Friday, August 15, 2014

The Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Wojciech Hubert Zurek and Hans Dieter Zeh were of a different opinion and, in the 1970s, they proposed a solution within the framework of what the theory of decoherence, verified in 1996 by known today Nobel Prize in Physics Serge Haroche and colleagues.

Yakir Aharonov physicist and his eternal cigar.  © Hayadan.org

There are many other paradoxes and puzzles in quantum physics especially when one tries to find out what exactly measuring a characteristic of a quantum system and what it reveals. Physicists are still very divided on this issue and some, like Max Tegmark , prefer to think in the context of the interpretation of Everett called multiple rather than one built in 1927 by Bohr, Heisenberg and Born worlds.

http://androidstars.newsvine.com/_news/2014/08/05/25184437-tomorrow-rosetta-will-add-a-chapter-to-the-saga-of-the-comet-hunting
http://androidgeek.ucoz.com/blog/alloy_simulated_on_computer_from_quantum_physics/2014-08-06-21
http://carmiell.blogspot.com/2014/08/video-3d-reconstruction-of-comet-rosetta.html

Two years ago, the famous Yakir Aharonov and his colleagues had suggested another thought experiment designed to probe more deeply the mysteries of quantum theory and its predictions in some situations. Physicists at that time were introducing the concept of the quantum Cheshire cat . This is, of course, a blink of an eye the cat that appears in the famous novel Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

The Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Reasoning researchers confirmed that the quantum world is as surreal as the universe of Carroll. In the latter, the Cheshire Cat has the ability to disappear leaving temporarily float in the air as her smile, which is so divorced from the animal. According to Aharonov and his colleagues, if we took a photon (quantum cat) and its polarization state (smile), it is possible to use an interferometer Mach-Zehnder interferometer to measure in a place to not be a photon , its polarization. In other words, an experiment with a quantum Cheshire cat somehow uses two detectors, one of which measures the presence of a photon in one place while its polarization is measured by another detector, in a place where it can not be found.

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