A pr 1 99 4 COMMENT ON “ MEANING OF THE WAVE FUNCTION ”

نویسندگان

  • J. Samuel
  • R. Nityananda
چکیده

We draw attention to an elementary flaw in a recently proposed experiment to measure the wave function of a single quantum system. In a recent paper, Aharonov, Anandan and Vaidman [1] claim to have devised an experiment to measure the wave function [2] of a single quantum mechanical system. The experiment they propose is a 'protective measure-ment': while the measurement is being performed, the wave function is prevented from collapsing by means of suitably chosen external field. The claim of ref.[1] is at variance with accepted interpretations of quantum mechanics. According to these, it is impossible to learn anything new about a quantum system without disturbing it. Our purpose in this note is to examine the claim made in ref.[1] more closely. The issues involved are best illustrated by the following simple example. One can determine the state of polarisation of a classical laser beam (one with a large number of photons) by means of simple experiments involving polaroids. Given a single photon, conventional wisdom holds that there is no way to measure its polarisation precisely. If the photon passes through a 1

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تاریخ انتشار 1994