Effect of Wigner rotation on estimating unitary-shift parameter of relativistic spin-1/2 particle

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Wigner rotation affects the precision of estimating a relativistic particle's position, revealing that accuracy diminishes with observer velocity but remains finite even at relativistic speeds.

Contribution

It provides the first derivation of the estimation accuracy limit for a relativistic spin-1/2 particle considering Wigner rotation effects.

Findings

Estimation accuracy decreases monotonically with observer velocity.

The accuracy limit remains finite even at relativistic speeds.

Wigner rotation entangles spin and momentum, affecting measurement precision.

Abstract

We obtain the accuracy limit for estimating the expectation value of the position of a relativistic particle for an observer moving along one direction at a constant velocity. We use a specific model of a relativistic spin-1/2 particle described by a gaussian wave function with a spin down in the rest frame. To derive the state vector of the particle for the moving observer, we use the Wigner rotation that entangles the spin and the momentum of the particle. Based on this wave function for the moving frame, we obtain the symmetric logarithmic derivative (SLD) Cramer-Rao bound that sets the estimation accuracy limit for an arbitrary moving observer. It is shown that estimation accuracy decreases monotonically in the velocity of the observer when the moving observer does not measure the spin degree of freedom. This implies that the estimation accuracy limit worsens with increasing the observer's velocity, but it is finite even in the relativistic limit. We derive the amount of this information loss by the exact calculation of the SLD Fisher information matrix in an arbitrary moving frame.