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Quantum measurement

A light touch

Nature volume 463, pages 890–891 (2010)Cite this article

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A technique used primarily to study fundamental issues in quantum mechanics has now been shown to have promise as a powerful practical tool for making ultra-precise measurements.

'Weak measurement', a technique invented by Aharonov and co-workers1 about 20 years ago, is a way of probing a quantum system so gently that the famous measurement disturbance guaranteed by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle becomes negligible. Its discovery opened the door for investigation of all manner of quantum phenomena previously deemed inaccessible. The method's downside — that when you probe a system weakly, you acquire little information — seemed a small price to pay for such a qualitative change in the rules of the game. Until recently, such a sacrifice seemed wise only for studying the foundations of physics. But writing in Physical Review A, Howell and colleagues2 show that a clever application of this technique can vastly improve the signal-to-noise ratio of a measurement as simple as the angular deflection of a light beam.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and the Department of Physics, Aephraim M. Steinberg is in the Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A7, Canada. steinberg@physics.utoronto.ca,

    Aephraim M. Steinberg

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  1. Aephraim M. Steinberg
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Steinberg, A. A light touch. Nature 463, 890–891 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/463890a

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