Quantum measurements of sums

Abstract

© 2020 American Physical Society. A method is proposed that allows one to infer the sum of the values of an observable taken during contacts with a pointer state. Hereby, the state of the pointer is updated while contacted with the system and remains unchanged between contacts while the system evolves in time. After a prescribed number of such contacts, the position of the pointer is determined by means of a projective measurement. The outcome is specified in terms of a probability distribution function for unitary and Markovian dissipative dynamics and compared with the results of the same number of generalized Gaussian measurements of the considered observable. As a particular example, a qubit is considered with an observable contacting to the pointer that does not commute with the system Hamiltonian