Aharonov Yakir, Colombo Fabrizio, Popescu Sandu, Sabadini Irene, Struppa Daniele C, Tollaksen Jeff
School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel; Schmid College of Science and Technology, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866; Institute for Quantum Studies, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866;
Dipartimento di Matematica, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy;
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Jan 19;113(3):532-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1522411112. Epub 2016 Jan 4.
The pigeonhole principle: "If you put three pigeons in two pigeonholes, at least two of the pigeons end up in the same hole," is an obvious yet fundamental principle of nature as it captures the very essence of counting. Here however we show that in quantum mechanics this is not true! We find instances when three quantum particles are put in two boxes, yet no two particles are in the same box. Furthermore, we show that the above "quantum pigeonhole principle" is only one of a host of related quantum effects, and points to a very interesting structure of quantum mechanics that was hitherto unnoticed. Our results shed new light on the very notions of separability and correlations in quantum mechanics and on the nature of interactions. It also presents a new role for entanglement, complementary to the usual one. Finally, interferometric experiments that illustrate our effects are proposed.
“如果你把三只鸽子放进两个鸽巢里，至少有两只鸽子最终会在同一个巢里”，这是一个显而易见却又十分基础的自然原理，因为它抓住了计数的本质。然而在这里我们表明，在量子力学中情况并非如此！我们发现存在这样的情形，即把三个量子粒子放进两个盒子里，但没有两个粒子在同一个盒子里。此外，我们表明上述“量子鸽巢原理”只是一系列相关量子效应之一，并且指向了量子力学中一个迄今未被注意到的非常有趣的结构。我们的结果为量子力学中可分性和关联性的概念以及相互作用的本质带来了新的启示。它还为纠缠呈现了一个新的角色，这与通常的角色互为补充。最后，我们提出了说明我们这些效应的干涉实验。
