No Arabic abstract
The connection between coarse-graining of measurement and emergence of classicality has been investigated for some time, if not well understood. Recently in (PRL $textbf{112}$, 010402, (2014)) it was pointed out that coarse-graining measurements can lead to non-violation of Bell-type inequalities by a state which would violate it under sharp measurements. We study here the effects of coarse-grained measurements on bipartite cat states. We show that while it is true that coarse-graining does indeed lead to non-violation of a Bell-type inequality, this is not reflected at the state level. Under such measurements the post-measurement states can be non-classical (in the quantum optical sense) and in certain cases coarse-graning can lead to an increase in this non-classicality with respect to the coarse-graining parameter. While there is no universal way to quantify non-classicality, we do so using well understood notions in quantum optics such as the negativity of the Wigner function and the singular nature of the Gluaber-Sudharshan P distribution.
Our everyday descriptions of the universe are highly coarse-grained, following only a tiny fraction of the variables necessary for a perfectly fine-grained description. Coarse graining in classical physics is made natural by our limited powers of observation and computation. But in the modern quantum mechanics of closed systems, some measure of coarse graining is inescapable because there are no non-trivial, probabilistic, fine-grained descriptions. This essay explores the consequences of that fact. Quantum theory allows for various coarse-grained descriptions some of which are mutually incompatible. For most purposes, however, we are interested in the small subset of ``quasiclassical descriptions defined by ranges of values of averages over small volumes of densities of conserved quantities such as energy and momentum and approximately conserved quantities such as baryon number. The near-conservation of these quasiclassical quantities results in approximate decoherence, predictability, and local equilibrium, leading to closed sets of equations of motion. In any description, information is sacrificed through the coarse graining that yields decoherence and gives rise to probabilities for histories. In quasiclassical descriptions, further information is sacrificed in exhibiting the emergent regularities summarized by classical equations of motion. An appropriate entropy measures the loss of information. For a ``quasiclassical realm this is connected with the usual thermodynamic entropy as obtained from statistical mechanics. It was low for the initial state of our universe and has been increasing since.
Continuous observation of a quantum system yields a measurement record that faithfully reproduces the classically predicted trajectory provided that the measurement is sufficiently strong to localize the state in phase space but weak enough that quantum backaction noise is negligible. We investigate the conditions under which classical dynamics emerges, via continuous position measurement, for a particle moving in a harmonic well with its position coupled to internal spin. As a consequence of this coupling we find that classical dynamics emerges only when the position and spin actions are both large compared to $hbar$. These conditions are quantified by placing bounds on the size of the covariance matrix which describes the delocalized quantum coherence over extended regions of phase space. From this result it follows that a mixed quantum-classical regime (where one subsystem can be treated classically and the other not) does not exist for a continuously observed spin 1/2 particle. When the conditions for classicallity are satisfied (in the large-spin limit), the quantum trajectories reproduce both the classical periodic orbits as well as the classically chaotic phase space regions. As a quantitative test of this convergence we compute the largest Lyapunov exponent directly from the measured quantum trajectories and show that it agrees with the classical value.
We develop a systematic coarse graining procedure for systems of $N$ qubits. We exploit the underlying geometrical structures of the associated discrete phase space to produce a coarse-grained version with reduced effective size. Our coarse-grained spaces inherit key properties of the original ones. In particular, our procedure naturally yields a subset of the original measurement operators, which can be used to construct a coarse discrete Wigner function. These operators also constitute a systematic choice of incomplete measurements for the tomographer wishing to probe an intractably large system.
We study the dynamical complexity of an open quantum driven double-well oscillator, mapping its dependence on effective Plancks constant $hbar_{eff}equivbeta$ and coupling to the environment, $Gamma$. We study this using stochastic Schrodinger equations, semiclassical equations, and the classical limit equation. We show that (i) the dynamical complexity initially increases with effective Hilbert space size (as $beta$ decreases) such that the most quantum systems are the least dynamically complex. (ii) If the classical limit is chaotic, that is the most dynamically complex (iii) if the classical limit is regular, there is always a quantum system more dynamically complex than the classical system. There are several parameter regimes where the quantum system is chaotic even though the classical limit is not. While some of the quantum chaotic attractors are of the same family as the classical limiting attractors, we also find a quantum attractor with no classical counterpart. These phenomena occur in experimentally accessible regimes.
Stochastic modelling of complex systems plays an essential, yet often computationally intensive role across the quantitative sciences. Recent advances in quantum information processing have elucidated the potential for quantum simulators to exhibit memory advantages for such tasks. Heretofore, the focus has been on lossless memory compression, wherein the advantage is typically in terms of lessening the amount of information tracked by the model, while -- arguably more practical -- reductions in memory dimension are not always possible. Here we address the case of lossy compression for quantum stochastic modelling of continuous-time processes, introducing a method for coarse-graining in quantum state space that drastically reduces the requisite memory dimension for modelling temporal dynamics whilst retaining near-exact statistics. In contrast to classical coarse-graining, this compression is not based on sacrificing temporal resolution, and brings memory-efficient, high-fidelity stochastic modelling within reach of present quantum technologies.