New Physical Review Letter on Weak Values

Post date: Dec 5, 2012 5:40:03 PM

Today, Physical Review Letters published a joint work with Justin Dressel on the subject of weak values in quantum mechanics.

The importance of the work is that it completely generalizes the concept of weak values. No approximations are made, and we find surprisingly universal results for any conditioned average, so long as the measurement is a "Von Neumann measurement" - a measurement that impulsively couples a free particle meter to a system observable.

We give a nice implementation of the formalism we develop to the case of an optical polarization state measured by a transverse beam shift. The interesting point is that the state of light can be prepared in any "Hermite-Gauss" mode that are typically prepared by lasers.

Possible implementation of the theory with an optical laser mode and birefringent element.