European Quantum Electronics Conference (EQEC)

Precision Tests of the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics with Single Photons and Multi-Path Interferometers

Thomas Kauten, Thomas Kaufmann, Benedikt Pressl, Robert Keil, Gregor Weihs

Published Jun 21, 2015• 0 citations

Abstract

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory to describe the physics of microscopic objects, but there are still questions whether this theory is complete or not. If the answer to this question is no, axioms could be violated. One of the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics is Born’s rule, which claims that the description of nature is probabilistic (P(r,t) = |Ψ(r,t)|2). Combined with the quantum mechanical superposition of wavefunctions this results in interference terms, which contain all the possible pairings of the states in the superposition, but does not allow higher-order interference terms with more than two constituents.

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