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Quantum mechanical effect of path-polarization contextuality for a single photon

Quantum Physics 2015-05-18 v1 Optics

Abstract

Using measurements pertaining to a suitable Mach-Zehnder(MZ) type setup, a curious quantum mechanical effect of contextuality between the path and the polarization degrees of freedom of a polarized photon is demonstrated, without using any notion of realism or hidden variables - an effect that holds good for the product as well as the entangled states. This form of experimental context-dependence is manifested in a way such that at \emph{either} of the two exit channels of the MZ setup used, the empirically verifiable \emph{subensemble} statistical properties obtained by an arbitrary polarization measurement depend upon the choice of a commuting(comeasurable) path observable, while this effect disappears for the \emph{whole ensemble} of photons emerging from the two exit channels of the MZ setup.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1005.1242,
  title  = {Quantum mechanical effect of path-polarization contextuality for a single photon},
  author = {Alok Kumar Pan and Dipankar Home},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1005.1242},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

To be published in IJTP

R2 v1 2026-06-21T15:19:57.854Z