Experimental nonlocal and surreal Bohmian trajectories

Weak measurement allows one to empirically determine a set of average trajectories for an ensemble of quantum particles. However, when two particles are entangled, the trajectories of the first particle can depend nonlocally on the position of the second particle. Moreover, the theory describing the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScience advances Vol. 2; no. 2; p. e1501466
Main Authors Mahler, Dylan H, Rozema, Lee, Fisher, Kent, Vermeyden, Lydia, Resch, Kevin J, Wiseman, Howard M, Steinberg, Aephraim
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 05.02.2016
Subjects
Bohmian mechanics
quantum measurement
interpretations of quantum mechanics
weak measurement
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Summary:Weak measurement allows one to empirically determine a set of average trajectories for an ensemble of quantum particles. However, when two particles are entangled, the trajectories of the first particle can depend nonlocally on the position of the second particle. Moreover, the theory describing these trajectories, called Bohmian mechanics, predicts trajectories that were at first deemed "surreal" when the second particle is used to probe the position of the first particle. We entangle two photons and determine a set of Bohmian trajectories for one of them using weak measurements and postselection. We show that the trajectories seem surreal only if one ignores their manifest nonlocality.
ISSN:2375-2548
2375-2548
DOI:10.1126/sciadv.1501466