# Tag Info

17

This question strikes close to the heart of The measurement problem, which is the question of what (if anything) the process of measurement represents; and is all but synonymous with the question of how one ought to interpret quantum mechanics. As such, the answer to this question is (a) subject to debate; and (b) absent any substantial philosophical and/or ...

14

First of all, let me start out by pointing out to you that there have been experimental violations of Bell's inequalities. This provides damning evidence against hidden variable models of quantum mechanics, and thus essentially proves that the random outcomes are an essential feature of quantum mechanics. If the outcomes of measurements in every basis were ...

14

What you describe in your question is the "Copenhagen interpretation" of quantum mechanics. There are more nuanced views of this nowadays that don't treat "measurements" quite so asymmetrically, see e.g. sources that talk about decoherence. I recommend watching the classic lecture "Quantum Mechanics in your face" by Sidney Coleman for a nice take on this ...

11

There is a definine velocity and momentum, we just don't know it. Nope. There is no definite velocity--this was the older interpretation. The particle has all (possible) velocities at once;it is in a wavefunction, a superposition of all of these states. This can actually be verified by stuff like the double-slit experiment with one photon--we cannot ...

11

it is the error created by photons striking on elementary particles It's not. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle actually has nothing to do with any particular experiment, or any particular interaction. It's a purely mathematical statement about waves. Its true meaning is explained in detail on the Wikipedia page, but the gist is that if you have a ...

11

Assuming wave-function collapse is correct (which can be a relatively hefty philosophical claim in some circles), then think of measurement this way: When you measure an observable on a system, you collapse the wave-function of the system into a Dirac delta function in the eigenbasis for that observable. If you measure position, you get a delta function in ...

10

The short answer is that we do not know why the world is this way. There might eventually be theories which explain this, rather than the current ones which simply take it as axiomatic. Maybe these future theories will relate to what we currently call the holographic principle, for example. There is also the apparently partially related fact of the ...

10

We can satisfy your requirement "the photon was emitted at a correct angle" by "the photon was prepared in a momentum eigenstate". If the photon has definite momentum $\bf{k}$, then its direction of travel is well defined, as you have specified. A photon is a discrete excitation of a "mode", i.e. a solution of Maxwell's equations. For a photon in a ...

10

So, why can't the uncertainty relations be violated in such a case, if I could, say, measure the position of the object with this wave function That's the catch. You can't. Or rather, you can measure the position, but the result you get will vary from one measurement to the next, because the wavefunction $\exp(x^2/2i - cx)$ is not an eigenstate of ...

9

Manishearth's answer is correct, and this is just a minor extension of it. Manishearth correctly points out that the problem is your statement: There is a definine velocity and momentum, we just don't know it. Your statement is the hidden variables idea, and courtesy of Bell's theorem we currently believe that hidden variables are impossible. Take the ...

8

Interactions merely involve a correlation developing. For example, if an electron is put through a Stern-Gerlach apparatus, a correlation develops between the distance travelled in the x direction and the distance deviated in the y direction. It is reversible. The measurement which occurs when the particle hits the photographic plate is irreversible. It ...

7

Trivially for any set of measurements $\{E_i\}$ where $\rho$ and $\sigma$ have equal expectation value for each $E_i$, $$\sum_i\mbox{Tr}(\rho E_i) \log \left[ \frac{\mbox{Tr}(\rho E_i)}{\mbox{Tr}(\sigma E_i)}\right] = \sum_i\mbox{Tr}(\rho E_i) \times 0 = 0.$$ Note that the log-sum inequality theorem says that $$\sum_i a_i \log\left(\frac{a_i}{b_i}\right) ... 7 An observation is an act by which one finds some information – the value of a physical observable (quantity). Observables are associated with linear Hermitian operators. The previous sentences tautologically imply that an observation is what "collapses" the wave function. The "collapse" of the wave function isn't a material process in any classical sense ... 7 The idea that "nothing is objectively real prior to measurement" is a peculiar philosophical mishmash, kept in currency by the conjunction of two things: (1) the difficulty of producing an objective theory, without a special status for "measurements" or "observers", that reduces to quantum mechanics; (2) a multitude of nonquantitative philosophical ideas, ... 7 Let us be clear about the problem. A photon is a quantum mechanical entity and follows the laws of quantum mechanics. There is always a probability attached to any possible path it can take so the strict answer is "no, the path of the photon is not deterministic". BUT the problem changes when speaking of a large ensemble of photons, which is any light we ... 7 The Uncertainty Principle will never, as far as we know, prevent you from simulating any physical system. The reason for this is that quantum mechanics is - except for that little problem with measurements - completely deterministic. To be more precise, say you want to simulate a given system within quantum mechanics. You begin by describing your ... 6 Assuming that the incoming "first" particle is prepared in a pure state, interaction with another particle does seem necessary. Such an interaction might simply be the spontaneous emission of a photon or other particle by the original incoming particle, however. Most importantly, such an interaction is not itself sufficient. For a measurement event to ... 6 If you think for a moment about how lengths and speeds in our universe are set (that is, independent of how we choose to measure them, by meters or seconds or whatever), you'll see that these must ultimately come from different ratios of fundamental constants. I don't know and would be very surprised if there's a way to change these ratios so that all ... 6 The spin of a single electron has been measured since the very first moment when the people understood that every electron possesses a spin. A Stern-Gerlach experiment - a magnetic field - is enough to measure the spin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern-Gerlach_experiment 6 For a particle which has a position-space wavefunction \psi(x), the uncertainty in position, denoted \sigma_x or \Delta x (I prefer the former), is given by$$\begin{align} \sigma_x^2 &= \langle x^2\rangle - \langle x\rangle^2 \\ &= \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}\psi^*(x)x^2\psi(x)\,\mathrm{d}x - ...

6

You're asking what would happen if we could view things with an unlimited high resolution. You view the emissions of the synchotron photons as discrete events and you ask is the path linear between these emissions. The problem is - quantum particles do not have trajectories so it's not meaningful to ask about the actual path followed by the particle. All ...

5

There's a prescription by Deutsch for the quantum mechanics of closed timelike curves. It works on the level of density states, instead of Hilbert space states. Given his prescription, he showed that a fixed point solution always exists no matter what the initial conditions are. However, this solution isn't unique in general. Also, pure states can be ...

5

If you're talking about building a quantum computer, then there are some modes of the system which you need to keep isolated so that you can make sure that any coherence of these modes is preserved, but there are other modes of the system that you use to control the system, and these aren't isolated. This idea is also used in quantum error correction. This ...

5

You should look at the link that Qmechanic gives, as it is closely related to your question. The "randomness" in quantum mechanics is widely misunderstood. There is nothing random in the wavefunction (or quantum field theory description) and as long as all interacting systems stay entangled the behaviour is completely predictable. We only see randomness ...

5

It seems that perhaps you are missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. The stochastic approach you describe is equivalent to performing a unitary which is chosen stochastically (essentially applying a superoperator) and then measuring in some fixed basis. In principle, however, you can go further, by stochastically choosing whether or not to measure at all, ...

5

The collapse of the wavefunction is generally attributed to decoherence. This is time asymmetric in the same way the second law of thermodynamics is time asymmetric. I suppose it's theoretically possible for a wavefunction to uncollapse, but this is like saying it's theoretically possible for a broken egg to reassemble itself.

5

Nick, Don't be surprised that this is confusing. There are a lot of concepts intermixed in the discussion of the uncertainty principle that are frequently not clearly understood and are intertwined unintentionally. Although one often sees that these are stated in statistical terms, the standard deviation does not directly require multiple observations of ...

5

I would actually expect this to be rare, and only generically true when the state of the system corresponds to an eigenstate. This simply because, for a state $\psi = \sum a_{n}\lvert\phi_{n}\rangle$ with eigenvalues $V_{n}$, you would have $\langle V\rangle = \sum V_{n}\lvert a_{n}\rvert^{2}$, which is not constrained to be equal to one of the $V_{n}$. ...

4

Much has been covered in these answers, but one aspect has been left out. The actual physics going on in any measurement process includes amplification. Feynman thought this was significant. Here is a perhaps little-known quotation of his: We and our measuring instruments are part of nature and so are, in principle, described by an amplitude function ...

4

There is no absolute scale to the universe unless you 'turn on' quantum mechanics and general relativity simultaneously. If you do this, then dimensional analysis can tell you that there is a way to use $\hbar$, $c$ and $G$ to construct a unique set of units--the Planck set of units--you can do it yourself pretty easily just by multiplying the three ...

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