Large-time limit of the quantum Zeno effect

Abstract

If very frequent periodic measurements ascertain whether a quantum system is still in its initial state, its evolution is hindered. This peculiar phenomenon is called quantum Zeno effect. We investigate the large-time limit of the survival probability as the total observation time scales as a power of the measurement frequency, $t\propto N^{\alpha }$. The limit survival probability exhibits a sudden jump from 1 to 0 at $\alpha =1/2$, the threshold between the quantum Zeno effect and a diffusive behavior. Moreover, we show that for $\alpha \ge 1$ the limit probability becomes sensitive to the spectral properties of the initial state and to arithmetic properties of the measurement periods.

18 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (3)

• Quantum Zeno dynamics: mathematical and physical aspects
• Freezing a Coherent Field Growth in a Cavity by Quantum Zeno Effect
• Classical and quantum aspects of tomography