By Syed Arshad Hussain

, Thin Films (Material Science)

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Filed under : Scitizen >> Science >> recent-development-of-scinece >> CLASSICAL CHAOS IN QUANTUM WORLD

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CLASSICAL CHAOS IN QUANTUM WORLD

15 Oct, 2009 05:19 am

Professor Poul Jessen of the University of Arozone explored through experiment that the worlds of quantum mechanics and classical are connected through chaos.

Professor Poul Jessen of the University of Arozone explored through experiment that the worlds of quantum mechanics and classical are connected through chaos.

Chaotic behavior is the rule, not the exception, in the world we experience through our senses, the world governed by the laws of classical physics ie the macroscopic world.

Until now, no experimental evidence is there that chaos occurs in the quantum world, the world of photons, atoms, molecules and their building blocks.

This is a world ruled by uncertainty: An atom is both a particle and a wave, and it's impossible to determine its position and velocity simultaneously.

And that presents a major problem. If the starting point for a quantum particle cannot be precisely known, then there is no way to construct a theory that is sensitive to initial conditions in the way of classical chaos.

Yet quantum mechanics is the most complete theory of the physical world, and therefore should be able to account for all naturally occurring phenomena.

We believe that quantum mechanics is the fundamental theory, the theory that describes everything, therefore, it is necessary to understand how classical physics follows as a limiting case of quantum physics."

Jessen and his group in UA's College of Optical Sciences showed that classical chaos spills over into the quantum world.

The reported their findings in the Oct. 8 issue of the journal Nature in an article titled, "Quantum signatures of chaos in a kicked top."

Their experiments show clear fingerprints of classical-world chaos in a quantum system designed to mimic a textbook example of chaos known as the "kicked top."

The quantum version of the top is the "spin" of individual laser-cooled cesium atoms that Jessen's team manipulate with magnetic fields and laser light, using tools and techniques developed over a decade of painstaking laboratory work.

Now it is interesting to see that the classical worlds is being explained with the quantum theory.

Reference:

S. Chaudhury, A. Smith, B. E. Anderson, S. Ghose, P. S. Jessen, Nature 461, 768-771 (8 October 2009) doi:10.1038/nature08396 Letter

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