Demonstration of single-electron buildup of an interference pattern

Tonomura, Akira; Endo, Junji; Matsuda, Tsuyoshi; Kawasaki, Takeshi; Ezawa, H.

doi:10.1119/1.16104

Cited by 565 publications

(497 citation statements)

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“…In any one single, individual experimental realisation of the above procedure however, one ends up with the full density matrix defined by equation (7), and one cannot use the expectation values of equation (8) to conclude anything about that one specific experiment. In particular, in the classic Young's double slit experiment, the observation that each single electron produces only a single dot on the photographic plate, can not be explained by invoking decoherence and averaging over the many degrees of freedom of the plate [28,29,34].…”

Section: : Decoherencementioning

confidence: 99%

Quantum dynamics in the thermodynamic limit

Wezel

2008

Phys. Rev. B

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The description of spontaneous symmetry breaking that underlies the connection between classically ordered objects in the thermodynamic limit and their individual quantum mechanical building blocks is one of the cornerstones of modern condensed matter theory and has found applications in many different areas of physics. The theory of spontaneous symmetry breaking however, is inherently an equilibrium theory, which does not address the dynamics of quantum systems in the thermodynamic limit. Here, we will use the example of a particular antiferromagnetic model system to show that the presence of a so-called thin spectrum of collective excitations with vanishing energy -one of the well-known characteristic properties shared by all symmetry-breaking objects-can allow these objects to also spontaneously break time-translation symmetry in the thermodynamic limit. As a result, that limit is found to be able, not only to reduce quantum mechanical equilibrium averages to their classical counterparts, but also to turn individual-state quantum dynamics into classical physics. In the process, we find that the dynamical description of spontaneous symmetry breaking can also be used to shed some light on the possible origins of Born's rule. We conclude by describing an experiment on a condensate of exciton polaritons which could potentially be used to experimentally test the proposed mechanism. 1: IntroductionCombining many elementary particles into a single interacting system may result in collective behaviour that qualitatively differs from the properties allowed by the physical theory governing the individual building blocks. This realisation -immortalised by P.W. Anderson in his famous phrase 'More is Different' [1]-not only forms the basis of much of the research being done in condensed matter physics today, but has also found applications in areas ranging from string theory to cosmology. The theory of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking which formalises these ideas first took shape over fifty years ago [2,3,4,5,6,7], and was completed in the context of quantum magnetism only two decades ago by the detailed description of the classical state as a combination of thin spectrum states, emerging as N → ∞ because of the singular nature of the thermodynamic limit [8,9,10]. The same description of the classical state emerging from the thin spectrum has since been shown to also directly apply to the cases of quantum crystals, antiferromagnets, Bose-Einstein condensates and superconductors [11,12,13,14,15].The connection between the quantum mechanical properties of microscopic particles and the classical behaviour of symmetry broken macroscopic objects has now again come to the forefront of modern science because of our technological capability to create ever larger and heavier quantum superpositions in the laboratory. Superconducting flux qubits harbour counterrotating streams of supercurrent consisting of up to 10 11 Cooper pairs [16,17,18], while Bose Einstein condensates of the order of 10 5 Rubidium atoms can be routinely brought i...

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Section: : Decoherencementioning

confidence: 99%

Quantum dynamics in the thermodynamic limit

Wezel

2008

Phys. Rev. B

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“…The possibility of performing quantum interference experiments with low-intensity beams (i.e., one per one particle) of photons [1][2][3] and material particles [4][5][6] has intensified the theoretical search of the topology of the photon paths [7][8][9] and particle trajectories [10][11][12][13][14] that describe the process behind the interference grating. The aim of all the proposed approaches is to simulate the appearance of the interference pattern by accumulation of single-particle events.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electromagnetic energy flow lines as possible paths of photons

et al. 2009

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Abstract. Motivated by recent experiments where interference patterns behind a grating are obtained by accumulating single photon events, here we provide an electromagnetic energy flow-line description to explain the emergence of such patterns. We find and discuss an analogy between the equation describing these energy flow lines and the equation of Bohmian trajectories used to describe the motion of massive particles.

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“…This idea has been confirmed in various double-slit experiments with massive objects such as electrons [40][41][42][43], neutrons [44,45], atoms [46,47] and molecules such as C 60 and C 70 [48,49], all showing interference. In some of the double-slit experiments [16,41,42] the interference pattern is built up by recording individual clicks of the detectors. According to Feynman, the observation that the interference patterns are built up event-by-event is "impossible, absolutely impossible to explain in any classical way and has in it the heart of quantum mechanics" [50].…”

Section: Two-beam Interferencementioning

confidence: 60%

Event‐by‐event simulation of quantum phenomena

Raedt

Zhao²,

Yuan³

et al. 2012

Annalen der Physik

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A discrete‐event simulation approach is reviewed that does not require the knowledge of the solution of the wave equation of the whole system, yet reproduces the statistical distributions of wave theory by generating detection events one‐by‐one. The simulation approach is illustrated by applications to a two‐beam interference experiment and two Bell test experiments, an Einstein‐Podolsky‐Rosen‐Bohm experiment with single photons employing post‐selection for pair identification and a single‐neutron Bell test interferometry experiment with nearly 100 % detection efficiency.

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Demonstration of single-electron buildup of an interference pattern

Cited by 565 publications

References 0 publications

Quantum dynamics in the thermodynamic limit

Quantum dynamics in the thermodynamic limit

Electromagnetic energy flow lines as possible paths of photons

Event‐by‐event simulation of quantum phenomena

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