Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 52: Quantum Dynamics, Decoherence and Quantum Information

DY 52.8: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2020, 17:00–17:15, HÜL 186

Statistics of the bifurcation in quantum measurement — Karl-Erik Eriksson and •Kristian Lindgren — Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

Quantum mechanics is at the basis of all modern physics and fundamental for the understanding of the world that we live in. As a general theory, quantum mechanics should apply also to the measurement process. From the general experience of non-destructive measurements, we draw conclusions about the interaction between the observed system and the measurement apparatus and how this can be described within quantum mechanics [1].

We model quantum measurement of a two-level system µ. Previous obstacles for understanding the measurement process are removed by basing the analysis of the interaction between µ and the measurement device on quantum field theory. This formulation shows how inverse processes take part in the interaction and introduce a non-linearity, necessary for the bifurcation of quantum measurement. A statistical analysis of the ensemble of initial states of the measurement device shows how microscopic details can influence the transition to a final state. We find that initial states that are efficient in leading to a transition to a final state result in either of the expected eigenstates for µ, with ensemble averages that are identical to the probabilities of the Born rule. Thus, the proposed scheme serves as a candidate mechanism for the quantum measurement process.

[1] Eriksson & Lindgren, Entropy (2019): doi.org/10.3390/e21090834