Typicality of pure states randomly sampled according to the Gaussian adjusted projected measure

Publication date 16 December 2008

Abstract: Consider a mixed quantum mechanical state, describing a statistical ensemble in terms of an arbitrary density operator

h o

of low purity,

r h o^{2} l l 1

, and yielding the ensemble averaged expectation value

r (h o A)

for any observable

A

. Assuming that the given statistical ensemble

h o

is generated by randomly sampling pure states

| p s i >

according to the corresponding so-called Gaussian adjusted projected measure

[

Goldstein et al., J. Stat. Phys. 125, 1197 (2006)

]

, the expectation value

< p s i | A | p s i >

is shown to be extremely close to the ensemble average

r (h o A)

for the overwhelming majority of pure states

| p s i >

and any experimentally realistic observable

A

. In particular, such a `typicality' property holds whenever the Hilbert space

h r

of the system contains a high dimensional subspace

h r_{+} s u b s e t h r

with the property that all

| p s i > i n h r_{+}

are realized with equal probability and all other

| p s i > i n h r

are excluded.

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