Artigo Revisado por pares

Quantum Zeno effect

1991; Elsevier BV; Volume: 170; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0378-4371(91)90048-h

ISSN

1873-2119

Autores

T. Petrosky, S. Tasaki, Ilya Prigogine,

Tópico(s)

Quantum Information and Cryptography

Resumo

In 1977, Misra and Sudarshan showed, based on the quantum measurement theory, that an unstable particle will never be found to decay when it is continuously observed. They called it the quantum Zeno effect (or paradox). More generally the quantum Zeno effect is associated to the inhibition of transitions by frequent measurements. This possibility has attracted much interest over the last years. Recently, Itano, Heinzen, Bollinger and Wineland have reported that they succeeded in observing the quantum Zeno effect. This would indeed be an important step towards the understanding of the role of the observer in quantum mechanics. However, in the present paper, we will show that their results can be recovered through conventional quantum mechanics and do not involve a repeated reduction (or collapse) of the wave function.

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