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Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer

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A consequence of the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle is that one may not discuss the path or “trajectory” that a quantum particle takes, because any measurement of position irrevocably disturbs the momentum, and vice versa. Using weak measurements, however, it is possible to operationally define a set of trajectories for an ensemble of quantum particles. We sent single photons emitted by a quantum dot through a double-slit interferometer and reconstructed these trajectories by performing a weak measurement of the photon momentum, postselected according to the result of a strong measurement of photon position in a series of planes. The results provide an observationally grounded description of the propagation of subensembles of quantum particles in a two-slit interferometer.
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29. Y. Larionova, W. Stolz, C. O. Weiss, Opt. Lett. 33,321
(2008).
30. A. J. Daley, P. Zoller, B. Trauzettel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100,
110404 (2008).
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1010.5225 (2010).
Acknowledgments: We thank S. Barbay, J. Bloch, R. Kuszelewicz,
W. D. Phillips, L. P. Pitaevskii, and M. Wouters for useful
discussions, and L. Martiradonna for the confocal
masks. This work was supported by the IFRAF,
CLERMONT4, and the Agence Nationale de la
Recherche. A.B. and C.C. are members of the Institut
Universitaire de France.
Supporting Online Material
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/332/6034/1167/DC1
Materials and Methods
Figs. S1 to S4
28 December 2010; accepted 11 April 2011
10.1126/science.1202307
Observing the Average
Trajectories of Single Photons
in a Two-Slit Interferometer
Sacha Kocsis,
1,2
*Boris Braverman,
1
*Sylvain Ravets,
3
*Martin J. Stevens,
4
Richard P. Mirin,
4
L. Krister Shalm,
1,5
Aephraim M. Steinberg
1
A consequence of the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle is that one may not discuss
the path or trajectorythat a quantum particle takes, because any measurement of position
irrevocably disturbs the momentum, and vice versa. Using weak measurements, however, it is
possible to operationally define a set of trajectories for an ensemble of quantum particles. We sent
single photons emitted by a quantum dot through a double-slit interferometer and reconstructed
these trajectories by performing a weak measurement of the photon momentum, postselected
according to the result of a strong measurement of photon position in a series of planes. The
results provide an observationally grounded description of the propagation of subensembles
of quantum particles in a two-slit interferometer.
In classical physics, the dynamics of a par-
ticles evolution are governed by its position
and velocity; to simultaneously know the
particles position and velocity is to know its past,
present, and future. However, the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics for-
bids simultaneous knowledge of the precise po-
sition and velocity of a particle. This makes it
impossible to determine the trajectory of a single
quantum particle in the same way as one would
that of a classical particle: Any information gained
about the quantum particles position irrevocably
alters its momentum (and vice versa) in a way that
is fundamentally uncertain. One consequence is
that in Youngs double-slit experiment one can-
not determine through which slit a particle passes
(position) and still observe interference effects on
a distant detection screen (equivalent to measur-
ing the momentum). Particle-like trajectories and
wavelike interference are complementaryas-
pects of the behavior of a quantum system, and
an experiment designed to observe one neces-
1
Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control and
Institute for Optical Sciences, Department of Physics, University
of Toronto, 60 St. George Street, ON M5S 1A7, Canada.
2
Centre
for Quantum Dynamics, Griffith University, Brisbane 4111,
Australia.
3
Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d'Optique, CNRS,
UniversitéParis-Sud, Campus Polytechnique, 2 avenue Augustin
Fresnel, RD 128, 91127 Palaiseau cedex, France.
4
National In-
stitute of Standards and Technology, 325 Broadway, Boulder,
CO 80305, USA.
5
Institute for Quantum Computing, University
of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L
3G1, Canada.
*These authors contributed equally to this work.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
steinberg@physics.utoronto.ca
Fig. 1. Experimental setup for measuring the average photon trajectories.
Single photons from an InGaAs quantum dot are split on a 50:50 beam
splitter and then outcoupled from two collimated fiber couplers that act as
double slits. A polarizer prepares the photons with a diagonal polarization
|D=1
ffiffi
2
p(|H+|V). Quarter waveplates (QWP) and half waveplates (HWP)
before the polarizer allow the number of photons passing through each slit
to be varied. The weak measurement is performed by using a 0.7-mm-thick
piece of calcite with its optic axis at 42° in the x-zplane that rotates the
polarization state to 1
ffiffi
2
p(eiϕk/2|Hþeiϕk/2|V).AQWPandabeamdis-
placer are used to measure the polarization of the photons in the circular
basis, allowing the weak momentum value k
x
to be extracted. A cooled CCD
measures the final xposition of the photons. Lenses L1, L2, and L3 allow
different imaging planes to be measured. The polarization states of the
photons are represented on the Poincaré sphere, where the six compass points
correspond to the polarization states |H,|V,|D,|A=1
ffiffi2
p(|H|V),|L=1
ffiffi
2
p
(|H+i|V),and|
R¼1
ffiffi
2
p(|Hi|V).
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sarily gives up the option of observing the other
(16). However, it is possible to weaklymea-
sure a system, gaining some information about
one property without appreciably disturbing the
future evolution (7); although the information ob-
tained from any individual measurement is lim-
ited, averaging over many trials determines an
accurate mean value for the observable of interest,
even for subensembles defined by some subse-
quent selection (perhaps even on a complementary
observable). It was recently pointed out (8)that
this provides a natural way to operationally de-
fine a set of particle trajectories: One can ascer-
tain the mean momentum of the subensemble of
particles that arrive at any given position, and, by
thus determining the momentum at many posi-
tions in a series of planes, one can experimentally
reconstruct a set of average trajectories. We use
a modified version of this protocol to reconstruct
the weak-valued trajectoriesfollowed by single
photons as they undergo two-slit interference. In
the case of single-particle quantum mechanics,
the trajectories measured in this fashion repro-
duce those predicted in the Bohmde Broglie
interpretation of quantum mechanics (9,10).
Weak measurements, first proposed 2 decades
ago (7,11), have recently attracted widespread
attention as a powerful tool for investigating fun-
damental questions in quantum mechanics (1215)
and have generated excitement for their potential
applications to enhancing precision measurement
(16,17). In a typical von Neumann measure-
ment, an observable of a system is coupled to a
measurement apparatus or pointervia its mo-
mentum. This coupling leads to an average shift
in the pointer position that is proportional to the
expectation value of the system observable. In a
strongmeasurement, this shift is large relative
to the initial uncertainty in pointer position, so
that significant informationisacquiredinasingle
shot. However, this implies that the pointer mo-
mentum must be very uncertain, and it is this
uncertainty that creates the uncontrollable, irrevers-
ible disturbance associated with measurement.
In a weakmeasurement, the pointer shift is
small and little information can be gained on a
single shot; but, on the other hand, there may be
arbitrarily little disturbance imparted to the sys-
tem. It is possible to subsequently postselect the
system on a desired final state. Postselecting on
a final state allows a particular subensemble to
be studied, and the mean value obtained from
repeating the weak measurement many times is
known as the weak value. Unlike the results of
strong measurements, weak values are not con-
strained to lie within the eigenvalue spectrum of
the observable being measured (7). This has led
to controversy over the meaning and role of weak
values, but continuing research has made strides
in clarifying their interpretation and demonstrat-
ing a variety of situations in which they are clearly
useful (1621).
In our experiment, we sent an ensemble of
single photons through a two-slit interferometer
and performed a weak measurement on each pho-
ton to gain a small amount of information about
its momentum, followed by a strong measure-
ment that postselects the subensemble of pho-
tons arriving at a particular position [see (22)for
more details]. We used the polarization degree
of freedom of the photons as a pointer that
weakly couples to and measures the momentum
of the photons. This weak momentum measure-
ment does not appreciably disturb the system,
and interference is still observed. The two mea-
surements must be repeated on a large ensemble
of particles in order to extract a useful amount
of information about the system. From this set
of measurements, we can determine the average
momentum of the photons reaching any partic-
ular position in the image plane, and, by repeat-
ing this procedure in a series of planes, we can
reconstruct trajectories over that range. In this
sense, weak measurement finally allows us to
speak about what happens to an ensemble of
particles inside an interferometer.
Our quantum particles are single photons
emitted by a liquid helium-cooled InGaAs quan-
tum dot (23,24)embeddedinaGaAs/AlAsmi-
cropillar cavity. The dot is optically pumped by a
CW laser at 810 nm and emits single photons at
0
200
400 Z coordinate: 3.2 m
Photon counts
−1
−0.5
0
0.5
1
x 10−3
k
x
/k
A
0
200
400 Z coordinate: 4.5 m
Photon counts
−1
−0.5
0
0.5
1
x 10−3
k
x
/k
B
0
200
400 Z coordinate: 5.6 m
Photon counts
−1
−0.5
0
0.5
1
x 10−3
k
x
/k
C
0
200
400 Z coordinate: 7.7 m
Photon counts
−5 0 5
−1
−0.5
0
0.5
1
x 10−3
Transverse coordinate [mm]
k
x
/k
D
Fig. 2. Measured intensities (photon counts) of
the two circular polarization components of |y,
measured on the CCD screen (red and blue curves),
as well as the weak momentum values calculated
from these intensities (black) for imaging planes at
(A)z=3.2m,(B)z=4.5m,(C)z=5.6m,and(D)
z= 7.7 m. The red and blue data points are the
intensity data with constant background sub-
tracted. The errors for the momentum values were
calculated by simulating the effect of Poissonian
noise in the photon counts. The magenta curve
shows momentum values obtained from enforcing
probability density conservation between adjacent
zplanes. Because of the coarse-grained averag-
ing over three imaging planes, the probability-
conserving momentum values are not as sensitive
as the measured weak momentum values to high-
ly localized regions in the pattern with steep mo-
mentum gradients.
Fig. 3. The reconstructed
average trajectories of an
ensemble of single photons
in the double-slit appara-
tus. The trajectories are re-
constructed over the range
2.75 T0.05 to 8.2 T0.1 m
by using the momentum data
(black points in Fig. 2) from
41 imaging planes. Here,
80 trajectories are shown.
Toreconstructasetoftra-
jectories, we determined the
weak momentum values for
the transverse xpositions at
the initial plane. On the basis
of this initial position and
momentum information, the
xposition on the subsequent
imaging plane that each
trajectory lands is calculated, and the measured weak momentum value k
x
at this point found. This
process is repeated until the final imaging plane is reached and the trajectories are traced out. If a
trajectory lands on a point that is not the center of a pixel, then a cubic spline interpolation between
neighboring momentum values is used.
3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000
−6
−4
−2
0
2
4
Propagation distance[mm]
Transverse coordinate[mm]
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a wavelength lof 943 nm. A Hanbury Brown-
Twiss interferometer is usedtomeasureasecond-
order correlation function g
(2)
(0) of 0.17 T0.04
(SD), confirming the single-photon nature of the
dot emission (25). The photons are coupled
into single-mode fiber and sent through an in-
fiber 50:50 beam splitter. The outputs of the
beam splitter exit two fiber launchers as Gaussian
beams with their waists at the fiber launchers
and are redirected to be parallel along the zaxis
by mirrored prisms to create the initial slit func-
tion(Fig. 1). The two Gaussian beams have a
waist 1/e
2
radius of 0.608 T0.006 mm and a
peak-to-peak separation of 4.69 T0.02 mm.
The polarization of the photons, which serves
as the ancilla system for the weak measurement,
is prepared in the initial state jy¼ð1=ffiffi
2
pÞ
ðjHþjVÞ,where|His identified with the x
axis and |Vwith the yaxis.
The weak measurement is accomplished with
a thin piece of birefringent calcite that changes
the polarization of the photons passing through
by introducing a phase shift between the ordinary
and extraordinary components of polarization.
The photons diffract out from the slits and im-
pinge upon the crystal with an incident angle q
that depends on their transverse momentum k
x
(where the momentum of a photon is p=ħk).
By orienting the calcites optic axis to lie in the
x-zplane, |Hbecomes the extraordinary polar-
ization that encounters an angle-dependent index
of refraction, n
e
(q), and |Vbecomes the ordinary
polarization that encounters a constant index of
refraction, n
o
. The calcite piece is 0.7 mm thick
with its optic axis in the x-zplane at 42° to the z
axis and imparts a small k
x
-dependent birefringent
phase shift that transforms the incident linear
polarization state of the photons to a slightly el-
liptical polarization state. In this way, we carry
out a measurement of the momentum with the po-
larization serving as a pointer that records the
value of this observable. By arranging for the
magnitude of the polarization rotation to be small
with respect to the uncertainty in the photons
polarization, we ensure that the measurement is
weak. No single measurement provides unambig-
uous information about the exact propagation
direction, and hence no significant measurement
disturbance is introduced. After averaging the re-
sults over many photons, it becomes possible to
extract the average value of photon momentum.
The birefringent phase shift ϕ(k
x
) that the
photons receive depends on the different paths
and indices of refraction for the two polariza-
tions in the calcite (26). The spread of the angles
of the diffracting photons passing through cal-
cite is small, allowing us to approximate the in-
duced birefringent phase shift ϕ(k
x
) as a linear
function of k
x
:
ϕðkxÞ¼zkx
jkjþϕ0ð1Þ
The coefficient zdesignates the coupling
strength between the phase we are measuring
and the photon momentum, and its value was
found to be 373.5 T3.4 (22). The calcite is tilted
in the x-zplane to tune ϕ
0
= 0 modulo 2p.
A system of three cylindrical lenses, with the
middle lens translatable in the zdirection, allows
the initial slit function to be imaged over an
arbitrary distance. It is important to note that the
thin calcite crystal performing the weak measure-
ment remains fixed in place before the lenses.
This does not affect the outcome of the final
postselection at the various imaging planes along
zas the interaction Hamiltonian between the
polarization pointer and the photons transverse
momentum commutes with the free-progagation
Hamiltonian of the system. The trajectories were
reconstructed over the range 2.75 T0.05 to 8.2 T
0.1 m to show the transition from the near-field
to far-field intensity distribution. The polarization
state of each photon is projected into the circular
basis by using a quarter waveplate with its fast
axis set to 45° to x, located in front of the lens
system, and a polarizing beam displacer located
behind the lenses. The beam displacer transmits
the right-hand circularly polarized component of
|yundeviated and displaces the left-hand cir-
cularly polarized component of |yvertically by
about 2 mm. The photons are then detected on a
cooled charge-coupled device (CCD). The expo-
sure time on the CCD was set to 15 s, allowing
the two vertically separated interference patterns
to accumulate. During each exposure, about
31,000 single photons were detected by the CCD.
By projecting into the circular basis, the mo-
mentum information encoded in polarization is
transformed into an intensity modulation between
the two vertically displaced patterns. The inten-
sity of the top pattern (corresponding to the pro-
jection onto the right-hand circular polarization)
is I
R
º[1 + sinϕ(k
x
)], whereas the intensity of
the bottom pattern (corresponding to the projec-
tion on to the left-hand circular polarization) goes
as I
L
º[1 sinϕk
x
)]. In the measured inter-
ference patterns at four different imaging planes
(Fig. 2), the pixel on the CCD where each pho-
ton is detected corresponds to the photonsx
position. The 26-µm pixel width sets the pre-
cision with which the photonsxposition can be
measured.
By using Eq. 1, we can simultaneously ex-
tract the weak value of the transverse compo-
nent of the photon wave vector k
x
at each pixel
position
kx
jkj¼1
zsin1IRIL
IRþIL

ð2Þ
Thus for each value of the photons position
x, we are able to calculate the weak value of its
transverse momentum k
x
by taking the difference
in modulated intensity between the two vertically
displaced patterns at the same imaging plane
along the zaxis. The weak momentum values
for four different imaging planes calculated in
this way are shown in Fig. 2. By repeating the
measurement for many imaging planes closely
spaced along z, a vector field is produced from
Fig. 4. The trajectories from Fig. 3 plotted on top of the measured probability density distribution. Even
though the trajectories were reconstructed by using only local knowledge, they reproduce the global
propagation behavior of the interference pattern.
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which the weak-valued photon trajectories are
reconstructed.
For the experimentally reconstructed trajecto-
ries for our double slit (Fig. 3), it is worth stress-
ing that photons are not constrained to follow
these precise trajectories; the exact trajectory of
an individual quantum particle is not a well-
defined concept. Rather, these trajectories rep-
resent the average behavior of the ensemble of
photons when the weakly measured momentum
in each plane is recorded contingent upon the
final position at which a photon is observed. The
trajectories resemble a hydrodynamic flow with a
central line of symmetry clearly visible: Trajec-
tories originating from one slit do not cross the
central line of symmetry into the opposite side of
the interference pattern. Trajectories at the edges
of bright fringes tend to cross over to join more
central bright fringes, thus generating the ob-
served intensity distribution because of interfer-
ence. The trajectories cross over dark fringes at
relatively steep angles; there is a low probability
of finding a photon in these regions that cor-
respond to postselecting on a state nearly or-
thogonal to the initial state of the system. The
separation of the imaging planes sets the scale
over which features in the trajectories can be
observed. The evolution of the interference in
our double-slit apparatus takes place over a scale
that is much longer than the separation between
imaging planes, and our trajectories can accu-
rately track the evolution of this interference. The
one place where the accuracy can suffer is when
a trajectory quickly passes through a dark fringe;
here the fine scale behavior is smaller than the
spacing between imaging planes. By overlaying
the trajectories on top of the measured intensity
distribution (Fig. 4), we observe that the trajec-
tories reproduce the global interference pattern
well. The tendency of the reconstructed trajecto-
ries to bunchtogether within each bright in-
terference fringe is an artifact of measurement
noise with the position error accumulating as the
trajectory reconstruction is carried out further
and further from the initial plane at z=2.75m.
Single-particle trajectories measured in this fash-
ion reproduce those predicted by the Bohmde
Broglie interpretation of quantum mechanics (8),
although the reconstruction is in no way depen-
dent on a choice of interpretation.
Controversy surrounding the role of mea-
surement in quantum mechanics is as old as the
quantum theory itself, and nowhere have the
paradoxes been thrown into such stark relief as
in the context of the double-slit experiment. Our
experimentally observed trajectories provide an
intuitive picture of the way in which a single par-
ticle interferes with itself. It is of course impos-
sible to rigorously discuss the trajectory of an
individual particle, but in a well-defined opera-
tional sense we gain information about the aver-
age momentum of the particle at each position
within the interferometer, leading to a set of av-
erage trajectories.The exact interpretation of
these observed trajectories will require continued
investigation, but these weak-measurement results
can be grounded in experimental measurements
that promise to elucidate a broad range of quan-
tum phenomena (7,1113,1517). By using the
power of weak measurements, we are able to pro-
vide a new perspective on the double-slit experi-
ment, which Feynman famously considered to
have in it the heart of quantum mechanics(27).
References and Notes
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Acknowledgments: A.M.S. conceived of the experiment and
supervised the work; M.J.S. and R.P.M. designed and
fabricated the single-photon sources; S.K. constructed the
experiment and acquired the data with assistance from
B.B. and S.R. and much guidance from L.K.S.; B.B., S.K.,
and S.R. carried out the data analysis and generated
the figures; S.K. and L.K.S. wrote the text with input
from all the other co-authors. This work was supported
by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced
Research, and QuantumWorks. S.K. thanks B. Higgins
and L.K.S. thanks K. J. Resch for useful discussions.
The data from the experiment has been archived
and is available at www.physics.utoronto.ca/~aephraim/
data/PhotonTrajectories.
Supporting Online Material
www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/332/6034/1170/DC1
Materials and Methods
27 December 2010; accepted 11 April 2011
10.1126/science.1202218
Spin-Liquid Ground State of the S= 1/2
Kagome Heisenberg Antiferromagnet
Simeng Yan,
1
David A. Huse,
2,3
Steven R. White
1
*
We use the density matrix renormalization group to perform accurate calculations of the ground
state of the nearest-neighbor quantum spin S= 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome
lattice. We study this model on numerous long cylinders with circumferences up to 12 lattice
spacings. Through a combination of very-low-energy and small finite-size effects, our results
provide strong evidence that, for the infinite two-dimensional system, the ground state of this
model is a fully gapped spin liquid.
We consider the quantum spin S= 1/2
kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet
(KHA) with only nearest-neighbor
isotropic exchange interactions (Hamiltonian
H¼S
Si
Sj,where
Siand
Sjare the spin
operators for sites i and j, respectively) on a kagome
lattice (Fig. 1A). This frustrated spin system has
long been thought to be an ideal candidate for a
simple, physically realistic model that shows a
spin-liquid ground state (13). A spin liquid is a
magnetic system that has meltedin its ground
state because of quantum fluctuations, so it has
no spontaneously broken symmetries (4). A key
problem in searching for spin liquids in two-
dimensional (2D) models is that there are no ex-
act or nearly exact analytical or computational
methods to solve infinite 2D quantum lattice sys-
tems. For 1D systems, the density matrix renor-
malization group (DMRG) (5,6), the method we
use here, serves in this capacity. In addition to
its interest as an important topic in quantum mag-
netism, the search for spin liquids thus serves
as a test-bed for the development of accurate and
widely applicable computational methods for
2D many-body quantum systems.
1
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Cali-
fornia, Irvine, CA 92617, USA.
2
Department of Physics,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
3
Institute
for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
srwhite@uci.edu
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... By preparing the ancilla qubit in the superposition state cos(α) |0 +sin(α) |1 , the beamsplitter is effectively placed into a coherent superposition of being present and being absent. One can then continuously tune between particle-like and wavelike measurement settings, in close analogy with the weak measurement technique of Ref. 16. This idea was quickly implemented by a number of groups [29][30][31] , two of which used photon pairs generated by SPDC. ...
... Notably, each observer needs only one detector, since the decrease in efficiency of detectors responsible for "−1" outcomes causes outcomes nominally "−1" to be included as "⊥", mapping n +1,−1 (a 0 , b 1 ) to n +1,⊥ (a 0 , b 1 ) and In order to avoid the coincidence-time loophole [17][18][19] (one of the same loopholes present in the reported data for the previous photon experiment [16]), we use a Pockels cell between crossed polarizers to periodically transmit short bursts of the pump laser. Each burst corresponds to a single well-defined event, easily distinguished with the detectors. ...
... Experimental setup. We performed our experiment using entangled photons created in a polarization Sagnac source based on spontaneous parametric downconversion 16,17 , see Figure 2. is source design meets two crucial requirements; a high entangled-pair collection e ciency and near-ideal polarization entanglement. ...
Preprint
The foundational ideas of quantum mechanics continue to give rise to counterintuitive theories and physical effects that are in conflict with a classical description of Nature. Experiments with light at the single photon level have historically been at the forefront of tests of fundamental quantum theory and new developments in photonics engineering continue to enable new experiments. Here we review recent photonic experiments to test two foundational themes in quantum mechanics: wave-particle duality, central to recent complementarity and delayed-choice experiments; and Bell nonlocality where recent theoretical and technological advances have allowed all controversial loopholes to be separately addressed in different photonics experiments.
... [7][8][9][10][11]. Recently, using weak measurements, the Bohmian trajectories have also been found experimentally in the case of the double-slit experiment for a single particle [12] and for entangled particles [13]. Also recently, the Bohmian dynamics is being studied in the context of hydrodynamic analogues of quantum mechanics [14][15][16][17]. ...
... The results obtained in the previous paragraph can be directly used in order to display the trajectory of a Bohmian particle moving in the two−dimensional Euclidean plane, in the presence of a wall located at y = 0 in Cartesian coordinates. The wave function is a product of a Gaussian wave packet in the x−direction, centred at x with initial momentum p x , and of the symmetrised Gaussian state as in (12) in the y−direction. It has the same width σ in both x− and y−directions.. Using (A.10) for the dynamics along the x direction, and (19) or (23) along the y−direction, the Bohmian velocity field has the Cartesian coordinates ...
Preprint
Bohmian trajectories are considered for a particle that is free (i.e. the potential energy is zero), except for a half-line barrier. On the barrier, both Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions are considered. The half-line barrier yields one of the simplest cases of diffraction. Using the exact time-dependent propagator found by Schulman, the trajectories are computed numerically for different initial Gaussian wave packets. In particular, it is found that different boundary conditions may lead to qualitatively different sets of trajectories. In the Dirichlet case, the particles tend to be more strongly repelled. The case of an incoming plane wave is also considered. The corresponding Bohmian trajectories are compared with the trajectories of an oil drop hopping on the surface of a vibrating bath.
... Originally conducted by Thomas Young [1] in the early nineteenth century, this seminal experiment provided compelling evidence for the wave-like attributes of light through the observation of interference patterns produced by light traversing two closely spaced slits. This groundbreaking revelation challenged the prevalent notion of light solely as a particle and laid the foundation for the wave-particle duality [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] concept-a keystone principle of quantum mechanics. Moreover, Young's experiment elucidated the principles of superposition and coherence, bedrock tenets underpinning various domains of modern physics, including quantum mechanics and optics. ...
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The classic Young's double-slit experiment exhibits first-order interference, producing alternating bright and dark fringes modulated by the diffraction effect of the slits. In contrast, here we demonstrate that its time-reversed configuration produces an ideal, deterministic second-order 'ghost' interference pattern devoid of diffraction and first-order effect, with the size dependent on the dimensions of the `effectively extended light source.' Furthermore, the new system enables a range of effects and phenomena not available in traditional double-slit interference studies, including the formation of programmed and digitized interference fringes and the coincidence of the pattern plane and the source plane. Despite the absence of first-order interference, our proposed experiment does not rely on nonclassical correlations or quantum entanglement. The elimination of diffraction through time-reversal symmetry holds promise for advancing superresolution optical imaging and sensing techniques beyond existing capabilities.
... Notably, there is weak measurement, where a system and measurement device are very weakly coupled, leaving the system nearly undisturbed [29]. With weak measurement, researchers have directly measured the quantum wavefunction [30], observed average trajectories of particles in the double-slit experiment [31], and performed tests of local realism [32]. More recently, we investigated partiallyprojecting measurements which lie somewhere between weak and projective measurement. ...
Preprint
The resources needed to conventionally characterize a quantum system are overwhelmingly large for high- dimensional systems. This obstacle may be overcome by abandoning traditional cornerstones of quantum measurement, such as general quantum states, strong projective measurement, and assumption-free characterization. Following this reasoning, we demonstrate an efficient technique for characterizing high-dimensional, spatial entanglement with one set of measurements. We recover sharp distributions with local, random filtering of the same ensemble in momentum followed by position---something the uncertainty principle forbids for projective measurements. Exploiting the expectation that entangled signals are highly correlated, we use fewer than 5,000 measurements to characterize a 65, 536-dimensional state. Finally, we use entropic inequalities to witness entanglement without a density matrix. Our method represents the sea change unfolding in quantum measurement where methods influenced by the information theory and signal-processing communities replace unscalable, brute-force techniques---a progression previously followed by classical sensing.
... In fact, most of the experiments involving weak measurements have been performed in classical optical settings for small optical signal amplifications, such as, for the estimation of small phase [7], quantifying small angular rotations [8], measuring ultrasmall time delays [9], capturing tiny beam deflections [10] and so on [11][12][13][14]. More importantly, the implementation of weak measurement in optical domain yields improved understandings of different foundational aspects of quantum physics [15][16][17][18], as well as different optical phenomena, e.g, optical beam shifts [19], spinorbit interaction of light [20], spin Hall effect of light [4,21] etc. ...
Preprint
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Quantum weak measurements became extremely popular in classical optics to amplify small optical signals for fundamental interests and potential applications. Later, a more general extension, joint weak measurement has been proposed to extract weak value from a joint quantum measurement. However, the detection of joint weak value in the realm of classical optics remains less explored. Here, using the polarization-dependent longitudinal and transverse optical beam shift as a platform, we experimentally realize the quantum joint weak measurement in a classical optical setting. Polarization states are cleverly pre and post-selected, and different single and joint canonical position-momentum observables of the beam are experimentally extracted and subsequently analyzed for successful detection of complex joint weak value. We envision that this work will find usefulness for gaining fundamental insights on quantum measurements and to tackle analogous problems in optics.
... Bohm's representation of quantum theory uses configuration space trajectories [46,47] and these have experimental relevance [48]. ...
Preprint
Phase space dynamics in classical mechanics is described by transport along trajectories. Anharmonic quantum mechanical systems do not allow for a trajectory-based description of their phase space dynamics. This invalidates some approaches to quantum phase space studies. We first demonstrate the absenceof trajectories in general terms. We then give an explicit proof for all quantum phase space distributions with negative values: we show that the generation of coherences in anharmonic quantum mechanical systems is responsible for the occurrence of singularities in their phase space velocity fields, and vice versa. This explains numerical problems repeatedly reported in the literature, and provides deeper insight into the nature of quantum phase space dynamics.
... This theoretical observation has led to a great number of experimental applications and discovery of several new effects; see e.g. [19][20][21][22]36]. ...
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The notions of weak measurement, weak value, and two-state-vector formalism provide a new quantum-theoretical frame for extracting additional information from a system in the limit of small disturbances to its state. Here, we provide an application to the case of two-body scattering with one body weakly interacting with an environment. The direct connection to real scattering experiments is pointed out by making contact with the field of impulsive incoherent neutron scattering from molecules and condensed systems. In particular, we predict a new quantum effect in neutron-atom collisions, namely an observable momentum transfer deficit; or equivalently, a reduction of effective mass below that of the free scattering atom. Two corroborative experimental findings are shortly presented. Implications for current and further experiments are mentioned. An interpretation of this effect and the associated experimental results within conventional theory is currently unavailable.
... It has also been shown that Bohmian chaos does not necessarily correspond to quantum chaos [13,14]. The study of chaos provides further insight into the nature of the Bohmian trajectories, which is particularly important in view of the fact that the details of the Bohmian trajectories can be revealed by experiments [15,16]. Establishing chaos usually also implies ergodicity, which means uniqueness of the quantum equilibrium distribution. ...
Preprint
In Bohmian mechanics, the nodes of the wave function play an important role in the generation of chaos. However, so far, most of the attention has been on moving nodes; little is known about the possibility of chaos in the case of stationary nodes. We address this question by considering stationary states, which provide the simplest examples of wave functions with stationary nodes. We provide examples of stationary wave functions for which there is chaos, as demonstrated by numerical computations, for one particle moving in 3 spatial dimensions and for two and three entangled particles in two dimensions. Our conclusion is that the motion of the nodes is not necessary for the generation of chaos. What is important is the overall complexity of the wave function. That is, if the wave function, or rather its phase, has complex spatial variations, it will lead to complex Bohmian trajectories and hence to chaos. Another aspect of our work concerns the average Lyapunov exponent, which quantifies the overall amount of chaos. Since it is very hard to evaluate the average Lyapunov exponent analytically, which is often computed numerically, it is useful to have simple quantities that agree well with the average Lyapunov exponent. We investigate possible correlations with quantities such as the participation ratio and different measures of entanglement, for different systems and different families of stationary wave functions. We find that these quantities often tend to correlate to the amount of chaos. However, the correlation is not perfect, because, in particular, these measures do not depend on the form of the basis states used to expand the wave function, while the amount of chaos does.
Article
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Even though weak measurements and weak value amplification (WVA) are founded on the principles of quantum mechanics and quantum measurements, these have found widespread applications in optics due to their inherent origin in wave interference. Besides their use in addressing foundational questions of quantum mechanics or for resolving quantum paradoxes, weak measurements and WVA have thus been used for numerous metrological applications, e.g., quantification of small optical beam displacement, tiny angular rotation, determination of extremely small phase shifts, spectral shifts, unraveling weak fundamental optical effects, improved optical imaging, amplifying weak signal and extracting small physical parameters and so forth. In this review, after providing the mathematical foundation of weak measurement and WVA, some of the metrological applications of weak measurements in the classical optics domain are briefly summarized, and the controversies and debates on the potential advantages of WVA in the estimation and detection of weak signal are discussed, and the interferometric philosophy of WVA is elucidated. The experimental weak measurement and WVA schemes in the domain of quantum optics are also discussed and highlighted the new perspectives and emerging trends of weak measurements in both the classical and quantum optics domain and their prospects in the development of next‐generation ultra‐sensitive optical devices.
Article
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Bohmian mechanics (BM) is a popular interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM) in which particles have real positions. The velocity of a point x in configuration space is defined as the standard probability current j(x) divided by the probability density P(x). However, this 'standard' j is in fact only one of infinitely many that transform correctly and satisfy . In this paper, I show that a particular j is singled out if one requires that j be determined experimentally as a weak value, using a technique that would make sense to a physicist with no knowledge of QM. This 'naively observable' j seems the most natural way to define j operationally. Moreover, I show that this operationally defined j equals the standard j, so, assuming , one obtains the dynamics of BM. It follows that the possible Bohmian paths are naively observable from a large enough ensemble. Furthermore, this justification for the Bohmian law of motion singles out x as the hidden variable, because (for example) the analogously defined momentum current is in general incompatible with the evolution of the momentum distribution. Finally I discuss how, in this setting, the usual quantum probabilities can be motivated from a Bayesian standpoint, via the principle of indifference.
Chapter
This third edition, like its two predecessors, provides a detailed account of the basic theory needed to understand the properties of light and its interactions with atoms, in particular the many nonclassical effects that have now been observed in quantum-optical experiments. The earlier chapters describe the quantum mechanics of various optical processes, leading from the classical representation of the electromagnetic field to the quantum theory of light. The later chapters develop the theoretical descriptions of some of the key experiments in quantum optics. Over half of the material in this third edition is new. It includes topics that have come into prominence over the last two decades, such as the beamsplitter theory, squeezed light, two-photon interference, balanced homodyne detection, travelling-wave attenuation and amplification, quantum jumps, and the ranges of nonliner optical processes important in the generation of nonclassical light. The book is written as a textbook, with the treatment as a whole appropriate for graduate or postgraduate students, while earlier chapters are also suitable for final- year undergraduates. Over 100 problems help to intensify the understanding of the material presented.
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Article
The usual interpretation of the quantum theory is self-consistent, but it involves an assumption that cannot be tested experimentally, viz., that the most complete possible specification of an individual system is in terms of a wave function that determines only probable results of actual measurement processes. The only way of investigating the truth of this assumption is by trying to find some other interpretation of the quantum theory in terms of at present "hidden" variables, which in principle determine the precise behavior of an individual system, but which are in practice averaged over in measurements of the types that can now be carried out. In this paper and in a subsequent paper, an interpretation of the quantum theory in terms of just such "hidden" variables is suggested. It is shown that as long as the mathematical theory retains its present general form, this suggested interpretation leads to precisely the same results for all physical processes as does the usual interpretation. Nevertheless, the suggested interpretation provides a broader conceptual framework than the usual interpretation, because it makes possible a precise and continuous description of all processes, even at the quantum level. This broader conceptual framework allows more general mathematical formulations of the theory than those allowed by the usual interpretation. Now, the usual mathematical formulation seems to lead to insoluble difficulties when it is extrapolated into the domain of distances of the order of 10-13 cm or less. It is therefore entirely possible that the interpretation suggested here may be needed for the resolution of these difficulties. In any case, the mere possibility of such an interpretation proves that it is not necessary for us to give up a precise, rational, and objective description of individual systems at a quantum level of accuracy.
Article
A detailed analysis of Einstein's version of the double-slit experiment, in which one tries to observe both wave and particle properties of light, is performed. Quantum nonseparability appears in the derivation of the interference pattern, which proves to be surprisingly sharp even when the trajectories of the photons have been determined with fairly high accuracy. An information-theoretic approach to this problem leads to a quantitative formulation of Bohr's complementarity principle for the case of the double-slit experiment. A practically realizable version of this experiment, to which the above analysis applies, is proposed.
Article
Simultaneous observations of wave and particle behavior is prohibited, usually by the position-momentum uncertainty relation. It is reported here, however, that a way has been found, based on matter-wave interferometry and recent advances in quantum optics, to obtain which-path or particlelike information without scattering or otherwise introducing large uncontrolled phase factors into the interfering beams. It is the information contained in a functioning measuring apparatus, rather than controllable alterations of the spatial wave function, that changes the outcome of the experiment to enforce complementarity.
Book
Principles of Optics is one of the classic science books of the twentieth century, and probably the most influential book in optics published in the past forty years. This edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with new material covering the CAT scan, interference with broad-band light and the so-called Rayleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction theory. This edition also details scattering from inhomogeneous media and presents an account of the principles of diffraction tomography to which Emil Wolf has made a basic contribution. Several new appendices are also included. This new edition will be invaluable to advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in most areas of optics.