Past of a quantum particle revisited

We analyze Vaidman's three-path interferometer with weak path marking [L. Vaidman, Phys. Rev. A 87, 052104 (2013)] and find that common sense yields correct statements about the particle's path through the interferometer. This disagrees with the original claim that the particles have disco...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Englert, Berthold-Georg, Horia, Kelvin, Dai, Jibo, Len, Yink Loong, Ng, Hui Khoon
Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82915
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/45036
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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Summary:We analyze Vaidman's three-path interferometer with weak path marking [L. Vaidman, Phys. Rev. A 87, 052104 (2013)] and find that common sense yields correct statements about the particle's path through the interferometer. This disagrees with the original claim that the particles have discontinuous trajectories at odds with common sense. In our analysis, “the particle's path” has operational meaning as acquired by a path-discriminating measurement. For a quantum-mechanical experimental demonstration of the case, one should perform a single-photon version of the experiment by Danan et al. [A. Danan, D. Farfurnik, S. Bar-Ad, and L. Vaidman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 240402 (2013)] with unambiguous path discrimination. We present a detailed proposal for such an experiment.