Temporal Ordering in Quantum Mechanics
摘要
We examine the measurability of the temporal ordering of two events, as well as event coincidences. In classical mechanics, a measurement of the order-of-arrival of two particles is shown to be equivalent to a measurement involving only one particle (in higher dimensions). In quantum mechanics, we find that diffraction effects introduce a minimum inaccuracy to which the temporal order-of-arrival can be determined unambiguously. The minimum inaccuracy of the measurement is given by dt=1/E where E is the total kinetic energy of the two particles. Similar restrictions apply to the case of coincidence measurements. We show that these limitations are much weaker than limitations on measuring the time-of-arrival of a particle to a fixed location.
关键词
引用
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0003130,
title = {Temporal Ordering in Quantum Mechanics},
author = {J. Oppenheim and B. Reznik and W. Unruh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0003130},
year = {2008}
}
备注
New section added, arguing that order-of-arrival can be measured more accurately than time-of-arrival. To appear in Journal of Physics A