Universal Quantum Measurements

Brody, D C and Hughston, L P. 2015. Universal Quantum Measurements. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 624, 012002. ISSN 1742-6588 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

We introduce a family of operations in quantum mechanics that one can regard as "universal quantum measurements" (UQMs). These measurements are applicable to all finite dimensional quantum systems and entail the specification of only a minimal amount of structure. The first class of UQM that we consider involves the specification of the initial state of the system—no further structure is brought into play. We call operations of this type "tomographic measurements", since given the statistics of the outcomes one can deduce the original state of the system. Next, we construct a disentangling operation, the outcome of which, when the procedure is applied to a general mixed state of an entangled composite system, is a disentangled product of pure constituent states. This operation exists whenever the dimension of the Hilbert space is not a prime, and can be used to model the decay of a composite system. As another example, we show how one can make a measurement of the direction along which the spin of a particle of spin s is oriented (s = 1/2, 1,...). The required additional structure in this case involves the embedding of CP1 as a rational curve of degree 2s in CP2s.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/624/1/012002

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Computing

Dates:

DateEvent
1 June 2015Published Online

Item ID:

24503

Date Deposited:

15 Oct 2018 10:18

Last Modified:

09 Feb 2022 10:34

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24503

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