Abstract
We study the influence of a detector on the decay law of a quantum state whose undisturbed survival probability is purely exponential. In particular, we consider a detector with a finite energy band of detection, i.e., it interacts only with decay products having an energy within a certain range of values. In one case, we assume that the detector performs many repeated measurements at short time intervals in all of which a collapse of the wave function occurs (bang-bang or pulsed-type measurements). In the second case, we assume a continuous measurement, which preserves unitarity. We confirm the slowing down of the decay in presence of a measuring apparatus, the quantum Zeno effect, but the outcomes of the detector are in general qualitatively and quantitatively different in the two cases. In turn, this implies that the so-called Schulman relation (the equivalence of pulsed and continuous measurements) does not hold in this case and that it is in principle possible to experimentally access how a certain detector performs a measurement.
- Received 3 June 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.90.052107
©2014 American Physical Society