute the widely held belief that the quantum weak value necessarily pertains to weak measurements. To accomplish this, we use the transverse position of a beam as the detector for the conditioned von Neumann measurement of a system observable. For any coupling strength, any initial states, and any choice of conditioning, the averages of the detector position and momentum are completely described by the real parts of three generalized weak values in the joint Hilbert space. Higher-order detector moments also have similar weak value expansions. Using the Wigner distribution of the initial detector state, we find compact expressions for these weak values within the reduced system Hilbert space. As an application of the approach, we show that for any Hermite-Gauss mode of a paraxial beam-like detector these expressions reduce to the real and imaginary parts of a single system weak value plus an additional weak-value-like contribution that only affects the momentum shift.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.4714,
  title  = {Weak values are universal in von Neumann measurements},
  author = {J. Dressel and A. N. Jordan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.4714},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

7 pages, 3 figures, includes Supplementary Material

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:22:58.781Z