John Locke
Bringing Light and Justice to the World
Quantum leaps are real – and now we can control them
Quantum leaps are real – and now we can control them
Quantum leaps are generally assumed to be instantaneous, but researchers have figured out how to intercept them midway, which may be useful in quantum computing
www.newscientist.com
Not this kind of leap
Belisarius Productions/Universal Television
For over a century, physicists having been rowing about the true nature of a quantum leap. There’s now an answer, and in true quantum form, everybody was a little bit correct.
The phrase “quantum leap” has taken a bit of battering over the past few decades – for many people it will call to mind a cliché for massive change, or the sci-fi TV programme starring Scott Bakula. It actually describes one of the core tenets of quantum physics: that atoms have discrete energy levels, and electrons within an atom can jump from one energy level to the next, but cannot be observed between those specific levels.
Titans of physics including Niels Bohr, who introduced the idea in 1913, Erwin Schrödinger, and Albert Einstein clashed over the specifics of these leaps – also known as quantum jumps – particularly about whether they were instantaneous and whether their timing was random.
Now, Zlatko Minev at Yale University and his colleagues have settled the debate. “If we zoom in to a very fine scale the jump is neither instantaneous nor as fully random as we thought it was,” Minev says.