Re: R: Duplication Thought Experiment Involving Complementarity

From: George Levy <GLevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 10:00:45 -0700

scerir wrote:

> George Levy:
>
> 5) Is complementarity anthropically necessary?
>
>
>
> I may be wrong but it seems to me that complementarity
>
> is nothing more, and nothing less than a consequence
>
> of the finiteness of (quantum) information.
>
>
>
I don't understand.

> It seems also that the complementarity principle is
>
> a "smooth" principle.
>
Yes, this is a difference between the thought experiment and nature. Or
is it? The fact that we haven't been able to show discreteness in QM
indeterminacy is no proof that there isn't.

> When we say, i.e. following von
>
> Weizsaeker, that localization and superposition are
>
> complementary, we mean that the predictability of the
>
> path plus the visibility of the interference fringes (in the
>
> double slit experiment) equals a certain constant.
>
>
>
> There is a "smooth" transition between the wave-like
> behavior and the particle-like behaviour.
>
>
>
> Wootters and Zurek [see "Complementarity in the Double-
> Slit Experiment: Quantum Nonseparability and a
> Quantitative Statement of Bohr's Principle", in
> Physical Review, D19, (1979)] showed that a photon
> still has a wave-like behaviour even if the path
> (the which way in a double-slit experiment) is
> predicted almost certainly. Their gedanken
> experiment is very simple: a single-slit
>
> + a double-slit + a screen.
>
>
>
> Thus to me the question "Is complementarity anthropically
>
> necessary?" means "Can *we* get infinite information
>
> from a single quantum?"
>

This would be a great feature for quantum computers. But I don't
understand how you arrive to this conclusion.

George

>
Received on Tue Sep 10 2002 - 10:50:07 PDT