Recent content by dsoodak

This would be true if you were actively adjusting voltage to maintain a constant current. In a circuit, the energy an electron has is proportional to voltage, in a similar fashion to how gravitational potential energy is proportional to height. 100% of the potential energy of each electron is...

One of my QM books started with the classical EM wave equation, then showed various polarizations as superpositions of different sets of polarization base states (like circular polarization as superposition of horizontal+i*vertical). I could be wrong, but this section seemed to imply a 1-1...

Generally, all that matters is the amplitude of the wavefunction. You usually can't even MEASURE the phase unless you are making a particle interfere with itself. With photons, however, the real & complex components seem to appear as electric and magnetic fields. Is there anything equivalent...

The way I've always seen it described in this sort of experiment, something counts as a measurement if the information about the state leaks out. I originally thought this transformation could be done (using photons as qbits) with an interferometer that has one path length 1/4 wavelength longer...

[FONT=Courier New] [FONT=Arial] If we start with a Bell state 1/Sqrt(2)(|00>+|11>) [FONT=Courier New][FONT=Arial]and (after moving the second qbit a significant distance away) apply the interferometer transformation [FONT=Courier New]|0> -> 0.5(|0>+|1>) |1> -> 0.5(|0>-|1>) [FONT=Arial]to the...

Thanks! That clarified a couple of things I've been trying to work out.

So you can just calculate the total potential energy of the charged particles with each other and the background field and treat it as one particle moving in 2D? I was afraid I would have to keep iterating the wavefunctions and electrical potentials until they both got to stable values... I am...

http://www.falstad.com/qm1d/ is a really good way of getting a feel for the dynamics of a single particle in a variety of potential wells. Does anyone know of an equivalent (hopefully free) program for multi-particle systems? Dustin Soodak

My point is that they appeared to stop investigating once the knowledge was in the state they were expecting. It would be one thing if they got a specific value (ex: if the calculations showed that the speed should be exactly .9999999451c and they measured .9999999455c), but it seemed (at...

I wasn't really expecting the results to collapse permanently into the "faster than light" state, but I found the whole process to be interesting so I always kept myself updated on the controversy. As I recall, they spent months trying to find an error in their measurements before publishing...

Thanks!

In order for the light to take the same amount of time for both paths in the interferometer, simple geometry implies that the ratio between length and width will have to decrease. A straightforward derivation gives L/W=Sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where the velocity v is in the direction of the length...

That's exactly what I find to be so weird... The masses of the neutron and proton are put into Schrödinger's equation as if they are fundamental particles, and it works perfectly even though each is actually 3 different particles all interacting with each other via 2 different forces (one of...

This seems to be what I'm looking for (also: thanks for all the other interesting links everyone has posted on this thread). Now I just have to wade through enough of it to get an intuitive understanding why it should come out so neatly...

First of all, thanks for all the responses. The links provide a nice variety of different ways to approach this subject. In order to clarify my question, I will use one of the links: http://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0703/0703126.pdf In several equations the term "p" for momentum is...