This month a study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which a new quantum phenomenon was presented. The authors called it the "principle of quantum pigeons and boxes." Prior to this discovery, this principle was widely known in traditional science as the “principle of pigeons and boxes” (in English), or as the Dirichlet principle.
According to the principle, if you place three pigeons in two cells, then at least two pigeons should be in the same cell. This is an obvious and fundamental principle of nature, the very basis of combinatorics. A study conducted by members of the Institute of Quantum Research (IQS) at Chapman University violates this principle. It demonstrates that an arbitrarily large number of particles can be placed in two boxes, and no two particles will be in one box.
“This discovery points to a very interesting structure of quantum mechanics that was previously unnoticed,” said Yakir Aaronov, Ph.D. and IQS co-director. “It forces us to reconsider the most basic concepts of nature.”
The paper entitled “Quantum Infringement of the Principle of Doves and Boxes and the Nature of Quantum Correlations” discusses several possible experiments investigating the nature of the interaction of particles. The work also introduces many additional new data that scientists have discovered that are investigating coupled quantum effects. The paper also questions some fundamental concepts, including separability and correlations.
“It’s too early to talk about all the consequences of this study,” said Jeff Tollaksen, Ph.D., co-author of work at PNAS and co-director of IQS. “But we feel that they should be tangible, because we are dealing with fundamental principles.” By the way, scientists began talking about possible violations in principle of pigeons and boxes in 2014. Since then, the work has not stopped.
What could be the consequences? For example: the laws of the quantum world imply that things can be in different places at the same time. Thus, one particle can be in both boxes at the same time, but only when you are not “looking” at it. As soon as you look and become an observer of a particle, it will be forced to end up in one or the other box.
“But if your only tool is a hammer, you tend to view everything as a nail,” says Tollaksen. “The problem is that such hammer-like measurements are usually not very helpful in finding out how the quantum world connects the future with a real delicate and important way.”
Aaronov and his team worked for twenty years on new types of soft “weak dimensions” that these connections could see - “as if you gently touch your finger and do not hit the box with a hammer, forcing each pigeon to end up in its own box,” says Tollaksen.
All these strange principles very and very much influence our understanding of the most probably exotic aspect of nature: non-locality - the theory that particles separated by huge distances, even at opposite ends of the Universe, are connected and can influence each other's behavior. “Non-locality is considered the most incredible discovery of science and is a resource for future technologies,” says Tollaksen.
The article is based on materials .
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