In quantum mechanics, measurements disturb the state of the system being measured. This disturbance is largest for complementary properties (e.g. position and momentum) and hence limits the precision with which such properties can be determined simultaneously. Often, this fact is conflated with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which refers to an uncertainty relation between complementary properties that is intrinsic to quantum states. In this thesis, the distinction between these two fundamental characteristics of quantum mechanics is made clear. At the intersection of the two are "joint measurements", which circumvent measurement disturbance to simultaneously determine complementary properties. They have applications in quantum metrology and enable a direct measurement of quantum states. The focus of this thesis is on the latter.
The thesis is structured in the following way. The first chapter serves as an introduction to joint measurements. It surveys the seminal works in the field, doing so in a chronological manner to provide some historical context. The remainder of the thesis discusses two strategies to experimentally achieve joint measurements. The first strategy is to sequentially measure the complementary properties, making these measurements weak so that they do not disrupt each other. The second strategy is to first clone the system being measured, and then measure each complementary property on a separate clone. Both strategies are experimentally demonstrated on polarized photons, but can be readily extended to other systems.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/36669 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Thekkadath, Guillaume |
| Contributors | Lundeen, Jeff |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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