Yakir Aharonov | PubMed Health

PubMed2005

Time and the quantum: erasing the past and impacting the future.

The quantum eraser effect of Scully and Drühl dramatically underscores the difference between our classical conceptions of time and how quantum processes can unfold in time. Such eyebrow-raising features of time in quantum mechanics have been labeled "the fallacy of delayed choice and quantum eraser" on the one hand and described "as one of the most intriguing effects in quantum mechanics" on the other. In the present paper, we discuss how the availability or erasure of information generated in the past can affect how we interpret data in the present. The quantum eraser concept has been studied and extended in many different experiments and scenarios, for example, the entanglement quantum eraser, the kaon quantum eraser, and the use of quantum eraser entanglement to improve microscopic resolution.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

Classical analog to topological nonlocal quantum interference effects.

The two main features of the Aharonov-Bohm effect are the topological dependence of accumulated phase on the winding number around the magnetic fluxon, and nonlocality-local observations at any intermediate point along the trajectories are not affected by the fluxon. The latter property is usually regarded as exclusive to quantum mechanics. Here we show that both the topological and nonlocal features of the Aharonov-Bohm effect can be manifested in a classical model that incorporates random noise. The model also suggests new types of multiparticle topological nonlocal effects which have no quantum analog.

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