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Schrödinger's Cat

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PHY064
Experimental Techniques in Physics
Seminar – 17 April 2017

Schrödinger’s Cat
Sangami G.S, Sakthi Kumaran
Nidhin S.R.

Central University of Tamil Nadu

 A Brief Digression;
Thought Experiments
• Imaginative devices used to study basic nature of things.
• Should be distinguished from
1) thinking about experiments,
2) merely imagining any experiments to be conducted outside the
imagination,
3) psychological experiments with thoughts and,
4) counterfactual reasoning in general, as they seem to require an
experimental element, which seems to explain the impression
that something is experienced in a thought experiment

• Lesson : Any counter-factual or hypothetical situation is not a thought

experiment
It seems right to demand that they also be visualized (or perhaps smelled,
tasted, heard, touched); there should be something experimental about a
thought experiment.
A Brief Digression;
Thought Experiments
• Why ?
A real experiment that is parallel to the thought
experiment maybe impossible for physical, technological, ethical,
or financial reasons. But this does not define a thought
experiment.
• How ?
1) Visualize some situation that we have set up in the
imagination;
2) Let it run or carry out an operation;
3) See what happens;
4) Draw a conclusion/s, which illustrate their fallibility.
For more go to
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online
Roy A. Sorensen ; Thought Experiments ; 1992 ; OUP
Thought Experiments from Physics
Special theory of relativity
• Bell’s spaceship paradox
• Ladder paradox
• Twin paradox
• Ehrenfest paradox

Thermodynamics
• Maxwell’s Demon

Quantum Mechanics
• Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester
• Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox
• Heisenberg’s microscope
• Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment
The Schrödinger’s Cat (1935)
A cruel animal experiment we physicists won’t be doing.

1935, Schrödinger’s cat paper

The Experimental Setup
• Cat penned up in a steel chamber (the box)
• With a device (no direct interference by the cat)
Geiger counter with a small amount of a radioactive, so
small such that within an hour only one atom may decay, or
none, with equal probability for both.
• If there occurs a decay, the counter tube discharges.
• The discharge, through a relay releases a hammer
• The hammer shatters a small flask of HCN.
• The wave function of the entire system would express this by
having in it the living and dead cat mixed in equal parts

• Atomic scale indeterminacy transformed into macroscopic

indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct
observation.
The Question.

When does a quantum system cease to be in the superposition

of all classically realizable states and start to exist in any one
of those states ?
The Paradox.
• EPR experiments require that macroscopic objects do not
always have unique classical descriptions.
• But if the cat survives, it remembers only being alive.

• Our intuition says that no observer can be in a mixture of

states—yet the cat, it seems from the thought experiment,
can be such a mixture. Is the cat required to be an observer,
or does its existence in a single well-defined classical state
require another external observer?
Interpretations

• Different interpretations of quantum mechanics give

different explanations for the cat experiment.
• Since they are different from each other.
• They also expose their weak parts.
Copenhagen interpretation
• When a measurement is made, the system collapses to one
state.
• Nature of measurement, or observation, is not well-defined in
this interpretation.
• The experiment can be interpreted that while the box is
closed, the system exists in a superposition of the states
"decayed nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living
cat", and that only when the box is opened and an observation
performed does the wave function collapse into one of the two
states
• Some real experiments suggest collapse happens with the
measurement device. No need of a conscious observer. But
those experimental designs are disputed.
Many-worlds interpretation
(due to Hugh Everett)

• Observation is not a big deal !

• There is no wave function collapse at all !
• Both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the box is
opened.
• But these two states are quantum decoherent.
• Decoherent states have no communication with each other.
• Open the box, the observer becomes entangled with the cat,
creating two observer states.
Ensemble interpretation

• Superpositions are subensembles of a larger statistical

ensemble.
• Discards the idea that a single quantum system has a
mathematical description that corresponds to it in any way.
• The state vector does not correspond to single cat
experiments, but only to the statistics of many similarly
prepared cat experiments.
• Schrödinger's cat paradox is not an issue !
Wigner’s friend (1961)

• Wigner waits outside the lab for his friend.

• Wigner’s friend still inside.
• Wigner’s friend opens the box with the cat.
• Wigner’s friend has to get out & tell Wigner what happened.
• Wigner’s friend and Wigner have to fetch some beer.
Wigner’s friend (contd.)
From Wigner’s viewpoint when did the wave function collapse (to
either cat being dead or alive)?
1) When his friend opened the box ?

But still Wigner has not observed !

2) When his friend came out and conveyed what happened to the
cat ?
But then the wave function should have
collapsed way before when the friend observed !
Wigner’s friend (contd.)
• Suppose his friend found the cat dead when he opened the
box.
• But for the (maybe) brief moment before Wigner is informed
of this, for him, the cat is still in superposition of the two
alive and dead states.
• That means, even though the cat is dead, for Wigner the cat
is still dead and alive.
Let’s make some sense.
Even though the wave function collapsed for Wigner’s friend,
it has not for Wigner.
Wigner’s friend (non-sloppy ver) contd.) (

• If F is an observer and makes a measurement of an

observable A of a quantum system S which then undergoes
projective dynamics to one of its eigen states. Then another
observer makes an observation of the same observable, but
now of the composite system S and F.
The Cheshire Cat Paradox,
another cat paradox from quantum mechanics

‘All right’, said the Cat; and this time vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin,
which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
‘Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin’, thought Alice, ‘but
a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in
my life!

- Alice in Wonderland
The Cheshire Cat Paradox (contd.)

• Grin is a property of the Cheshire Cat.

• Can physical properties of particles exist without the

particles ?
The Cheshire Cat Paradox (contd.)

• Can physical properties of particles exist without the

particles ?

Yes !
The Cheshire Cat Paradox (contd.)

Photons have been observed to be in one place and their

circular polarization (their property) in some other place.

How and Why ?

Quantum mechanics is a strange animal !

slide due to Carl Bender, Washington Univ

Questions ?
References
• verbatim from ‘Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’
• Wigner’s Friend and Bell’s Field Beables ; Jeffry A. Barrett
• Griffith’s book on Quantum Mechanics 2nd Ed.
• And much more.
 Thank You.

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