Publication date: November 2017
Source:Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Volume 60
Author(s): Jaume Navarro, Alexander Blum, Christoph Lehner

Publication date: Available online 22 November 2017
Source:Physics Reports
Author(s): Jose Beltrán Jiménez, Lavinia Heisenberg, Gonzalo J. Olmo, Diego Rubiera-Garcia
General Relativity has shown an outstanding observational success in the scales where it has been directly tested. However, modifications have been intensively explored in the regimes where it seems either incomplete or signals its own limit of validity. In particular, the breakdown of unitarity near the Planck scale strongly suggests that General Relativity needs to be modified at high energies and quantum gravity effects are expected to be important. This is related to the existence of spacetime singularities when the solutions of General Relativity are extrapolated to regimes where curvatures are large. In this sense, Born–Infeld inspired modifications of gravity have shown an extraordinary ability to regularise the gravitational dynamics, leading to non-singular cosmologies and regular black hole spacetimes in a very robust manner and without resorting to quantum gravity effects. This has boosted the interest in these theories in applications to stellar structure, compact objects, inflationary scenarios, cosmological singularities, and black hole and wormhole physics, among others. We review the motivations, various formulations, and main results achieved within these theories, including their observational viability, and provide an overview of current open problems and future research opportunities.

Interfacing fundamentally different quantum systems is key to building future hybrid quantum networks. Such heterogeneous networks offer capabilities superior to those of their homogeneous counterparts, as they merge the individual advantages of disparate quantum nodes in a single network architecture. However, few investigations of optical hybrid interconnections have been carried out, owing to fundamental and technological challenges such as wavelength and bandwidth matching of the interfacing photons. Here we report optical quantum interconnection of two disparate matter quantum systems with photon storage capabilities. We show that a quantum state can be transferred faithfully between a cold atomic ensemble and a rare-earth-doped crystal by means of a single photon at 1,552  nanometre telecommunication wavelength, using cascaded quantum frequency conversion. We demonstrate that quantum correlations between a photon and a single collective spin excitation in the cold atomic ensemble can be transferred to the solid-state system. We also show that single-photon time-bin qubits generated in the cold atomic ensemble can be converted, stored and retrieved from the crystal with a conditional qubit fidelity of more than 85 per cent. Our results open up the prospect of optically connecting quantum nodes with different capabilities and represent an important step towards the realization of large-scale hybrid quantum networks.

Nature 551 485 doi: 10.1038/nature24468

Zalamea, Federico (2017) The Two-fold Role of Observables in Classical and Quantum Kinematics. [Preprint]

Author(s): Shunlong Luo

Born’s rule, which postulates the probability of a measurement outcome in a quantum state, is pivotal to interpretations and applications of quantum mechanics. By exploiting the departure of the product of two Hermitian operators in Born’s rule from Hermiticity, we prescribe an intrinsic and natural…
[Phys. Rev. A 96, 052126] Published Mon Nov 20, 2017

Authors: Adil Belhaj, Salah Eddine Ennadifi

Motivated by string theory and standard model physics, we discuss the possibility of other particles-based quantum information. A special attention is put on the consideration of the graviton in light of the gravitational wave detection. This may offer a new take in approaching quantum information using messenger particles. The construction is readily extended to higher dimensional qubits where we speculate on possible connections with open and closed string sectors in terms of quiver and graph theories, respectively. In particular, we reveal that the vectorial qubits could be associated with skeleton diagrams considered as extended quivers.

Authors: Pedro Alberto, Saurya Das, Elias C. Vagenas

The problem of a particle in a box is probably the simplest problem in quantum mechanics which allows for significant insight into the nature of quantum systems and thus is a cornerstone in the teaching of quantum mechanics. In relativistic quantum mechanics this problem allows also to highlight the implications of special relativity for quantum physics, namely the effect that spin has on the quantized energy spectra. To illustrate this point, we solve the problem of a spin zero relativistic particle in a one- and three-dimensional box using the Klein-Gordon equation in the Feshbach-Villars formalism. We compare the solutions and the energy spectra obtained with the corresponding ones from the Dirac equation for a spin one-half relativistic particle. We note the similarities and differences, in particular the spin effects in the relativistic energy spectrum. As expected, the non-relativistic limit is the same for both kinds of particles, since, for a particle in a box, the spin contribution to the energy is a relativistic effect.

Authors: Cesar R. de Oliveira, Renan G. Romano

We add a confining potential to the Aharonov-Bohm model resulting in no contact of the particle with the solenoid (border); this is characterized by a unique self-adjoint extension of the initial Hamiltonian operator. It is shown that the spectrum of such extension is discrete and the first eigenvalue is found to be a nonconstant 1-periodic function of the magnetic flux circulation with a minimum at integers and maximum at half-integer circulations. This is a rigorous verification of the effect.

Authors: Domenico P. L. Castrigiano

Causal systems describe the localizability of relativistic quantum systems complying with the principles of special relativity and elementary causality. At their classification we restrict ourselves to real mass and finite spinor systems. It follows that (up to certain not yet discarded unitarily related systems) the only irreducible causal systems are the Dirac and the Weyl fermions. Their wave-equations are established as a mere consequence of causal localization.

The compact localized Dirac and Weyl wave-functions are studied in detail. One finds that, at the speed of light, the carriers shrink in the past and expand in the future. For every direction in space there is a defnite time at which the change from shrinking to expanding occurs. A late changing time characterizes those states, which shrink to a delta-strip if boosted in the opposite direction. Using a density result for these late-change states one shows that all Dirac and Weyl wave-functions are subjected to Lorentz contraction.

We tackle the question whether a causal system induces a representation of a causal logic and thus provides a localization in proper space-time regions rather than on spacelike hyperplanes. The causal logic generated by the spacelike relation is shown to do not admit representations at all. But the logic generated by the non-timelike relation in general does, and the necessary condition is derived that there is a projection valued measure on every non-timelike non-spacelike hyperplane being the high boost limit of the localization on the spacelike hyperplanes. Dirac and Weyl systems are shown to satisfy this condition and thus to extend to all non-timelike hyperplanes, which implies more profound properties of the causal systems. The compact localized eigenstates of the projections to non-spacelike flat strips are late-change states.