History operators in quantum mechanics

DOI10.1142/S0219749919410016MaRDI QIDQ5219345zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors L. Castellani

Publication date 11 March 2020

Published in International Journal of Quantum Information (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.03624

zbMATH Keywords

history formalismquantum collapsequantum non localityquantum physics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General and philosophical questions in quantum theory (81P05) Quantum measurement theory, state operations, state preparations (81P15) Quantum coherence, entanglement, quantum correlations (81P40) Feynman integrals and graphs; applications of algebraic topology and algebraic geometry (81Q30) Path integrals in quantum mechanics (81S40) Quantum optics (81V80)

Abstract: It is convenient to describe a quantum system at all times by means of a "history operator" $C$, encoding measurements and unitary time evolution between measurements. These operators naturally arise when computing the probability of measurement sequences, and generalize the "sum over position histories " of the Feynman path-integral. As we argue in the present note, this description has some computational advantages over the usual state vector description, and may help to clarify some issues regarding nonlocality of quantum correlations and collapse. A measurement on a system described by $C$ modifies the history operator, $CightarrowPC$, where $P$ is the projector corresponding to the measurement. We refer to this modification as "history operator collapse". Thus $C$ keeps track of the succession of measurements on a system, and contains all histories compatible with the results of these measurements. The collapse modifies the history content of $C$, and therefore modifies also the past (relative to the measurement), but never in a way to violate causality. Probabilities of outcomes are obtained as $Tr(C^{d}aggerPC)/Tr(C^{d}aggerC)$. A similar formula yields probabilities for intermediate measurements, and reproduces the result of the two-vector formalism in the case of given initial and final states. We apply the history operator formalism to a few examples: entangler circuit, Mach-Zehnder interferometer, teleportation circuit, three-box experiment. Not surprisingly, the propagation of coordinate eigenstates $|qangle$ is described by a history operator $C$ containing the Feynman path-integral.

Recommendations

• Quantum histories and measurements
• The action operator for continuous-time histories
• Consistent histories and the interpretation of quantum mechanics
• Consistent histories and operational quantum theory
• The measurement process in the generalized contexts formalism for quantum histories

Cites work

• Consistent histories and the interpretation of quantum mechanics
• Consistent Quantum Theory
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1579275 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 872244 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 936290 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3208040 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3282537 (Why is no real title available?)
• Teleporting an unknown quantum state via dual classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen channels

Cited in

(7)

• No relation for Wigner's friend
• Traces of operators and their history
• Path summation and von Neumann-like quantum measurements
• Historical magic in old quantum theory?
• Entropy of temporal entanglement
• Space and time correlations in quantum histories
• Nonconforming finite element method for a 4th-order history-dependent hemivariational inequality

This page was built for publication: History operators in quantum mechanics

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q5219345)