Timeline for A spontaneous wavefunction collapse thought experiment
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 5, 2016 at 21:00 | comment | added | knzhou | @Shing After the emission, the atom and field states are entangled, but there's still a perfectly well-defined quantum state. However, if you trace out the field state, the resulting atom state must be described by a density matrix, not a single quantum state. So we say the superposition has been destroyed. | |
| Nov 5, 2016 at 10:59 | comment | added | Shing | How "If you only ever look at the atom's state, it's the emission of this photon that collapses the superposition"? The atom should be 1st become state {$n'$}, and then emit a photon to be state {$n'-1$}. if only considering the atom, the atom "collapse" itself to {$n'$} first. Or you mean all those process happen at the same time? Hence it is reasonable to say "emission of photon that collapses the superposition"? | |
| Nov 5, 2016 at 5:33 | comment | added | Bob Bee | So you are saying it's an interaction between the dipole moment and the vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field, as a first approximation? Can the spontaneous emission rates be calculated correctly that way? | |
| Nov 5, 2016 at 0:00 | vote | accept | Shing | ||
| Nov 4, 2016 at 23:23 | history | answered | knzhou | CC BY-SA 3.0 |