Feynman’s Idea

Howard Burton, Nima Arkani-hamed A

Takashi Ichinose

Introduction.With his physical postulates Feynman ([4], [5]) conceived the eminent idea of path integral in quantum mechanics.Kac [6] has given a rigorous realization of Feynman's idea for pure- imaginary-time quantum mechanics.Namely, he has represented the

Marco Ornigotti, Andrea Aiello

We test the validity of Feynman's idea that a two-slit experiment performed with classical objects (bullets) does not produce observable interference fringes on the detection screen because the Compton's wavelength of the bullets is so tiny, that no real detector could resolve individual interference fringes, thus producing only an average signal which is the observed smooth curve. To test this idea, we study the two-slit experiment in two different situations using light to simulate both wave-like and particle-like bullets. In the first case, we consider coherent light with short wavelengths and in the second case incoherent light with not-so-short wavelength. While in the former case (simulating Feynman's wave-like bullets) the interference fringes are so dense that they cannot be resolved by a detector, therefore resulting in an averaged smooth signal, in the latter case (simulating Feynman's particle-like bullets), although the detector is fully capable of discriminating each fringe, the observed classical smooth pattern limit is produced because of the lack of spatial coherence of the impinging field.

George Jaroszkiewicz, Jason Ridgway-Taylor

By the early eighties, Fredkin, Feynman, Minsky and others were exploring the notion that the laws of physics could be simulated with computers. Feynman's particular contribution was to bring quantum mechanics into the discussion and his ideas played a key role in the development of quantum computation. It was shown in 1995 by Barenco et al that all quantum computation processes could be written in terms of local operations and CNOT gates. We show how one of the most important of all physical systems, the quantized bosonic oscillator, can be rewritten in precisely those terms and therefore described as a quantum computational process, exactly in line with Feynman's ideas. We discuss single particle excitations and coherent states.