Necessary and sufficient conditions for macroscopic realism from quantum mechanics

Macroscopic realism, the classical world view that macroscopic objects exist independently of and are not influenced by measurements, is usually tested using Leggett-Garg inequalities. Recently, another necessary condition called no-signaling in time (NSIT) has been proposed as a witness for non-classical behavior. In this paper, we show that a combination of NSIT conditions is not only necessary but also sufficient for a macrorealistic description of a physical system. Any violation of macroscopic realism must therefore be witnessed by a suitable NSIT condition. Subsequently, we derive an operational formulation for NSIT in terms of positive operator-valued measurements and the system Hamiltonian. We argue that this leads to a suitable definition of "classical" measurements and Hamiltonians, and apply our formalism to some generic coarse-grained quantum measurements.Comment: 10 pages, published versio

Condition for macroscopic realism beyond the Leggett-Garg inequalities

In 1985, Leggett and Garg put forward the concept of macroscopic realism (macrorealism) and, in analogy to Bell's theorem, derived a necessary condition in terms of inequalities, which are now known as the Leggett-Garg inequalities. In this paper, we discuss another necessary condition called no-signaling in time. It solely bases on comparing the probability distribution for a macrovariable at some time for the cases where previously a measurement has or has not been performed. Although the concept is analogous to the no-signaling condition in the case of Bell tests, it can be violated according to quantum mechanical predictions even in situations where no violation of Leggett-Garg inequalities is possible.Comment: 6 pages, 1 table, 1 figure, published versio

Conference on Planetary Volatiles

Initial and present volatile inventories and distributions in the Earth, other planets, meteorites, and comets; observational evidence on the time history of volatile transfer among reservoirs; and volatiles in planetary bodies, their mechanisms of transport, and their relation to thermal, chemical, geological and biological evolution were addressed

Entanglement distribution revealed by macroscopic observations

What can we learn about entanglement between individual particles in macroscopic samples by observing only the collective properties of the ensembles? Using only a few experimentally feasible collective properties, we establish an entanglement measure between two samples of spin-1/2 particles (as representatives of two-dimensional quantum systems). This is a tight lower bound for the average entanglement between all pairs of spins in general and is equal to the average entanglement for a certain class of systems. We compute the entanglement measures for explicit examples and show how to generalize the method to more than two samples and multi-partite entanglement.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, revised and published versio

Hard exclusive photoproduction of charmed mesons

{We investigate the photoproduction process $p \gamma \rightarrow \Lambda_{c}^{+} \overline{D^{0}}$ within the handbag approach, which we assume to be the dominant mechanism at energies well above the production threshold and in the forward scattering hemisphere.Comment: proceedings of Photon 2013, May 20-24 2013, Paris, Franc

A Snapshot of Foundational Attitudes Toward Quantum Mechanics

Foundational investigations in quantum mechanics, both experimental and theoretical, gave birth to the field of quantum information science. Nevertheless, the foundations of quantum mechanics themselves remain hotly debated in the scientific community, and no consensus on essential questions has been reached. Here, we present the results of a poll carried out among 33 participants of a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics. The participants completed a questionnaire containing 16 multiple-choice questions probing opinions on quantum-foundational issues. Participants included physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians. We describe our findings, identify commonly held views, and determine strong, medium, and weak correlations between the answers. Our study provides a unique snapshot of current views in the field of quantum foundations, as well as an analysis of the relationships between these views.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Light polarization measurements in tests of macrorealism

According to the world view of macrorealism, the properties of a given system exist prior to and independent of measurement, which is incompatible with quantum mechanics. Leggett and Garg put forward a practical criterion capable of identifying violations of macrorealism, and so far experiments performed on microscopic and mesoscopic systems have always ruled out in favor of quantum mechanics. However, a macrorealist can always assign the cause of such violations to the perturbation that measurements effect on such small systems, and hence a definitive test would require using non-invasive measurements, preferably on macroscopic objects, where such measurements seem more plausible. However, the generation of truly macroscopic quantum superposition states capable of violating macrorealism remains a big challenge. In this work we propose a setup that makes use of measurements on the polarization of light, a property which has been extensively manipulated both in classical and quantum contexts, hence establishing the perfect link between the microscopic and macroscopic worlds. In particular, we use Leggett-Garg inequalities and the criterion of no-signaling in time to study the macrorealistic character of light polarization for different kinds of measurements, in particular with different degrees of coarse-graining. Our proposal is non-invasive for coherent input states by construction. We show for states with well defined photon number in two orthogonal polarization modes, that there always exists a way of making the measurement sufficiently coarse-grained so that a violation of macrorealism becomes arbitrarily small, while sufficiently sharp measurements can always lead to a significant violation.Comment: Comments, suggestions, and constructive criticism are welcom