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Hardy's Paradox
Hardy's paradox is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics devised by Lucien Hardy in 1992–1993 in which a particle and its antiparticle may interact without annihilating each other. Experiments. Also availablhere using the technique of weak measurement have studied an interaction of polarized photons, and these have demonstrated that the phenomenon does occur. However, the consequence of these experiments is only that past events can be inferred after their occurrence as a probabilistic wave collapse. These weak measurements are considered to be an observation themselves, and therefore part of the causation of wave collapse, making the objective results only a probabilistic function rather than a fixed reality. However, a careful analysis of the experiment shows that Hardy's paradox only proves that a local hidden-variable theory cannot exist, as there cannot be a theory that assumes that the system meets the states of reality regardless of the interaction with the measurin ...
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Thought Experiment
A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario that is meant to elucidate or test an argument or theory. It is often an experiment that would be hard, impossible, or unethical to actually perform. It can also be an abstract hypothetical that is meant to test our intuitions about morality or other fundamental philosophical questions. History The ancient Greek , "was the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof", and existed before Euclidean geometry, Euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thought experiment. Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the equivalent German term . Ørsted was also the first to use the equivalent term in 1820. By 1883, Ernst Mach used in a different sense, to denote exclusively the conduct of a experiment that would be subsequently performed as a by his students. Physical and mental experimentation could then be contrasted: Mach asked hi ...
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Interaction-free Measurement
In physics, interaction-free measurement is a type of measurement in quantum mechanics that detects the position, presence, or state of an object without an interaction occurring between it and the measuring device. Examples include the Renninger negative-result experiment, the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb-testing problem, and certain double-cavity optical systems, such as Hardy's paradox. In quantum computation such measurements are referred to as counterfactual quantum computation, an idea introduced by physicists Graeme Mitchinson and Richard Jozsa. Examples include Keith Bowden's Counterfactual Mirror Array,Bowden, Keith G, "Classical Computation can be Counterfactual", in Aspects I, Proc ANPA19, Cambridge 1997 (published May 1999), describing a digital computer that could be counterfactually interrogated to calculate whether a light beam would fail to pass through a maze. Initially proposed as thought experiments by R. H. Dicke in 1981 , interaction-free measurements have been exp ...
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Quantum Measurement
In quantum physics, a measurement is the testing or manipulation of a physical system to yield a numerical result. A fundamental feature of quantum theory is that the predictions it makes are probabilistic. The procedure for finding a probability involves combining a quantum state, which mathematically describes a quantum system, with a mathematical representation of the measurement to be performed on that system. The formula for this calculation is known as the Born rule. For example, a quantum particle like an electron can be described by a quantum state that associates to each point in space a complex number called a probability amplitude. Applying the Born rule to these amplitudes gives the probabilities that the electron will be found in one region or another when an experiment is performed to locate it. This is the best the theory can do; it cannot say for certain where the electron will be found. The same quantum state can also be used to make a prediction of how the electro ...
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Wave Function Collapse
In various interpretations of quantum mechanics, wave function collapse, also called reduction of the state vector, occurs when a wave function—initially in a superposition of several eigenstates—reduces to a single eigenstate due to interaction with the external world. This interaction is called an ''observation'' and is the essence of a measurement in quantum mechanics, which connects the wave function with classical observables such as position and momentum. Collapse is one of the two processes by which quantum systems evolve in time; the other is the continuous evolution governed by the Schrödinger equation. : In the Copenhagen interpretation, wave function collapse connects quantum to classical models, with a special role for the observer. By contrast, objective-collapse proposes an origin in physical processes. In the many-worlds interpretation, collapse does not exist; all wave function outcomes occur while quantum decoherence accounts for the appearance of ...
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Uncertainty Principle
The uncertainty principle, also known as Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle, is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. It states that there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known. In other words, the more accurately one property is measured, the less accurately the other property can be known. More formally, the uncertainty principle is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the product of the accuracy of certain related pairs of measurements on a quantum system, such as position, ''x'', and momentum, ''p''. Such paired-variables are known as complementary variables or canonically conjugate variables. First introduced in 1927 by German physicist Werner Heisenberg, the formal inequality relating the standard deviation of position ''σx'' and the standard deviation of momentum ''σp'' was derived by Earle Hesse Kennard later that ...
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Half-wave Plate
A waveplate or retarder is an optical device that alters the polarization state of a light wave travelling through it. Two common types of waveplates are the ''half-wave plate'', which rotates the polarization direction of linearly polarized light, and the ''quarter-wave plate'', which converts between different elliptical polarizations (such as the special case of converting from linearly polarized light to circularly polarized light and vice versa.) Waveplates are constructed out of a birefringent material (such as quartz or mica, or even plastic), for which the index of refraction is different for light that is linearly polarized along one or the other of two certain perpendicular crystal axes. The behavior of a waveplate (that is, whether it is a half-wave plate, a quarter-wave plate, etc.) depends on the thickness of the crystal, the wavelength of light, and the variation of the index of refraction. By appropriate choice of the relationship between these parameters, it is po ...
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Barium Borate
Barium borate is an inorganic compound, a borate of barium with a chemical formula BaB2O4 or Ba(BO2)2. It is available as a hydrate or dehydrated form, as white powder or colorless crystals. The crystals exist in the high-temperature α phase and low-temperature β phase, abbreviated as BBO; both phases are birefringent, and BBO is a common nonlinear optical material. Barium borate was discovered and developed by Chen Chuangtian and others of the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Properties Barium borate exists in three major crystalline forms: alpha, beta, and gamma. The low-temperature beta phase converts into the alpha phase upon heating to 925 °C. β-Barium borate (BBO) differs from the α form by the positions of the barium ions within the crystal. Both phases are birefringent, however the α phase possesses centric symmetry and thus does not have the same nonlinear properties as the β phase. Alpha barium borate ...
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Jeff Lundeen
Jeff is a masculine name, often a short form (hypocorism) of the English given name Jefferson or Jeffrey, which comes from a medieval variant of Geoffrey. Music * DJ Jazzy Jeff, American DJ/turntablist record producer Jeffrey Allen Townes * Excision (musician), Canadian dubstep producer and DJ Jeff Abel * Jeff Abercrombie, bassist for American rock band Fuel * Jeff Allen, English session drummer * Jeff Baxter, American guitarist for rock bands Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers * Jeff Beal (born 1963), American composer of music for various media * Jeff Beck (1944–2023), English guitarist * Jeff Buckley (1966–1997), American singer-songwriter * Jeff Coffin, saxophonist, bandleader, composer and educator * Jeff Current, lead singer of American alternative rock band Against All Will * Jeff Fatt, Australian musician and actor, formerly with the children's band The Wiggles * Jeff Gillan, an American journalist * Jeff Graham, Canadian radio DJ * Jeff Hanneman (1964–2013) ...
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Yakir Aharonov
Yakir Aharonov (; born August 28, 1932) is an Israeli physicist specializing in quantum physics. He has been a Professor of Theoretical Physics and the James J. Farley Professor of Natural Philosophy at Chapman University in California since 2008. He was a distinguished professor in the Perimeter Institute between 2009-2012 and is a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and at University of South Carolina. He is president of the IYAR, The Israeli Institute for Advanced Research. In June 2024 he was elected to serve in the Royal Society of Londo6 Biography Yakir Aharonov was born in Haifa. He received his undergraduate education at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, graduating with a BSc in 1956. He continued his graduate studies at the Technion and then moved to Bristol University, UK together with his doctoral advisor David Bohm, receiving a Ph.D. degree in 1960. Aharonov later taught at the Brandeis University from 1960 to 1961 and the Yeshiv ...
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Local Hidden Variables
In the interpretation of quantum mechanics, a local hidden-variable theory is a hidden-variable theory that satisfies the principle of locality. These models attempt to account for the probabilistic features of quantum mechanics via the mechanism of underlying but inaccessible variables, with the additional requirement that distant events be statistically independent. The mathematical implications of a local hidden-variable theory with regards to quantum entanglement were explored by physicist John Stewart Bell, who in 1964 proved that broad classes of local hidden-variable theories cannot reproduce the correlations between measurement outcomes that quantum mechanics predicts, a result since confirmed by a range of detailed Bell test experiments. Models Single qubit A collection of related theorems, beginning with Bell's proof in 1964, show that quantum mechanics is incompatible with local hidden variables. However, as Bell pointed out, restricted sets of quantum phenomen ...
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Quantum Superposition
Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that states that linear combinations of solutions to the Schrödinger equation are also solutions of the Schrödinger equation. This follows from the fact that the Schrödinger equation is a linear differential equation in time and position. More precisely, the state of a system is given by a linear combination of all the eigenfunctions of the Schrödinger equation governing that system. An example is a qubit used in quantum information processing. A qubit state is most generally a superposition of the basis states , 0 \rangle and , 1 \rangle: : , \Psi \rangle = c_0, 0\rangle + c_1, 1\rangle, where , \Psi \rangle is the quantum state of the qubit, and , 0 \rangle, , 1 \rangle denote particular solutions to the Schrödinger equation in Dirac notation weighted by the two probability amplitudes c_0 and c_1 that both are complex numbers. Here , 0 \rangle corresponds to the classical 0 bit, and , 1 \r ...
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