Related papers: Framing Difficulties in Quantum Mechanics
The present work is a study of the unitarity problem for Quantum Mechanics at Planck Scale considered as Quantum Mechanics with Fundamental Length (QMFL).In the process QMFL is described as deformation of a well-known Quantum Mechanics…
Supersymmetric models are grounded in the intriguing concept of a hypothetical symmetry that relates bosonic and fermionic particles. This symmetry has profound implications, offering valuable extensions to the Standard Model of particle…
Identifying and understanding student difficulties with physics content in a wide variety of topical areas is an active research area within the PER community. In many cases, physics topics appear multiple times in different contexts across…
As quantum computers advance, the complexity of the software they can execute increases as well. To ensure this software is efficient, maintainable, reusable, and cost-effective -key qualities of any industry-grade software-mature software…
We consider the process of changing reference frames in the case where the reference frames are quantum systems. We find that, as part of this process, decoherence is necessarily induced on any quantum system described relative to these…
Quantum computing presents a transformative potential for the world of computing. However, integrating this technology into the curriculum for computer science students who lack prior exposure to quantum mechanics and advanced mathematics…
Foundational investigations in quantum mechanics, both experimental and theoretical, gave birth to the field of quantum information science. Nevertheless, the foundations of quantum mechanics themselves remain hotly debated in the…
We discuss how a class of difficult kinematic problems can play an important role in an introductory course in stimulating students' reasoning on more complex physical situations. The problems presented here have an elementary analysis once…
We investigate the physics of quantum reference frames. Specifically, we study several simple scenarios involving a small number of quantum particles, whereby we promote one of these particles to the role of a quantum observer and ask what…
The ability to categorize problems based upon underlying principles, rather than contexts, is considered a hallmark of expertise in physics problem solving. With inspiration from a classic study by Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, we compared…
We present a panoramic view on various attempts to "solve" the problems of quantum measurement and macro-objectivation, i.e. of the transition from a probabilistic quantum mechanic microscopic world to a deterministic classical macroscopic…
Computational models are an essential tool for the design, characterization, and discovery of novel materials. Hard computational tasks in materials science stretch the limits of existing high-performance supercomputing centers, consuming…
This position paper examines the substantial divide between academia and industry within quantum software engineering. For example, while academic research related to debugging and testing predominantly focuses on a limited subset of…
The Weltanschauung emerging from quantum theory clashes profoundly with our classical concepts. Quantum characteristics like superposition, entanglement, wave-particle duality, nonlocality, contextuality are difficult to reconcile with our…
At the University of Colorado Boulder, as part of our broader efforts to transform middle- and upper-division physics courses, we research students' difficulties with particular concepts, methods, and tools in classical mechanics,…
On the surface, behavioural science and physics seem to be two disparate fields of research. However, a closer examination of problems solved by them reveals that they are uniquely related to one another. Exemplified by the theories of…
The Mathematization project investigates students' use of mathematical tools across the undergraduate physics curriculum. As a part of this project, we look at intermediate mechanics students' written homework solutions to understand how…
The momentum representation is seldom used in quantum mechanics courses. Some students are thence surprised by the change in viewpoint when, in doing advanced work, they have to use the momentum rather than the coordinate representation. In…
While multimodal LLMs (MLLMs) demonstrate remarkable reasoning progress, their application in specialized scientific domains like physics reveals significant gaps in current evaluation benchmarks. Specifically, existing benchmarks often…
The paper describes two general problems encountered in computational assignments at the introductory level. First, novice students often treat computer code as almost magic incantations, and like novices in many fields, have trouble…