Stephen Paul King (stephenk1@home.com)
Mon, 29 Nov 1999 10:33:16 -0500
http://arXiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9909010
From: Benni Reznik <reznik@post.tau.ac.il> Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 13:07:10 GMT (24kb)
Authors:
Aharon Casher,
Benni Reznik
Comments: 18 pages, 4 figures
Measurements are ordinarily described with respect to absolute "Newtonian" time. In reality however, the switching-on of the measuring device at the instance of the measurement requires a timing device. Hence the classical time $t$ must be replaced by a suitable quantum time variable $\tau$ of a physical clock. The main issue raised in this article is that while doing so, we can no longer neglect the {\em back-reaction} due to the measurement on the clock. This back-reaction yields a bound on the accuracy of the measurement. When this bound is violated the result of a measurement is generally not an eigenvalue of the observable, and furthermore, the state of the system after the measurement is generally not a pure state. We argue that as a consequence, a sub-class of observables in a closed system cannot be realized by a measurement.
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