Weak Values from Displacement Currents in Multiterminal Electron Devices

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to measure quantum weak values in electronic devices using displacement currents, enabling new fundamental physics experiments and applications with existing technology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to measure position and momentum weak values in electronic devices via displacement currents, inspired by the Ramo-Shockley-Pellegrini theorem.

Findings

Displacement current can serve as a weak measurement of electron momentum.

The method allows strong measurement of electron position.

Numerical experiments demonstrate the feasibility of measuring Bohmian velocity.

Abstract

Weak values allow the measurement of observables associated with noncommuting operators. Up to now, position-momentum weak values have been mainly developed for (relativistic) photons. In this Letter, a proposal for the measurement of such weak values in typical electronic devices is presented. Inspired by the Ramo-Shockley-Pellegrini theorem that provides a relation between current and electron velocity, it is shown that the displacement current measured in multiterminal configurations can provide either a weak measurement of the momentum or strong measurement of position. This proposal opens new opportunities for fundamental and applied physics with state-of-the-art electronic technology. As an example, a setup for the measurement of the Bohmian velocity of (nonrelativistic) electrons is presented and tested with numerical experiments.