Abstract

We extend the idea of weak measurements to the general case, provide a complete treatment and obtain results for both the regime when the PPS are almost orthogonal and the regime when they are exactly orthogonal. We surprisingly find that for a fixed interaction strength, there may exist a maximum signal amplification and a corresponding optimum overlap of PPS to achieve it. We also find interesting quantities, the orthogonal weak values, which play the role of weak values for the case when the PPS are exactly orthogonal.

© 2011 Optical Society of America