Delayed Choice
Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, like the
quantum eraser, and the
Mach-Zender interferometer, involves a
superposition of two quantum states similar to those in
entanglement, the
two-slit experiment, and
Schrödinger's Cat.
Depending on the experimental setup, the outcomes can be
misinterpreted as sending signals instantaneously (faster than light speed and violating relativity), a particle thought to be in two places at the same time, events that happened in the distant past being changed, an interference pattern remotely disappearing and reappearing, and other
weird phenomena of which cats simultaneously dead and alive is probably the most well-known.
These
weird phenomena are described in many popular books that misunderstand or misinterpret what quantum particles and quantum wave functions are actually or "really" doing. While "nobody understands quantum mechanics," as
Richard Feynman famously said, we hope to explain how
Albert Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" has given rise to the amazing new technologies of the "second quantum revolution."
These "quantum resources" include the generation of quantum random bit strings used as unbreakable cryptographic codes ("
") for secure communications, and the entangled "qubits" that may become the basis for
quantum computing.
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