No Arabic abstract
If one seeks to test quantum theory against many alternatives in a landscape of possible physical theories, then it is crucial to be able to analyze experimental data in a theory-agnostic way. This can be achieved using the framework of Generalized Probabilistic Theories (GPTs). Here, we implement GPT tomography on a three-level system corresponding to a single photon shared among three modes. This scheme achieves a GPT characterization of each of the preparations and measurements implemented in the experiment without requiring any prior characterization of either. Assuming that the sets of realized preparations and measurements are tomographically complete, our analysis identifies the most likely dimension of the GPT vector space describing the three-level system to be nine, in agreement with the value predicted by quantum theory. Relative to this dimension, we infer the scope of GPTs that are consistent with our experimental data by identifying polytopes that provide inner and outer bounds for the state and effect spaces of the true GPT. From these, we are able to determine quantitative bounds on possible deviations from quantum theory. In particular, we bound the degree to which the no-restriction hypothesis might be violated for our three-level system.
Many experiments in the field of quantum foundations seek to adjudicate between quantum theory and speculative alternatives to it. This requires one to analyze the experimental data in a manner that does not presume the correctness of the quantum formalism. The mathematical framework of generalized probabilistic theories (GPTs) provides a means of doing so. We present a scheme for determining which GPTs are consistent with a given set of experimental data. It proceeds by performing tomography on the preparations and measurements in a self-consistent manner, i.e., without presuming a prior characterization of either. We illustrate the scheme by analyzing experimental data for a large set of preparations and measurements on the polarization degree of freedom of a single photon. We find that the smallest and largest GPT state spaces consistent with our data are a pair of polytopes, each approximating the shape of the Bloch Sphere and having a volume ratio of $0.977 pm 0.001$, which provides a quantitative bound on the scope for deviations from quantum theory. We also demonstrate how our scheme can be used to bound the extent to which nature might be more nonlocal than quantum theory predicts, as well as the extent to which it might be more or less contextual. Specifically, we find that the maximal violation of the CHSH inequality can be at most $1.3% pm 0.1$ greater than the quantum prediction, and the maximal violation of a particular inequality for universal noncontextuality can not differ from the quantum prediction by more than this factor on either side. The most significant loophole in this sort of analysis is that the set of preparations and measurements one implements might fail to be tomographically complete for the system of interest.
In the light of the progress in quantum technologies, the task of verifying the correct functioning of processes and obtaining accurate tomographic information about quantum states becomes increasingly important. Compressed sensing, a machinery derived from the theory of signal processing, has emerged as a feasible tool to perform robust and significantly more resource-economical quantum state tomography for intermediate-sized quantum systems. In this work, we provide a comprehensive analysis of compressed sensing tomography in the regime in which tomographically complete data is available with reliable statistics from experimental observations of a multi-mode photonic architecture. Due to the fact that the data is known with high statistical significance, we are in a position to systematically explore the quality of reconstruction depending on the number of employed measurement settings, randomly selected from the complete set of data, and on different model assumptions. We present and test a complete prescription to perform efficient compressed sensing and are able to reliably use notions of model selection and cross-validation to account for experimental imperfections and finite counting statistics. Thus, we establish compressed sensing as an effective tool for quantum state tomography, specifically suited for photonic systems.
We investigate the quantum thermal transistor effect in nonequilibrium three-level systems by applying the polaron transformed Redfield equation combined with full counting statistics. The steady state heat currents are obtained via this unified approach over a wide region of system-bath coupling, and can be analytically reduced to the Redfield and nonequilibrium noninteracting blip approximation results in the weak and strong coupling limits, respectively. A giant heat amplification phenomenon emerges in the strong system-bath coupling limit, where transitions mediated by the middle thermal bath is found to be crucial to unravel the underlying mechanism. Moreover, the heat amplification is also exhibited with moderate coupling strength, which can be properly explained within the polaron framework.
The standard formalism of quantum mechanics is extended to describe a total system including the reference system (RS), with respect to which the total system is described. The RS is assumed to be able to act as a measuring apparatus, with measurement records given by the values of some reference properties of the RS. In order to describe the total system, we define a frame of reference (FR) as a set of states that can be used to express all other states of the total system. The theory is based on four basic postulates, which have, loosely speaking, the following contents. (i) A reference property of a RS has a definite value and is sufficiently stable in the FR directly related to the reference property. (ii) States of the total system are associated with vectors in the Hilbert space. (iii) Schrodinger equation is the dynamical law in each valid FR. (iv) Under certain condition a property of a system can be regarded as a reference property; vector descriptions of the total system given in different FRs of the same RS may have a probabilistic relationship like in Borns rule.
We adopt a three-level bosonic model to investigate the quantum phase transition in an ultracold atom-molecule conversion system which includes one atomic mode and two molecular modes. Through thoroughly exploring the properties of energy level structure, fidelity, and adiabatical geometric phase, we confirm that the system exists a second-order phase transition from an atommolecule mixture phase to a pure molecule phase. We give the explicit expression of the critical point and obtain two scaling laws to characterize this transition. In particular we find that both the critical exponents and the behaviors of ground-state geometric phase change obviously in contrast to a similar two-level model. Our analytical calculations show that the ground-state geometric phase jumps from zero to ?pi/3 at the critical point. This discontinuous behavior has been checked by numerical simulations and it can be used to identify the phase transition in the system.