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The quantum Zeno effect — watched pots in the quantum world

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Abstract

In the 5th century BC, the philosopher and logician Zeno of Elea posed several paradoxes which remained unresolved for over two thousand five hundred years. In recent times, the Zeno effect made an intriguing appearance in a rather unlikely place — a situation involving the time evolution of a quantum system which is subject to ‘observations’ over a period of time. In 1977, B Misra and E C G Sudarshan published a paper on the quantum Zeno effect, called “The Zeno’s paradox in quantum theory”. Their fascinating result revealed the bizarre workings of the quantum world. In the following article, the quantum Zeno effect is described and a brief outline of some of the work following Misra and Sudarshan’s paper is given.

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Suggested Reading

  1. A watched atom never decays, New Scientist, 10th March 1990.

  2. Accelerated decay, New Scientist, 3rd June 2000.

  3. Asher Peres, Zeno paradox in Quantum Theory, American Journal of Physics, p.931, 1980.

  4. Namiki, Pascazio and Na-kazato, Quantum Zeno Effect, Deco-herence and Quantum Measurements, World Scientific, 1997, Chapter 8.

  5. The description of the classical paradoxes of Zeno is based on information at the online site. http://pirate.shu.edu/:_wachsmut/ira/history/zeno.html, and Chapter 9 of the PhD thesis of M J Gagen, entitled ‘Quantum measurement theory and the quantum Zeno effect’, PhD thesis, University of Queensland, Australia 1993.

  6. The section on the experiment of Kwiat et al is based on material posted at http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/seedark.html entitled ‘Quantum Seeing in the Dark’, by Paul Kwiat, Harald Wein-furter and Anton Zeilinger.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Philosophy and Foundations of Science Darshan Sadan, E-36 Panchshila Park, New Delhi, 110 017, India

    Anu Venugopalan

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  1. Anu Venugopalan
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Correspondence to Anu Venugopalan.

Additional information

Anu Venugopalan is on the faculty of the Centre for Philosophy and Foundations of Science, New Delhi, on leave from GGS Indraprastha University, Kashmere Gate, Delhi. Her primary research interests are in the areas of Foundations of Quantum mechanics, Quantum Optics and Quantum Information.

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Venugopalan, A. The quantum Zeno effect — watched pots in the quantum world. Reson 12, 52–68 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-007-0038-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-007-0038-x

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