Maybe "collapse" was the wrong word to use. By collapse I mean the point at which a superposition in some basis changes to one of the eigen values of the basis. For eg: a photon with polarization +1 in the 0 degree basis changes to either +1 or -1 in the 45 degree basis when it passes through a...
I'm a novice at this quantum business and was just trying to understand the single slit diffraction experiment and when an electron's position is getting measured in particular.
Given my understanding it looks like the electron's position gets measured twice. Once when it is just about to...
Thanks for the replies. That seems to clarify some of my misunderstandings.
A couple more questions. If an operator is to be associated with any measurable quantity then there should be an infinite number of operators right?
For example could we not define operators for velocity...
Like all beginners to QM I'm really confused about the measurement operation. I understand that measurement is simply a dot product with an "operator" and the result is one of the operator's eigenvalues.
Now my question is what exactly is an operator? If someone could explain what physical...
I'm just getting the basics of quantum mechanics and I had a question regarding a modification of the stern-gerlach experiment that I think might help me understand the superimposed eigen-states better. Could someone please clarify what one would expect in the following situation?
Suppose we...