Weak

measurements

Mae Hwee Teo

Conceived in 1988 by Aharonov, Albert and Vaidman, a weak measurement is a quantum measurement where the measurement probe is only weakly coupled to the system. This means that the quantum state does not collapse upon a measurement, and thus has very interesting philosophical implications in our understanding of quantum mechanics1. In his Viewpoint article2, Popescu suggests we consider an ensemble of spin-1/2 particles that are measured to be spin up in the z-direction. At a later time, the particles are measured in the x-direction. If we select only the particles that finally turn out to be spin up in the x-direction, then the spin of these particles has to be in both the +z and +x direction during the time between the two measurements. This conclusion is impossible in quantum mechanics and implies the controversial statement that measurements in the present can affect quantum states in the past. In this example, a weak measurement is accomplished by finding both the x- and z- components of spin simultaneously. It turns out that the weak values obtained can be much larger than the largest possible eigenvalue of the observable. Therefore, in spite of the skepticism on weak measurements, these measurements can and do serve as signal amplifiers. Amplifying a measurement value is useful for observing small effects. When a signal is too small to be measured by conventional means, amplification can resolve the data. However, all amplification methods have drawbacks. In the case of weak measurements, most data are not in the desired final state, so a lot of data is discarded during post processing3. However, even with little data, the improvement can be dramatic. In an impressive demonstration, Hosten and Kwiat have measured a beam deflection on the order of an angstrom by using weak measurements, and experimentally verified the spin-hall effect of light4. Hence, by using a cleverly designed setup, small effects can be measured that cannot be resolved by other means. One such setup is a Sagnac interferometer, which can be used to measure minute beam deflections to very high precision3. Because of interference effects, a small misalignment of the interferometer causes large changes in the beams that emerge at the output ports of the interferometer. A way to measure beam deflections is by moving one mirror mounted on a controlled piezoelectric actuator and characterizing the resulting beams position as it exits one output port. If we selectively measure light from only the dark output port, we are indirectly taking a weak measurement of the beams deflection angle. Therefore, the tiny movement of the mirror can be characterized with this interferometer3. The results obtained in this experiment agreed with the theory of weak value amplification1, since the expected amplification was observed in the change in position of the output beam. Furthermore, as expected, incredibly small effects were detected. As an example, the displacement of the piezoelectric actuator was measured to be 147 fm, which is about the size of a large atomic nucleus!3 In conclusion, a weak measurement is not only a marvelous curiosity, but also an extremely useful tool to observe small effects otherwise unseen.

Weak measurements

Mae Hwee Teo

References 1 Y. Aharonov, D.Z. Albert, L. Vaidman, "How the result of a measurement of a component of the spin of a spin-1/2 particle can turn out to be 100," Physical Review Letters, 1988. 2 Viewpoint: Weak measurements just got stronger (Web article) Sandu Popescu http://physics.aps.org/articles/v2/32 3 P. Ben Dixon, David J. Starling, Andrew N. Jordan, and John C. Howell Ultrasensitive Beam Deflection Measurement via Interferometric Weak Value Amplification (Original paper) Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 173601 (2009) Published April 27, 2009 4 O. Hosten and P. Kwiat Observation of the spin Hall effect of light via weak measurements Science 319 787 (2008)