Does Cutting an Object Affect Its Hilbert Space or Quantum State?

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
2 replies · 1K views
oquen
Messages
109
Reaction score
1
When you cut an object with a knife.. say a sausage. Does it's Hilbert Space or Quantum State split into two too? Or is it like in a holographic film.. in which even after cutting it, all the original image is in each of the cut portion?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
oquen said:
When you cut an object with a knife.. say a sausage. Does it's Hilbert Space or Quantum State split into two too? Or is it like in a holographic film.. in which even after cutting it, all the original image is in each of the cut portion?

You may get a better answer, but I'm not sure it's helpful to think of a sausage as a quantum object!
 
oquen said:
When you cut an object with a knife.. say a sausage. Does it's Hilbert Space or Quantum State split into two too? Or is it like in a holographic film.. in which even after cutting it, all the original image is in each of the cut portion?
A Hilbert space is a mathematical abstraction, not any sort of physical space that can be cut and divided. Objects don't "have" or occupy Hilbert spaces, and there is no correspondence between the parts of an object and the elements of the Hilbert space we're using in our computations.

Unfortunately, all of this about how a Hilbert space isn't what you're thinking it is doesn't help much with explaining what a Hilbert really is. For that, you need a college-level intro QM text.