Interferometry of quantum correlation functions to access quasiprobability distribution of work
Year: 2024
Authors: Hernandez-Gomez S., Isogawa T., Belenchia A., Levy A., Fabbri N., Gherardini S., Cappellaro P.
Autors Affiliation: MIT, Res Lab Elect, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA; MIT, Dept Nucl Sci & Engn, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA; German Aerosp Ctr DLR, Inst Quantum Technol, D-89077 Ulm, Germany; Bar Ilan Univ, Inst Nanotechnol & Adv Mat, Dept Chem, IL-52900 Ramat Gan, Israel; Bar Ilan Univ, Ctr Quantum Entanglement Sci & Technol, IL-52900 Ramat Gan, Israel; Ist Nazl Ott Consiglio Nazl Ric CNR INO, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy; Univ Firenze, European Lab Nonlinear Spect LENS, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy; Ist Nazl Ott Consiglio Nazl Ric CNR INO, Largo Enr Fermi 6, I-50125 Florence, Italy; SISSA, Via Bonomea 265, I-34136 Trieste, Italy.
Abstract: The Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability distribution, intimately connected with the quantum correlation function of two observables measured at distinct times, is becoming increasingly relevant for fundamental physics and quantum technologies. This quasiprobability distribution can take non-positive values, and its experimental reconstruction becomes challenging when expectation values of incompatible observables are involved. Here, we use an interferometric scheme aided by an auxiliary system to reconstruct the Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability distribution. We experimentally demonstrate this scheme in an electron-nuclear spin system associated with a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond. By measuring the characteristic function, we reconstruct the quasiprobability distribution of work and analyze the behavior of its first and second moments. Our results clarify the physical meaning of the work quasiprobability distribution in the context of quantum thermodynamics. Finally, we study the uncertainty of measuring the Hamiltonian of the system at two times, via the Robertson-Schr & ouml;dinger uncertainty relation, for different initial states.
Journal/Review: NPJ QUANTUM INFORMATION
Volume: 10 (1) Pages from: 115-1 to: 115-11
More Information: We thank Matteo Lostaglio for several discussions involving this work and for carefully reading the manuscript. We are grateful to Guoqing Wang for insightful discussions. We wish to acknowledge financial support from the MISTI Global Seed Funds MIT-FVG Collaboration Grants Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics of Dissipative Quantum Systems (NETDQS) and Revealing and exploiting quantumness via quasiprobabilities: from quantum thermodynamics to quantum sensing, the project PRIN 2022 Quantum Reservoir Computing (QuReCo), and the PNRR MUR project PE0000023-NQSTI funded by the European Union-Next Generation EU. The work was also supported by the European Commission under Grant No. 101070546- MUQUABIS, and by the European Union’s Next Generation EU Programme through the I-PHOQS Infrastructure, and through the Project PRIN 2022 QUASAR. A. Belenchia acknowledges support from the Horizon Europe EIC Pathfinder project QuCoM (Grant Agreement No. 10104697). This work was in part supported by the Center for Ultracold Atoms (an NSF Physics Frontiers Center), PHY-2317134. A. Levy acknowledges support from the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 1364/21). T. Isogawa acknowledges support from the Keio University Global Fellowship.DOI: 10.1038/s41534-024-00913-x