A detector-based measurement theory for quantum field theory

Abstract

We propose a measurement theory for quantum fields based on measurements made with localized nonrelativistic systems that couple covariantly to quantum fields (like the Unruh-DeWitt detector). Concretely, we analyze the positive operator-valued measure induced on the field when an idealized measurement is carried out on the detector after it coupled to the field. Using an information-theoretic approach, we provide a relativistic analogue to the quantum-mechanical Luders update rule to update the field state following the measurement on the detector. We argue that this proposal has all the desirable characteristics of a proper measurement theory. In particular it does not suffer from the "impossible measurements" problem pointed out by Rafael Sorkin in the 1990s which shows that idealized measurements cannot be used in quantum field theory.