People have posted in other threads about a setup where you have a detector at the slits, and then a monitor which displays the results. They claim that if the detector is turned on and the monitor is on then there will be no interference, but if the detector is on but the monitor is turned off...
Thanks to everyone for all of your replies. The delayed choice quantum eraser experiments make me think even more that some "human knowledge" is required for wavefunction collapse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser
In this case we have two different instruments acting...
Would someone help me to understand what would happen in this situation.
w→ x→ (y)→ z
Photon emitter is at point w emitting photons one at a time. Double slit is at point x. Screen is at point z.
There is a detector at point y (after photon has already passed through slits) which is capable...
This evening I enjoyed a dessert consisting of an unknown fruit emersed in chocolate pudding. I could not identify the fruit by its appearance, and when I consumed it, it took several seconds before I could identify the piece of fruit as a plum. I began to contemplate whether Schroedinger's...
Brian Greene in his book the Hidden Reality claims that in fact MWI and CI may actually make different predictions, although I must admit I do not really understand his example or explanation.
Greene argues that in Many Worlds, the wave-function have multiple spikes, corresponding to...
Hi jtbell,
from: http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/manyworlds.html
"Political scientist" L David Raub reports a poll of 72 of the "leading
cosmologists and other quantum field theorists" about the "Many-Worlds
Interpretation" and gives the following response breakdown [T]...
Thanks JeffKoch for your reply.
I understand that MW does not change predictions about quantum mechanical experiments, however, I would argue that the distinction is not purely philosophical.
Which interpretation you agree with will change the way you think about physics problems which...
Thanks xts for your reply.
With point #1, I agree I was being facetious to make a point, but you have to agree it's still a non-zero probability which means it is occurring all the time in some parallel universe.
With point #2, why should any of the 1001000 worlds show an intereference...
Hello,
While the majority of physicists embrace the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum decoherence, I am holding out hope for the Copenhagen interpretation or better yet, a undiscovered interpretation.
Please allow me to pose three problems I have with the MW interpretation.
1) There...
since the sun and Earth are in constant motion and their relative distance changes minutely by the minute, the Lagrange points should be consistently shifting, shouldn't they?
Thank you for your extensive explanation.
If we consider representing the universe by using hilbert spaces, then you would not have to ever use two points. But you would have to use additional dimensions in Hilbert space to represent that information using a single point, right? Doesn't...
Hi Fredrik,
Thank you for your explanation. Please help me to understand better, as my background is in the biomedical sciences, and I have little physics/mathematics training.
Aside from the mathematical explanation of moving along the curve in Hilbert space during decoherence, does...
A lot of replies have invoked Occam's razor, and MWI being a simpler theory because of the lack of requirement of wave function, but I ask:
What is simpler? A wave function collapsing, or an entire universe being duplicated because measurement of one quantum particle has been made? What is...
How does one define that time coordinate? For example muons, are particles created in the atmosphere by cosmic rays falling constantly to Earth at around 200,000 miles per second. Since muons move so quickly with respect to the laboratory reference frame, time passes slower in the muon...