No Arabic abstract
This contribution to the present Workshop Proceedings outlines a general programme for identifying geometric structures--out of which to possibly recover quantum dynamics as well--associated to the manifold in Hilbert space of the quantum states that saturate the Schrodinger-Robertson uncertainty relation associated to a specific set of quantum observables which characterise a given quantum system and its dynamics. The first step in such an exploration is addressed herein in the case of the observables Q and P of the Heisenberg algebra for a single degree of freedom system. The corresponding saturating states are the well known general squeezed states, whose properties are reviewed and discussed in detail together with some original results, in preparation of a study deferred to a separated analysis of their quantum geometry and of the corresponding path integral representation over such states.
We re-derive the Schr{o}dinger-Robertson uncertainty principle for the position and momentum of a quantum particle. Our derivation does not directly employ commutation relations, but works by reduction to an eigenvalue problem related to the harmonic oscillator, which can then be further exploited to find a larger class of constrained uncertainty relations. We derive an uncertainty relation under the constraint of a fixed degree of Gaussianity and prove that, remarkably, it is saturated by all eigenstates of the harmonic oscillator. This goes beyond the common knowledge that the (Gaussian) ground state of the harmonic oscillator saturates the uncertainty relation.
Measurement uncertainty relations are lower bounds on the errors of any approximate joint measurement of two or more quantum observables. The aim of this paper is to provide methods to compute optimal bounds of this type. The basic method is semidefinite programming, which we apply to arbitrary finite collections of projective observables on a finite dimensional Hilbert space. The quantification of errors is based on an arbitrary cost function, which assigns a penalty to getting result $x$ rather than y, for any pair (x,y). This induces a notion of optimal transport cost for a pair of probability distributions, and we include an appendix with a short summary of optimal transport theory as needed in our context. There are then different ways to form an overall figure of merit from the comparison of distributions. We consider three, which are related to different physical testing scenarios. The most thorough test compares the transport distances between the marginals of a joint measurement and the reference observables for every input state. Less demanding is a test just on the states for which a true value is known in the sense that the reference observable yields a definite outcome. Finally, we can measure a deviation as a single expectation value by comparing the two observables on the two parts of a maximally entangled state. All three error quantities have the property that they vanish if and only if the tested observable is equal to the reference. The theory is illustrated with some characteristic examples.
A new lower boundary for the product of variances of two observables is obtained in the case, when these observables are entangled with the third one. This boundary can be higher than the Robertson--Schrodinger one. The special case of the two-dimensional pure Gaussian state is considered as an example.
Our knowledge of quantum mechanics can satisfactorily describe simple, microscopic systems, but is yet to explain the macroscopic everyday phenomena we observe. Here we aim to shed some light on the quantum-to-classical transition as seen through the analysis of uncertainty relations. We employ entropic uncertainty relations to show that it is only by the inclusion of imprecision in our model of macroscopic measurements that we can prepare a system with two simultaneously well-defined quantities, even if their associated observables do not commute. We also establish how the precision of measurements must increase in order to keep quantum properties, a desirable feature for large quantum computers.
We discuss some applications of vario