Some confusion about the uncertainty principle and superposition
I’m really interested in physics but most of my knowledge comes from interesting articles, podcasts, and videos. So apologies if my questions are misinformed.
This is one topic where I feel like I don’t really understand.
Here are my questions:
I understand superficially what it means that momentum and position are Fourier transforms of one another.
- But what does this mean as a particle’s potential momentum and position propagate through space?
- Are they in superposition until information about one property is measured?
- What does knowing a particle’s position at one point in time tell you about the behaviour of the probability wave that allowed the particle to exist in that position?
- How does this affect two simultaneous measurements happening on a particle? One measurement for momentum and one for position? I expect that there are no workarounds but I don’t understand why?
- Does the measurement of a particle’s momentum affect its position? (Or vice-versa?) Or is this a misunderstanding?
- How does something like a particle collision work? Surely the momentum and position of two particles affects what happens to them when they collide?
- If I have two particles interacting with each other carrying away information about each other’s position, is this a form of entanglement?
I’ve also read that measurement is about information being carried away from a particle. So that an interaction can happen between two particles but if for example knowing about that interaction doesn’t tell us its momentum, then the momentum was not “measured” by that interaction. It seems to imply that a macroscopic system can be in superposition (e.g. Schrödinger’s Cat).
- If the Cat were instead in a box where a particular side would open triggers by the decay of a radioactive atom, then the cat wondered around the room... does it really make sense to say that the cat’s location in the room is in a superposition of all of its possible locations?
- From the cat’s perspective the superposition of the radioactive decay has collapsed, but because no information is available to an outside observer. But then our observation has to propagate our from our laboratory. Does that mean we are in superposition too? When could we say the state has finally “collapses”?
Posted Dec 6, 2018, 12:51 AM UTC