A Schrödinger cat with eight lives: quantum entanglement of eight photons | Hacker News Reader

A Schrödinger cat with eight lives: quantum entanglement of eight photons

arstechnica.com

43 points3lit3H4ck3r8 comments

I'm not sure its really accurate to call the Copenhagen interpretation the "standard interpretation"? I'm given to understand that either a majority or at least a plurality of physicists subscribe to the Everett Interpretation.

>I'm not sure its really accurate to call the Copenhagen interpretation the "standard interpretation"?

You are correct. There are other accepted interpretative models. However, the Copenhagen interpretation remains the most widely accepted.

Those interested in quantum mechanics, and that find the 'textbook interpretation' (the copenhagen interpration) or the "many worlds/everett" interpration frustratingly unintuitive, may find the decoherent/consistent histories interpretation interesting.

That interpretation provides an intuitive way to reason about quantum mechanics and therefore makes it much easier to learn how quantum mechanics works, without getting distracted by paradoxes and philosophical difficulties.

To learn more,

Read a paper by one of decoherent histories' main proponents http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0612065

See if you can understand quantum decoherence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

Read the FAQ: http://quantum.phys.cmu.edu/CHS/quest.html

Dive into a textbook explaining quantum physics in decoherent histories interpration (by the same proponent as above) http://quantum.phys.cmu.edu/CQT/index.html

And of course its Wikipedia page may not be overlooked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_histories

In fact, the Copenhagen interpretation has been proven wrong by fellow lisper Ron Garret. You can read his paper here:

www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf

and watch his google talk about it here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc .

The problem is, that most people (not scientists, mind you) do not really care anyway, and the Copenhagen interpretation gives you a nice story to tell, which is fairly "strange", yet somewhat understandable. I hate the fact that even science magazines still 100% subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation, just to attract a greater readership and to be able to use catchier headlines.

Great contribution replax. Systemically, I follow his argument. Please, allow me to study this topic further. In my gut "something" does not feel right regarding his conclusion.

Kind of what my gut was telling me (from the Google Talk comments):

"I feel like a lot of assmptions were made in this lecture. We've thrown formulas out the window before because they didn't agree with newly experimental data. Using the schroedinger equation to prove the results of the quantum eraser is pretty much equivalent to using old newtonian formulas to prove that you can travel faster than the speed of light - it doesn't hold water. I'm not saying Ron Garret is wrong, but too many assumptions were made in this proof, i'd rather trust experimental data."

Still reading. Thanks!

I really enjoy reading articles like this; what I found interesting is that there is an assumed entangled relation between the photons and the beam.

"A second test of entanglement, which used polarization orientations other than horizontal and vertical, found a ratio of approximately 4:1."

I didn't see a reference to the orientation in regards to the Earth's magnetic field.

This is the future of computation:

>However, the system is also powerful enough that it is a step forward in terms of optical quantum computation. The authors suggest that their setup may enable quantum simulations to tackle more complicated problems in condensed matter physics than have been possible so far.

That is why I posted this article.

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