Related papers: Observing controlled quantum state collapse in a s…

Establishing a notion of the quantum state that applies consistently across space and time could be a crucial step toward formulating a relativistic quantum theory. We give an operational meaning to multipartite quantum states over…

This thesis is concerned with retrodiction and measurement in quantum optics. The latter of these two concepts is studied in particular form with a general optical multiport device, consisting of an arbitrary array of beam-splitters and…

A one-dimensional quantum oscillator is monitored by taking repeated position measurements. As a first con- tribution, it is shown that, under a quantum nondemolition measurement scheme applied to a system initially at the ground state, (i)…

We explore the possibility of using "weak" measurements to carry out quantum state tomography. Given a certain fixed number of copies of identically prepared states of a qubit, we simulate state tomography using weak as well as projective…

The conventional postulate for the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is asymmetric in preparation and measurement, making retrodiction reliant on inference by use of Bayes' theorem. Here, a more fundamental symmetric…

We present a new interpretation of the terms superposition, entanglement, and measurement that appear in quantum mechanics. We hypothesize that the structure of the wave function for a quantum system at the sub-Planck scale has a…

The specific advance of this work is to propose a mechanism by which superpositions collapse during measurement of the separated subsystems of entangled quantum states. It is shown how the phase that locks together entangled states plays a…

The irreversible evolution of a microscopic system under measurement is a central feature of quantum theory. From an initial state generally exhibiting quantum uncertainty in the measured observable, the system is projected into a state in…

Quantum mechanics is an extremely successful theory that agrees with every experiment. However, the principle of linear superposition, a central tenet of the theory, apparently contradicts a commonplace observation: macroscopic objects are…

Measurements in quantum mechanics can not only effectively freeze the state of the quantum system (the quantum Zeno effect) but also accelerate the time evolution of the system (the quantum anti-Zeno effect). In studies of the quantum Zeno…

The indeterminism of quantum mechanics generally permits the independent specification of both an initial and a final condition on the state. Quantum pre-and-post-selection of states opens up a new, experimentally testable, sector of…

A fundamental principle of quantum theory, clearly manifested in the two-slit experiment, is that for any alternatives that cannot be distinguished by measurement physical predictions are obtained by summation of their amplitudes. In…

Consider a statistical model with an epistemic restriction such that, unlike in classical mechanics, the allowed distribution of positions is fundamentally restricted by the form of an underlying momentum field. Assume an agent (observer)…

Wavefunction collapse is commonly associated with unavoidable physical disturbance of the measured system. Here we show that in driven-dissipative quantum systems, continuous measurement can induce strong trajectory-level collapse while…

We consider the problem of determining the state of a quantum system given one or more readings of the expectation value of an observable. The system is assumed to be a finite dimensional quantum control system for which we can influence…

Perhaps the quantum state represents information about reality, and not reality directly. Wave function collapse is then possibly no more mysterious than a Bayesian update of a probability distribution given new data. We consider models for…

The nRules are empirical regularities that were discovered in macroscopic situations where the outcome is known. When they are projected theoretically into the microscopic domain they predict a novel ontology including the frequent collapse…

A central feature of quantum mechanics is that a measurement is intrinsically probabilistic. As a result, continuously monitoring a quantum system will randomly perturb its natural unitary evolution. The ability to control a quantum system…

We argue that quantum mechanics makes sense without such controversial postulates as the wave function collapse, the quantum probability rule and the observable postulate. We only need the existence of a wave function as a representation of…

In textbooks, ideal quantum measurements are described in terms of the tested system only by the collapse postulate and Born's rule. This level of description offers a rather flexible position for the interpretation of quantum mechanics.…