RTC SEMINAR
"The Focusing of Light"
Karol Zyczkowski
Institute for Plasma Research
University of Maryland, College Park
and
Instytut Fizyki im. Smoluchowskiego
Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Krakow, Poland
July 1998
Abstract:
We define a metric in the space of quantum states taking the Monge distance between corresponding Husimi distributions (Q-fuctions). This quantity fulfills the axioms of a metric and satisfies the following 'semiclassical property': the distance between two coherent states is equal to the Euclidean distance between corresponding points in the classical phase space. We compute analytically distances between certain states (coherent, squeezed, Fock, and thermal) and discuss a scheme for numerical computaiton of Monge distance for two arbitrary quantum states.
The Monge distance might be used to characterize entanglement of quantum states. In the second part of the talk, the question of how many entangled or, respectively, seperable states are there in the set of all quantum states is considered.
Return to Seminar list