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Full-Text Articles in Quantum Physics
Weak Measurement And Bohmian Conditional Wave Functions, Travis Norsen
Weak Measurement And Bohmian Conditional Wave Functions, Travis Norsen
Physics: Faculty Publications
It was recently pointed out (and demonstrated experimentally) by Lundeen et al. that the wave function of a particle (more precisely, the wave function possessed by each member of an ensemble of identically-prepared particles) can be "directly measured" using weak measurement. Here it is shown that if this same technique is applied, with appropriate post-selection, to one particle from a (perhaps entangled) multi-particle system, the result is precisely the so-called "conditional wave function" of Bohmian mechanics. Thus, a plausibly operationalist method for defining the wave function of a quantum mechanical sub-system corresponds to the natural definition of a sub-system wave …
Quantum Non-Barking Dogs, Sara Imari Walker, Paul C. W. Davies, Prasant Samantray, Yakir Aharonov
Quantum Non-Barking Dogs, Sara Imari Walker, Paul C. W. Davies, Prasant Samantray, Yakir Aharonov
Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research
Quantum weak measurements with states both pre- and post-selected offer a window into a hitherto neglected sector of quantum mechanics. A class of such systems involves time dependent evolution with transitions possible. In this paper we explore two very simple systems in this class. The first is a toy model representing the decay of an excited atom. The second is the tunneling of a particle through a barrier. The post-selection criteria are chosen as follows: at the final time, the atom remains in its initial excited state for the first example and the particle remains behind the barrier for the …