Day5 of #Quantum30 Challenge
Hello everyone, Welcome back! As a physics student myself, I have heard people and sometimes even professors say, “An electron can be in different states at the same time”. I’m pleased to inform that this notion of Quantum Superposition is WRONG, and that’s what I studied on my Day 5 of #Quantum30 Challenge, an initiative by QuantumComputingIndia.
The first video is “Quantum Superposition, Explained Without Woo Woo” on the YouTube channel The Science Asylum by speaker Nick Lucid. In this explanation, the speaker addresses a common misconception in quantum mechanics about particles being in multiple states simultaneously. The speaker uses a metaphor involving orbs with different textures, smooth and rough, to illustrate quantum states. Each orb’s texture state is represented as a vector in an abstract vector space. Superpositions, where orbs can be in a combination of smooth and rough states, are explained as single states in this abstract space.
The speaker introduces the concept of vector spaces, where vectors represent physical properties. In this analogy, each orb’s texture state is a vector in the texture space. Superposition is not about being in multiple states at the same time but rather having the possibility of different texture states.
To demonstrate quantum measurement, the speaker introduces a texture detector, and when an orb goes through it, its state is determined. The act of measurement changes the orb’s state, and this is related to the probabilities represented by the coefficients of the vectors.
The speaker emphasizes that no matter how many basis states there are, a quantum particle is always in a single state, and the idea of being in multiple states simultaneously is a misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.
The second video resource is “Superposition of Quantum States” on the YouTube channel Up and Atoms by the speaker Jade Tan-Holmes. In this video, the presenter, Jade, introduces the concept of quantum superposition using a series of experiments with neutrons. She emphasizes the importance of understanding superposition, which is fundamental to quantum physics.
Jade begins by describing a box of neutrons and introducing a color and shape analogy for them. She explains that the neutrons can be sorted into blue or green colors and circular or square shapes. A color machine and a shape machine are used to sort the neutrons.
In the first experiment, the presenter observes that sorting neutrons by color or shape results in a 50/50 split for each property, indicating no correlation between them. In the second experiment, she introduces a beam splitter and observes that 100% of the neutrons come out green and 0% come out blue after recombination. This suggests that knowing one property (color) makes the other (shape) uncertain.
In the next experiment, when the circular path is blocked, she finds that half of the neutrons come out blue and half green, similar to the first experiment’s results. Jade then introduces a mysterious “area of mystery” where the neutrons seem to behave differently. She concludes that the neutrons are in a state of superposition, meaning they possess both shape and color properties simultaneously, but measuring one property collapses the other.
Jade notes that physical objects in the quantum world are fundamentally unpredictable in certain aspects, leading to superposition. She mentions that this behavior has been observed with different particles, and the concept was initially explored in the Stern-Gerlach experiment with the spin of silver atoms.
Thank you so much, readers! I am actually learning so much from this daily dose of Quantum Physics. I hope you guys are learning too. Signing off, see you tomorrow!
QuantumComputingIndia #Quantum30