Maxwellian theory of gravitational waves and their mechanical properties

We present a theory in Maxwellian form for gravitational waves in a flat background. This requires us to identify the gravitational analogues of the electric and magnetic fields for light. An important novelty, however, is that our analogues are not vector fields but rather rank-two tensor fields; in place of a three-component vector at each point in space, as in electromagnetism, our fields are three by three symmetric matrices at each point. The resulting Maxwell-like equations lead directly to a Poynting theorem for the local energy density associated with a gravitational wave and to associated local properties including densities of momentum and angular momentum

Resolution of the Abraham-Minkowski dilemma

The dilemma of identifying the correct form for the momentum of light in a medium has run for a century and has been informed by many distinguished contributions, both theoretical and experimental. We show that both the Abraham and Minkowski forms of the momentum density are correct, with the former being the kinetic momentum and the latter the canonical momentum. This identification allows us to explain why the experiments supporting each of the rival momenta gave the results that they did. The inclusion of dispersion and absorption provides an interesting subtlety, but does not change our conclusion

Grassmann phase space methods for fermions. II. Field theory

In both quantum optics and cold atom physics, the behaviour of bosonic photons and atoms is often treated using phase space methods, where mode annihilation and creation operators are represented by c-number phase space variables, with the density operator equivalent to a distribution function of these variables. The anti-commutation rules for fermion annihilation, creation operators suggests the possibility of using anti-commuting Grassmann variables to represent these operators. However, in spite of the seminal work by Cahill and Glauber and a few applications, the use of Grassmann phase space methods in quantum-atom optics to treat fermionic systems is rather rare, though fermion coherent states using Grassmann variables are widely used in particle physics. This paper presents a phase space theory for fermion systems based on distribution functionals, which replace the density operator and involve Grassmann fields representing anti-commuting fermion field annihilation, creation operators. It is an extension of a previous phase space theory paper for fermions (Paper I) based on separate modes, in which the density operator is replaced by a distribution function depending on Grassmann phase space variables which represent the mode annihilation and creation operators. This further development of the theory is important for the situation when large numbers of fermions are involved, resulting in too many modes to treat separately. Here Grassmann fields, distribution functionals, functional Fokker–Planck equations and Ito stochastic field equations are involved. Typical applications to a trapped Fermi gas of interacting spin 1/2 fermionic atoms and to multi-component Fermi gases with non-zero range interactions are presented, showing that the Ito stochastic field equations are local in these cases. For the spin 1/2 case we also show how simple solutions can be obtained both for the untrapped case and for an optical lattice trapping potential

Bayes' theorem and quantum retrodiction

We derive on the basis of Bayes' theorem a simple but general expression for the retrodicted premeasurement state associated with the result of any measurement. The retrodictive density operator is the normalized probability operator measure element associated with the result. We examine applications to quantum optical cryptography and to the optical beam splitter

Retrodiction of Generalised Measurement Outcomes

If a generalised measurement is performed on a quantum system and we do not know the outcome, are we able to retrodict it with a second measurement? We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for perfect retrodiction of the outcome of a known generalised measurement, given the final state, for an arbitrary initial state. From this, we deduce that, when the input and output Hilbert spaces have equal (finite) dimension, it is impossible to perfectly retrodict the outcome of any fine-grained measurement (where each POVM element corresponds to a single Kraus operator) for all initial states unless the measurement is unitarily equivalent to a projective measurement. It also enables us to show that every POVM can be realised in such a way that perfect outcome retrodiction is possible for an arbitrary initial state when the number of outcomes does not exceed the output Hilbert space dimension. We then consider the situation where the initial state is not arbitrary, though it may be entangled, and describe the conditions under which unambiguous outcome retrodiction is possible for a fine-grained generalised measurement. We find that this is possible for some state if the Kraus operators are linearly independent. This condition is also necessary when the Kraus operators are non-singular. From this, we deduce that every trace-preserving quantum operation is associated with a generalised measurement whose outcome is unambiguously retrodictable for some initial state, and also that a set of unitary operators can be unambiguously discriminated iff they are linearly independent. We then examine the issue of unambiguous outcome retrodiction without entanglement. This has important connections with the theory of locally linearly dependent and locally linearly independent operators.Comment: To appear in Physical Review

Detection of a spinning object using light's orbital angular momentum

The linear Doppler shift is widely used to infer the velocity of approaching objects, but this shift does not detect rotation. By analyzing the orbital angular momentum of the light scattered from a spinning object, we observed a frequency shift proportional to product of the rotation frequency of the object and the orbital angular momentum of the light. This rotational frequency shift was still present when the angular momentum vector was parallel to the observation direction. The multiplicative enhancement of the frequency shift may have applications for the remote detection of rotating bodies in both terrestrial and astronomical settings

Quantum state transformation by dispersive and absorbing four-port devices

The recently derived input-output relations for the radiation field at a dispersive and absorbing four-port device [T. Gruner and D.-G. Welsch, Phys. Rev. A 54, 1661 (1996)] are used to derive the unitary transformation that relates the output quantum state to the input quantum state, including radiation and matter and without placing frequency restrictions. It is shown that for each frequency the transformation can be regarded as a well-behaved SU(4) group transformation that can be decomposed into a product of U(2) and SU(2) group transformations. Each of them may be thought of as being realized by a particular lossless four-port device. If for narrow-bandwidth radiation far from the medium resonances the absorption matrix of the four-port device can be disregarded, the well-known SU(2) group transformation for a lossless device is recognized. Explicit formulas for the transformation of Fock-states and coherent states are given.Comment: 24 pages, RevTe

Uncertainty characteristics of generalized quantum measurements

The effects of any quantum measurement can be described by a collection of measurement operators {M_m} acting on the quantum state of the measured system. However, the Hilbert space formalism tends to obscure the relationship between the measurement results and the physical properties of the measured system. In this paper, a characterization of measurement operators in terms of measurement resolution and disturbance is developed. It is then possible to formulate uncertainty relations for the measurement process that are valid for arbitrary input states. The motivation of these concepts is explained from a quantum communication viewpoint. It is shown that the intuitive interpretation of uncertainty as a relation between measurement resolution and disturbance provides a valid description of measurement back action. Possible applications to quantum cryptography, quantum cloning, and teleportation are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, small additions on cloning and on definitions of delta A_mf, et

Pulse-mode quantum projection synthesis: Effects of mode mismatch on optical state truncation and preparation

Quantum projection synthesis can be used for phase-probability-distribution measurement, optical-state truncation and preparation. The method relies on interfering optical lights, which is a major challenge in experiments performed by pulsed light sources. In the pulsed regime, the time frequency overlap of the interfering lights plays a crucial role on the efficiency of the method when they have different mode structures. In this paper, the pulsed mode projection synthesis is developed, the mode structure of interfering lights are characterized and the effect of this overlap (or mode match) on the fidelity of optical-state truncation and preparation is investigated. By introducing the positive-operator-valued measure (POVM) for the detection events in the scheme, the effect of mode mismatch between the photon-counting detectors and the incident lights are also presented.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Control of black hole evaporation?

Contradiction between Hawking's semi-classical arguments and string theory on the evaporation of black hole has been one of the most intriguing problems in fundamental physics. A final-state boundary condition inside the black hole was proposed by Horowitz and Maldacena to resolve this contradiction. We point out that original Hawking effect can be also regarded as a separate boundary condition at the event horizon for this scenario. Here, we found that the change of Hawking boundary condition may affect the information transfer from the initial collapsing matter to the outgoing Hawking radiation during evaporation process and as a result the evaporation process itself, significantly.Comment: Journal of High Energy Physics, to be publishe