Measurement of non-commuting spin components using spin-orbit interaction

Abstract

We analyze the physical meaning of a possible experiment aimed at the simultaneous measurement of two non-commuting spin components. We demonstrate that switching of a strong spin-orbit interaction, e.g., in a solid state or a cold-atom system, for a short period of time simulates a simultaneous von Neumann measurement of spin components, ${\sigma }_x$ and ${\sigma }_y$. By mapping spin dynamics onto coordinate-space motion, such a measurement determines time averages of ${\sigma }_x$ and ${\sigma }_y$ which, unlike their instantaneous values, may be evaluated simultaneously to an arbitrary accuracy.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• The electronic properties of graphene
• A spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate
• Spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
• Effect of Induced Spin-Orbit Coupling for Atoms via Laser Fields
• Wave packet dynamics in a monolayer graphene
• Universal model for exoergic bimolecular reactions and inelastic processes

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Spin-Orbit Coupled Quantum Gases
• Understanding quantum measurement from the solution of dynamical models
• Manipulating Topological Edge Spins in One-Dimensional Optical Lattice
• Spin dynamics in a strongly driven system: very slow Rabi oscillations
• Von Neumann spin measurements with Rashba fields
• Quantum Zeno effect under continuous spin noise measurement in a quantum dot-micropillar cavity
• Zeno effect and ergodicity in finite-time quantum measurements