Related papers: A self-interfering clock as a "which path" witness
The creation of delocalized coherent superpositions of quantum systems experiencing different relativistic effects is an important milestone in future research at the interface of gravity and quantum mechanics. This could be achieved by…
Time plays a fundamental role in our ability to make sense of the physical laws in the world around us. The nature of time has puzzled people -- from the ancient Greeks to the present day -- resulting in a long running debate between…
The quantum "mystery which cannot go away" (in Feynman's words) of wave-particle duality is illustrated in a striking way by Wheeler's delayed-choice GedankenExperiment. In this experiment, the configuration of a two-path interferometer is…
We investigate a Mach-Zehnder interferometer fed by two time-dependently driven single-particle sources, one of them placed in front of the interferometer, the other in the center of one of the arms. As long as the two sources are operated…
We propose an experimental setup to probe the interplay between the quantum superposition principle and gravitational time dilation arising from the mass-energy equivalence. It capitalizes on state-of-the-art atom interferometers that can…
The sensitivity of an atomic interferometer increases when the phase evolution of its quantum superposition state is measured over a longer interrogation interval. In practice, a limit is set by the measurement process, which returns not…
A multi-slit interference experiment, with which-way detectors, in the presence of environment induced decoherence, is theoretically analyzed. The effect of environment is modeled via a coupling to a bath of harmonic oscillators. Through an…
The collision of two ultra-cold atoms results in a quantum-mechanical superposition of two outcomes: each atom continues without scattering and each atom scatters as a spherically outgoing wave with an s-wave phase shift. The magnitude of…
Atomic clocks provide a reproducible basis for our understanding of time and frequency. Recent demonstrations of compact optical clocks, employing thermal atomic beams, have achieved short-term fractional frequency instabilities in the…
We present an algorithm for synchronizing two clocks based on second-order quantum interference between entangled photons generated by parametric down-conversion. The procedure is distinct from the standard Einstein two-way clock…
We analyze a double-slit experiment when the interfering particle is "mesoscopic" and one endeavors to obtain Welcher Weg information by shining light on it. We derive a compact expression for the visibility of the interference pattern:…
We examine the emergence of periodicity in a non-interacting steady-state quantum system without external drive inspired by quantum time crystals' spontaneous time-translation symmetry breaking. Specifically, we consider a lattice ring of…
We report that entangled pairs of quantum clocks (non-degenerate quantum bits) can be used as a specialized detector for precisely measuring difference of proper-times that each constituent quantum clock experiences. We describe why the…
Some modified two-slit interference experiments were carried out showing an apparent paradox in wave-particle duality. In a typical such experiment, the screen, where the interference pattern is supposed to be formed, is replaced by a…
Interference between multiple distinct paths is a defining property of quantum physics, where "paths" may involve actual physical trajectories, as in interferometry, or transitions between different internal (e.g. spin) states, or both. A…
A clock steps a computer through a cycle of phases. For the propagation of logical symbols from one computer to another, each computer must mesh its phases with arrivals of symbols from other computers. Even the best atomic clocks drift…
Basic for the definition of 'time' are clocks operating under stationary conditions. The periods of two clocks can be compared with each other via two return experiments. The central clock mediates between the rotating and the inertial…
In general relativity, the picture of spacetime assigns an ideal clock to each worldline. Being ideal, gravitational effects due to these clocks are ignored and the flow of time according to one clock is not affected by the presence of…
Complementarity lies at the heart of conceptual foundation of orthodox quantum mechanics. The wave-particle duality makes it impossible to tell which slit each particle passes through and still observe an interference pattern in a Young's…
The statistical state of any (classical or quantum) system with non-trivial time evolution can be interpreted as the pointer of a clock. The quality of such a clock is given by the statistical distinguishability of its states at different…