Collapsing the wavefuntion to an Energy Eigenfunction?

mkarydas
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
Is there an experiment that can measure the energy of a single particle so immediately after it has collapsed to one of the energy eigenfunctions?
The problem is that all experiments i can think of are about measuring the position of a the particle so we collapse it to its delta function. But how can someone experimentally measure the energy of a particle ?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
What's your question?

How someone measures experimentally the energy of a particle? - well its done all the time in particle colliders.

How one measures it immediately after - simply do the same experiment immediately after - of course if the measurement didn't destroy it.

Thanks
Bill
 
Last edited:
thats exactly my question..how does one measure the energy of a particle without measuring its position first?
 
mkarydas said:
thats exactly my question..how does one measure the energy of a particle without measuring its position first?

Mass spectrometer is one way - probably others as well.

Thanks
Bill
 
Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. Towards the end of the first lecture for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2025, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Olivia Lanes (Global Lead, Content and Education IBM) stated... Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/quantum-entanglement-is-a-kinematic-fact-not-a-dynamical-effect/ by @RUTA
If we release an electron around a positively charged sphere, the initial state of electron is a linear combination of Hydrogen-like states. According to quantum mechanics, evolution of time would not change this initial state because the potential is time independent. However, classically we expect the electron to collide with the sphere. So, it seems that the quantum and classics predict different behaviours!
Back
Top