Generalized quantum measurements are an important extension of projective or von Neumann measurements, in that they can be used to describe any measurement that can be implemented on a quantum system. We describe how to realize two non-standard quant
um measurements using cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). The first measurement optimally and unabmiguously distinguishes between two non-orthogonal quantum states. The second example is a measurement that demonstrates superadditive quantum coding gain. The experimental tools used are single-atom unitary operations effected by Ramsey pulses and two-atom Tavis-Cummings interactions. We show how the superadditive quantum coding gain is affected by errors in the field-ionisation detection of atoms, and that even with rather high levels of experimental imperfections, a reasonable amount of superadditivity can still be seen. To date, these types of measurement have only been realized on photons. It would be of great interest to have realizations using other physical systems. This is for fundamental reasons, but also since quantum coding gain in general increases with code word length, and a realization using atoms could be more easily scaled than existing realizations using photons.
In a recent article Wang et al. (Class. Quantum Grav. 23 (2006) L59), demonstrated that the phase of a particle fluctuates due to interactions with random deviations of a conformal gravitational field. Furthermore they demonstrated that atom interfer
ometers are sensitive to these fluctuations and that sensitivity to Planck scale effects could be achieved with a sufficiently sensitive interferometer. In this paper we demonstrate that a class of entangled states, the N-atom Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, provide a better scaling than atom interferometers and that current experiments are capable of making a significant impact in this field. We outline an experiment which uses atomic beams of rubidium atoms excited to Rydberg states. The atoms undergo controlled collisions in high quality factor microwave resonators in a sequence that makes the resulting state highly sensitive to conformal field fluctuations. We show that a significant advance in sensitivity is possible.
The Mermin inequality provides a criterion for experimentally ruling out local-realistic descriptions of multiparticle systems. A violation of this inequality means that the particles must be entangled, but does not, in general, indicate whether N-pa
rtite entanglement is present. For this, a stricter bound is required. Here we discuss this bound and use it to propose two different schemes for demonstrating N-partite entanglement with atoms. The first scheme involves Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in an optical lattice and the second uses Rydberg atoms in microwave cavities.
