Related papers: The April First Phenomenon
Using a very simple Gedankenexperiment, I remind the reader that (contrary to what happens in classical mechanics) the energy of a quantum system is inevitably increased just by performing (some) textbook measurements on it. As a direct…
Despite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary…
When Alice and Bob have different quantum knowledges or state assignments (density operators) for one and the same specific individual system, then the problems of compatibility and pooling arise. The so-called first Brun-Finkelstein-Mermin…
When a quantum particle is launched with a finite velocity in a disordered potential, it may surprisingly come back to its initial position at long times and remain there forever. This phenomenon, dubbed ``quantum boomerang effect'', was…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
It is well known that in quantum gravity, the very geometry of space and time is subject to continual fluctuation. The mathematical formulation for this old theory is still lacking. This article formulates this more than forty-year-old…
Quantum mechanics is very odd. It presents both an immensely practical and a deeply troubling conception of the physical world. As such, its uses stretch from optimizing nanoelectronics to examining the very nature of reality. In this…
In this essay, dedicated to the one hundredth anniversary of Hermann Minkowski's talk "Space and Time", I argue that physicists should face the issue of the reality of spacetime and worldtubes of physical objects for two reasons. First,…
Recent theoretical results confirm that quantum theory provides the possibility of new ways of performing efficient calculations. The most striking example is the factoring problem. It has recently been shown that computers that exploit…
The nature of quantum waves, whether they are real physical waves or, on the contrary, mere probability waves, has been a very controversial theme since the beginning of quantum theory. Here we present some possible experiments that may…
We will focus on the Quantum theory and starting from simple philosophical conjectures, we infer possible different physical realities. Also we argue of possible wavefunction emerging under specific conditions of the physical reality.…
According to quantum mechanics, statements about the future made by sentient beings like us are, in general, neither true nor false; they must satisfy a many-valued logic. I propose that the truth value of such a statement should be…
One of the greatest difficulties encountered by all in their first proof intensive class is subtly assuming an unproven fact in a proof. The purpose of this note is to describe a specific instance where this can occur, namely in results…
We combine the eyebrow-raising quantum phenomena of erasure and counterfactuality for the first time, proposing a simple yet unusual quantum eraser: A distant Bob can decide to erase which-path information from Alice's photon, dramatically…
Recently, the authors of Ref.1[arXiv:1004.3100] claimed that they have proven the traditional adiabatic condition is a necessary condition. Here, it is claimed that there are some mistakes and an artificial over-strong constraint in [1],…
The cosmic inflation hypothesis, its relation to fundamental theory on the beginning of the universe, and the light that both shed on how the various elements and their relative amounts came into existence. The fundamental factors…
This is an open letter on the nature of the quantum theory.
Strongly correlated Fermi systems are among the most intriguing, best experimentally studied and fundamental systems in physics. These are, however, in defiance of theoretical understanding. The ideas based on the concepts like Kondo…
When a metal is subjected to strong magnetic field B nearly all measurable quantities exhibit oscillations periodic in 1/B. Such quantum oscillations represent a canonical probe of the defining aspect of a metal, its Fermi surface (FS). In…
One of the key features of quantum mechanics is the interference of probability amplitudes. The reason for the appearance of interference is mathematically very simple. It is the linear structure of the Hilbert space which is used for the…