A Relaxationless Demonstration of the Quantum Zeno Paradox on an Individual Atom
نویسندگان
چکیده
The driven evolution of the spin of an individual atomic ion on the ground-state hyperfine resonance is impeded by the observation of the ion in one of the pertaining eigenstates. Detection of resonantly scattered light identifies the ion in its upper " bright " state. The lower " dark " ion state is free of relaxation and correlated with the detector by a null signal. Null events represent the straightforward demonstration of the quantum Zeno paradox. Also, high probability of survival was demonstrated when the ion, driven by a fractionated π pulse, was probed and monitored during the intermissions of the drive, such that the ion's evolution is completely documented.
منابع مشابه
Evolution of an Atom Impeded by Measurement: The Quantum Zeno Effect
A quantum system being observed evolves more slowly. This “quantum Zeno effect” is reviewed with respect to a previous attempt of demonstration, and to subsequent criticism of the significance of the findings. A recent experiment on an individual cold trapped ion has been capable of revealing the micro-state of this quantum system, such that the effect of measurement is indeed discriminated fro...
متن کاملPerspectives on the quantum Zeno paradox
As of October 2006, there were approximately 535 citations to the seminal 1977 paper of Misra and Sudarshan that pointed out the quantum Zeno paradox (more often called the quantum Zeno effect). In simple terms, the quantum Zeno effect refers to a slowing down of the evolution of a quantum state in the limit that the state is observed continuously. There has been much disagreement as to how the...
متن کاملMathematics of the Quantum Zeno Effect
We present an overview of the mathematics underlying the quantum Zeno effect. Classical, functional analytic results are put into perspective and compared with more recent ones. This yields some new insights into mathematical preconditions entailing the Zeno paradox, in particular a simplified proof of Misra’s and Sudarshan’s theorem. We emphasise the complexanalytic structures associated to th...
متن کاملInteraction- and measurement-free quantum Zeno gates for universal computation with single-atom and single-photon qubits
By extending the concept of interaction-free imaging to the few-atom level, we show that asymptotically on-demand interactionand measurement-free quantum logic gates can be realized for both single-atom and single-photon qubits. The interaction-free feature suppresses the possibility of qubit decoherence via atomic spontaneous decay, while the elimination of measurements can significantly reduc...
متن کاملZeno Paradox for Bohmian Trajectories: The Unfolding of the Metatron
We study an analogue of the quantum Zeno paradox for the Bohm trajectory of a sharply located particle. We show that a continuously observed Bohm trajectory is the classical trajectory. Our results are then compared and contrasted with Mott’s original treatment of an α-particle track produced by a decaying nucleus in a cloud chamber using standard quantum mechanics.
متن کامل