Researchers chart the ’secret’ movement of quantum particles

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have taken a peek into the secretive domain of quantum mechanics. In a theoretical paper published in the journal Physical Review A , they have shown that the way that particles interact with their environment can be used to track quantum particles when they're not being observed, which had been thought to be impossible. We can verify old predictions of quantum mechanics, for example that particles can exist in different locations at the same time. David Arvidsson-Shukur One of the fundamental ideas of quantum theory is that quantum objects can exist both as a wave and as a particle, and that they don't exist as one or the other until they are measured. This is the premise that Erwin Schrödinger was illustrating with his famous thought experiment involving a dead-or-maybe-not-dead cat in a box. "This premise, commonly referred to as the wave function, has been used more as a mathematical tool than a representation of actual quantum particles," said David Arvidsson-Shukur, a PhD student at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, and the paper's first author. "That's why we took on the challenge of creating a way to track the secret movements of quantum particles." Any particle will always interact with its environment, 'tagging' it along the way.