In this work we revisit the important and controversial concept of quantum weak values, aiming to provide a simplified understanding to its associated physics and the origin of anomaly. Taking the Stern-Gerlach setup as a working system, we base our analysis on an exact treatment in terms of quantum Bayesian approach. We also make particular connection with a very recent work, where the anomaly of the weak values was claimed from the pure statistics in association with “disturbance” and “post-selection”, rather than the unique quantum nature. Our analysis resolves the related controversies through a clear and quantitative way.
Motivated by recent proposals of Majorana qubits and the read-out of their quantum state we investigate a qubit setup formed by two parallel topological wires shunted by a superconducting bridge. The wires are further coupled to two quantum dots, which are also linked directly, thus creating an interference loop. The transport current through this system shows an interference pattern which distinguishes two basis states of the qubit in a QND measurement. We analyze various properties of the interference current and the read-out process, including the resulting dephasing and relaxation. We also analyze the effects of varying control parameters such as gate voltages on the current. The characteristic dependencies may serve as a signature of Majorana bound states.
For continuous weak measurement of qubits, we obtain exact expressions for weak values (WVs) from the post-selection restricted average of measurement outputs, by using both the quantumtrajectory-equation (QTE) and quantum Bayesian approach. The former is applicable to short-time weak measurement, while the latter can relax the measurement strength to finite. We find that even in the "very" weak limit the result can be essentially different from the one originally proposed by Aharonov, Albert and Vaidman (AAV), in a sense that our result incorporates non-perturbative correction which could be important when the AAV's WV is large. Within the Bayesian framework, we obtain also elegant expressions for finite measurement strength and find that the amplifier's noise in quantum measurement has no effect on the WVs. In particular, we obtain very useful result for homodyne measurement in circuit-QED system, which allows for measuring the real and imaginary parts of the AAV's WV by simply tuning the phase of the local oscillator. This advantage can be exploited as efficient state-tomography technique.
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