Heating from Continuous Number Density Measurements in Optical Lattices

TL;DR

This paper investigates how continuous density measurements in optical lattices induce heating and correlation decay, revealing that measurement strength and spatial resolution directly influence energy increase and loss of quantum correlations.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative analysis of measurement-induced heating in optical lattices, including effects on different particle interactions and the role of measurement resolution.

Findings

Measurement destroys correlations even in the Mott regime.

Heating rate is proportional to information gained from measurements.

Correlations decay with continuous density measurement.

Abstract

We explore the effects of continuous number density measurement on atoms in an optical lattice. By integrating a master equation for quantum observables, we calculate how single particle correlations decay. We consider weakly- and strongly- interacting bosons and noninteracting fermions. Even in the Mott regime, such measurements destroy correlations and increase the average energy, as long as some hopping is allowed. We explore the role of spatial resolution, and find that the heating rate is proportional to the amount of information gained from such measurements.