Related papers: What was in the apparatus before the click
Consideration of the von Neumann measurement process underlying interference experiments shows that the uncertainty in the incoming wave, responsible for its interference, translates during measurement into an uncertainty at the measuring…
Wave-particle duality epitomizes the counterintuitive character of quantum physics. A striking illustration is the quantum delay-choice experiment, which is based on Wheeler's classic delayed-choice gedanken experiment, but with the…
The extremely fascinating behaviors of the quantum walks of particles, which differ much from the classical counterparts, have attracted many physicists. Here we investigate another interesting part of the quantum walks, that is the quantum…
The most puzzling issue in the foundations of quantum mechanics is perhaps that of the status of the wave function of a system in a quantum universe. Is the wave function objective or subjective? Does it represent the physical state of the…
Quantum entanglement occurs not just in discrete systems such as spins, but also in the spatial wave functions of systems with more than one degree of freedom. It is easy to introduce students to entangled wave functions at an early stage,…
A textbook interpretation of quantum physics is that quantum objects can be described in a particle or a wave picture, depending on the operations and measurements performed. Beyond this widely held believe, we demonstrate in this…
The quantum object is in general considered as displaying both wave and particle nature. By particle is understood an item localized in a very small volume of the space, and which cannot be simultaneously in two disjoint regions of the…
A century on from the development of quantum theory, the interpretation of a quantum state is still discussed. If a physicist claims to have produced a system with a particular wave function, does this represent directly a physical wave of…
Light's wave-particle duality is at the heart of quantum mechanics and can be well illustrated by Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment. The choice of inserting or removing the second classical (quantum) beam splitter in a Mach-Zehnder…
Quantum systems exhibit particle-like or wave-like behaviour depending on the experimental apparatus they are confronted by. This wave-particle duality is at the heart of quantum mechanics, and is fully captured in Wheeler's famous delayed…
The wave-particle duality has been said to contain the entire mystery of quantum mechanics. Many delayed-choice experiments have been performed to further understand the wave-particle duality. Here, we reveal some flaws in the known…
We consider multiple collisions of quantum wave packets in one dimension. The system under investigation consists of an impenetrable wall and of two hard-core particles with very different masses. The lighter particle bounces between the…
We study the interaction between gravitational waves and a quantum two-level system consisting of a spin 1/2 particle using the formalism of the proper detector frame. This approach highlights the effects of gravitational waves on both the…
Classically, wave interference is a phenomenon that can be explained by considering only the waves themselves, that is, without the need to consider the apparatus that monitors or observes them. Thus, in classical theories, interference can…
Complete analysis of quantum wave functions of linear systems in an arbitrary number of dimensions is given. It is shown how one can construct a complete set of stationary quantum states of an arbitrary linear system from purely classical…
There are reasons to doubt that making sense of the wave function (other than as a probability algorithm) will help with the project of making sense of quantum mechanics. The consistency of the quantum-mechanical correlation laws with the…
Starting with a down to earth interpretation of quantum mechanics for a free particle, the disappearance and reappearance of interference in the 2 slit problem with a detector behind one are treated in detail. A partial interpretation of…
Stunning progresses in the experimental resolution and control of natural or man-made complex systems at the level of their quantum mechanical constituents raises the question, across diverse subdisciplines of physics, chemistry and…
The coupled motion is investigated for a mechanical system consisting of water and a body freely floating in it. Water occupies either a half-space or a layer of constant depth into which an infinitely long surface-piercing cylinder is…
It is proposed that the paradox of wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics may be resolved using a physical picture analogous to magnetic domains. Within this picture, a quantum particle represents a coherent region of a quantum wave…