Quantum Measurement Theory and its Applications 1st Edition by Kurt Jacobs | (PDF) Free Download

Description

Recent experimental advances in the control of quantum superconducting circuits, nano-mechanical resonators and photonic crystals has meant that quantum measurement theory is now an indispensable part of the modelling and design of experimental technologies. This book, aimed at graduate students and researchers in physics, gives a thorough introduction to the basic theory of quantum measurement and many of its important modern applications. Measurement and control is explicitly treated in superconducting circuits and optical and opto-mechanical systems, and methods for deriving the Hamiltonians of superconducting circuits are introduced in detail. Further applications covered include feedback control, metrology, open systems and thermal environments, Maxwell’s demon, and the quantum-to-classical transition.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a review of Chapter 1 only, entitled Quantum Measurement Theory. Normally, I wouldn’t post a review based solely on such a small part, but I am making an exception because the first chapter impressed me so favorably and there are no other reviews about two years after its publication.For a paper I am writing, I needed a published reference to the theory of quantum measurement operators in the form that I intended to use it. The only reference I knew was the book of Nielsen and Chuang, “Quantum Computation and Quantum Information”. Though a generally excellent book, I was not satisfied with its treatment of measurement operators. Searching the web, I came across an early version of the first Chapter of Jacob’s book, which turned out to be almost exactly what I was looking for.There ought to be many good treatments of measurement operators by now, some thirty-odd years after its introduction in the seminal book of Karl Kraus, “States, effects, and operations”. Probably there are, but Jacobs’ is the only one that I have seen.The Chapter is clear and well written. The essence of its mathematical treatment is essentially the way I would do it were I writing an introduction to measurement operators. However, I think it would be more useful for advanced readers if it were written in the language and notation of operators on Hilbert spaces rather than matrices.Its intended audience is graduate students in physics. They should be able, and encouraged if not, to think more abstractly than in terms of matrices with numerical entries. A more abstract view may be harder at first, but once mastered makes so many things so much easier. It is because the chapter is written in the language of numerical-entried matrices that I gave it 4 instead of the maximum 5 stars.In summary, I think this book is worth a look for anyone who wants to learn quantum measurement theory.

⭐I was very seduced at first by the contents of this book. I have only read the first two chapters so far. I like very much the detailed parallel between classical measurements and quantum ones. This enables the reader to understand what part of a quantum measurement’s randomness is due to the intrinsic quantum nature of a system, and what part is the result of uncertainty also present in any classical system measurement. However, my opinion is that all this effort is spoiled when no distinction is made when qualifying the density matrix (or density operator) of a quantum system as “state of the system” on one hand, or as ” state of knowledge(of the system) for an observer”, on the other hand, without any distinction. This ignores the fact that the “state of a system” characterizes the system itself while the “state of knowledge” depends on the observer. Presence of the word “state” is not enough to identify the two concepts!As the former commentator, I would have liked to see things described in the more general context of “density operators” and not simply “density matrices”.I also would have liked examples of applications to simple measurements. I believe that this would have helped clarifying the ambiguity between the “system’s state” and the observer’s “state of knowlegde”.

⭐After some time reading and re-reading this book I conclude it is a masterpiece.Unlike the author I am not an applied physicist so I have left the application section (ch.5-7) unread, however reviewing ch.1-4 (230 pages) as a self contained book it is nothing less than a treatise on the foundations of quantum physics showing how we can only make sense of the complete quantum world by studying it in parallel with:measurement theory (discrete ch.1, continuous ch.3)information theory (ch.2)statistical physics (ch.4)Only then can we fully appreciate how the quantum laws (reversible, linear) give rise to the emergence of familiar macroscopic physics (irreversibility, particle trajectory, nonlinearity, chaos).Only at the very last page of ch.4 are we invited to consider the ultimate quantum conundrum: the quantum measurement problem.The criticism of presentation in the other reviews are no doubt valid and I could add my own. Very few non-expert readers will be able to read all 230 pages without getting lost on some mathematical or conceptual technicalities – I found ito calculus required to understand continuous measurement in ch.3 the most challenging. However I challenge any author to do better whilst maintaining this level of rigor.So I come to praise this book only after reading several other quantum foundations books and perhaps gleaning enough ideas from them to allow me to appreciate what this book achieves.Other books of the same genre either dive straight into mathematics and leave you lost as to what physics is really about, or else try to sell you some particular philosophy (decoherence, many worlds, quantum Darwinism, “physics is information” etc) as an answer to the measurement problem. This book treads a fine line between these two positions leaving the diligent reader able to think for himself to what extent quantum foundations is a solved problem.

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