Ground state entanglement energetics

We consider the ground state of simple quantum systems coupled to an environment. In general the system is entangled with its environment. As a consequence, even at zero temperature, the energy of the system is not sharp: a projective measurement can find the system in an excited state. We show that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physica. E, Low-dimensional systems & nanostructures Low-dimensional systems & nanostructures, 2005-10, Vol.29 (1), p.272-282
Main Authors: Büttiker, M., Jordan, A.N.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Classical and quantum physics: mechanics and fields
Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties
Decoherence
Electronic structure and electrical properties of surfaces, interfaces, thin films and low-dimensional structures
Electronic transport in mesoscopic systems
Energy fluctuations
Entanglement energetics
Exact sciences and technology
Persistent currents
Physics
Quantum computation
Quantum information
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Summary:We consider the ground state of simple quantum systems coupled to an environment. In general the system is entangled with its environment. As a consequence, even at zero temperature, the energy of the system is not sharp: a projective measurement can find the system in an excited state. We show that energy fluctuation measurements at zero temperature provide entanglement information. For two-state systems which exhibit a persistent current in the ground state, energy fluctuations and persistent current fluctuations are closely related. The harmonic oscillator serves to illustrate energy fluctuations in a system with an infinite number of states. In addition to the energy distribution we discuss the energy–energy time-correlation function in the zero-temperature limit.
ISSN:1386-9477
1873-1759
DOI:10.1016/j.physe.2005.05.024