Pointer-based simultaneous measurements of conjugate observables in a thermal environment

Abstract

We combine traditional pointer-based simultaneous measurements of conjugate observables with the concept of quantum Brownian motion of multipartite systems to phenomenologically model simultaneous measurements of conjugate observables in a thermal environment. This approach provides us with a formal solution of the complete measurement dynamics for quadratic Hamiltonians and we can therefore discuss the measurement uncertainty and optimal measurement times. As a main result, we obtain a lower bound for the uncertainty of a noisy measurement, which is an extension of a previously known uncertainty relation and in which the squeezing of the system state to be measured plays an important role. This also allows us to classify minimal uncertainty states in more detail.