An #electron trapped in 0.1 nm box give me "wACKy iNflATaBLe aRm flAILinG tUBe mAN" vibes. I can't stop giggling. The initial state is a ground state infinite square-well where you suddenly double the box size. Summed over 50 Fourier components. 
#Science #Physics #QuantumMechanics #Python
Something Strange Happens When You Trust Quantum Mechanics
In 1930, Felix Bloch introduced the magnon, a quasiparticle of atomic spin waves. #Poetry #Science #History #QuantumMechanics #Magnon #Bloch (https://sharpgiving.com/thebookofscience/items/p1930.html)
Did the Particle Go Through the Two Slits, or Did the Wave Function?
#PhysicsFactlet
I had to redo an old animation about quantum tunnelling in the time domain, so why not post it here?
#QuantumMechanics #ITeachPhysics
A few details:
* The incident and reflected waves interfere, creating fringes in the wavefunction modulus when it hits the barrier.
* Even when far away from the barrier, the wavefunction of the "free" particle is slowly broadening.
Entangled Whispers: Sensing Gravity's Quantum Dance
Unlocking the Secrets of the Universe, One Quantum Step at a Time.
#QuantumEntanglement, #Gravity, #QuantumGravity, #Spacetime, #Physics, #QuantumMechanics, #GeneralRelativity, #HolographicPrinciple, #QuantumSensing, #BlackHoles, #Cosmology, #TheoreticalPhysics, #QuantumPhysics, #Science, #Universe, #Entanglement, #QuantumDance, #GravityWaves, #QuantumTechnology, #CosmicMysteries
'Quantum mechanics is incomplete' | Roger Penrose on #quantummechanics a...
SciTechDaily: How Quantum Mechanics Powers the Near-Perfect Efficiency of Photosynthesis…
Plants harness quantum physics to capture solar energy with near-perfect efficiency. Scientists are now exploring how to apply this to next-gen renewable energy tech... #quantummechanics #photosynthesis #chemistry
Please share: If you are interested in the foundations of Quantum Mechanics, there are now again a few slots open in our upcoming conference on the island of Helgoland, in June 2025. Celebrating 100 years of Quantum Mechanics!
General information: https://helgoland2025.yalepages.org/
Direct to registration: https://indico.mpl.mpg.de/event/17/registrations/
This conference has an illustrious list of speakers and panelists, including people like Alain Aspect, Anton Zeilinger, John Clauser, Serge Haroche, David Wineland, Michelle Simmons, and many many others.
SciTechDaily: How Quantum Mechanics Powers the Near-Perfect Efficiency of Photosynthesis…
Plants harness quantum physics to capture solar energy with near-perfect efficiency. Scientists are now exploring how to apply this to next-gen renewable energy tech... #quantummechanics #photosynthesis #chemistry
The Economic Times: Study finds how new technology enhances gravitational-wave detection…
#quantummechanics #quantumscience #physics #blackholes #technology
How Hans Bethe Stumbled Upon Perfect Quantum Theories
Quantum calculations amount to sophisticated estimates. But in 1931, Hans Bethe intuited precisely how a chain of particles would behave — an insight that had far-reaching consequences.
By Matt von Rippel
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-hans-bethe-stumbled-upon-perfect-quantum-theories-20250212/
More information about Hans Bethe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe
#PhysicsJournalClub
"The Tumultuous Birth of Quantum Mechanics"
by Philip Ball
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/24
"quantum mechanics wasn’t created all at once. It took several decades and was a messy, confused process, during most of which the true nature of this revolution was obscure. In some ways it still is."
Nature.com: Why even physicists still don’t understand quantum theory 100 years on…
Quantum mechanics depicts a counter-intuitive reality in which the act of observation influences what is observed — and few can agree on what that means... #physics #quantummechanics #science
The Brighter Side of News: New theory unites Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum mechanics
For over a century, #quantummechanics and #Einstein ’s general #relativity have stood as the cornerstones of modern #physics, yet their unification remains one of science’s greatest challenges...
Shedding Light on Quantum Measurement with Calcite - Have you ever struggled with the concept of quantum measurement, feeling it’s unne... - https://hackaday.com/2025/01/26/shedding-light-on-quantum-measurement-with-calcite/ #quantummeasurement #quantummechanics #entanglement #laserhacks #homehacks #science #calcite #photons #optics #light #news
Primordial black holes and dark matter, oh my! Hard SF writers will want to read this article.
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-gravitational-black-holes-quantum-effect.html
@orionkidder : if recollection serves me, this article will be of interest re one of your SF universes.
#PhysicsFactlet
Do you want an interpretation of quantum mechanics that doesn't really work that well in practice, but that would look fantastic for your Sci-Fi novel? I have for you "Many interacting words" (not to be confused with the similarly named "Many worlds interpretation").
In this interpretation the universe is 100% classical, but instead of being one universe there is a VERY large number of them, all classical and weakly interacting with each other. In particular each particle is classical, but is repelled by its "copies" in the other universes. This is able to replicate a lot of the most weird effects of quantum mechanics. For instance, classically a particle is not able to overcome a potential barrier if it doesn't have enough energy to do so, but in this interpretation the particle would be repelled by its copies, so it has a non-zero chance of getting enough of a kick to jump on the other side of the barrier, producing the phenomenon we usually call "quantum tunnelling".
Another effect replicated by this model is the "zero point energy" i.e. the fact that the lowest energy a particle can have is not zero, but a bit higher than that. In this interpretation this comes to be because the particle (which is classic) would like to sit at zero energy, but so do all of its "copies", and they repel, so none of them can really sit at zero energy.
If you want, in this interpretation the very fact we see quantum effects is evidence of parallel universes!
https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.4.041013
#PhysicsJournalClub
"Testing the necessity of complex numbers in traditional quantum theory with quantum computers"
by Jarrett L. Lancaster and Nicholas M. Palladino
Am. J. Phys. 93, 110 (2025)
In classical electrodynamics the use of complex numbers is only due to to its convenience for calculations. Nobody wants to remember all those pesky trigonometric identities, so we use complex numbers to simplify calculations and take the real part at the end. You need to be a bit careful when calculating stuff like the Poynting vector, but this is well addressed ion any half-decent undergrad-level textbook.
But for quantum mechanics the problem is less obvious. On one hand we only ever measure real quantities, but on the other hand the imaginary unit appears explicitly in the Schrödinger equation, and no textbook I am aware of ever even mention the possibility that quantum numbers might be just a calculation convenience like it is in classical electrodynamics.
The question is subtle enough that you are going to find no shortage of well-read Physicists claiming that it is "obvious" that complex numbers are necessary for quantum mechanics, or that it is "obvious" that you could just use real numbers if you wanted.
This paper makes a pretty good job at explaining the problem, going through some of the history and explicit calculations, up to constructing explicitly a real-valued version of QM.
The second part, where they make an "experiment" on a IBM cloud quantum computer is (imho) less interesting, and their conclusion that you need indeed complex numbers not really supported by the evidence, but your mileage might vary 
https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/article/93/1/110/3327097/Testing-the-necessity-of-complex-numbers-in
