Protective Measurement—A New Quantum Measurement Paradigm: Detailed Description of the First Realization
Enrico Rebufello, Fabrizio Piacentini, Alessio Avella, Rudi Lussana, Federica Villa, Alberto Tosi, Marco Gramegna, Giorgio Brida, Eliahu Cohen, Lev Vaidman, Ivo Pietro Degiovanni, Marco Genovese
Abstract
We present a detailed description of the experiment realizing for the first time a protective measurement, a novel measurement protocol which combines weak interactions with a “protection mechanism” preserving the measured state coherence during the whole measurement process. Furthermore, protective measurement allows finding the expectation value of an observable, i.e., an inherently statistical quantity, by measuring a single particle, without the need for any statistics. This peculiar property, in sharp contrast to the framework of traditional (projective) quantum measurement, might constitute a groundbreaking advance for several quantum technology related fields.