Hannover 2020 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 11: Quantum Optics I
Q 11.3: Talk
Monday, March 9, 2020, 14:30–14:45, f342
Coherent and incoherent many-particle interference tests of Born’s rule — •Marc-Oliver Pleinert1,2, Eric Lutz3, and Joachim von Zanthier1,2 — 1Institut für Optik, Information und Photonik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), 91058 Erlangen, Germany — 2Erlangen Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies (SAOT), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), 91052 Erlangen, Germany — 3Institute for Theoretical Physics I, University of Stuttgart, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany
Quantum mechanics is based on a set of only a few postulates, which can be separated into two parts: one part governing the ‘inner’ structure, i.e., the definition and dynamics of the state space, the wave function and the observables; and one part making the connection to experiments (‘external’ world). Here, we focus on the second part, in particular Born’s rule, which - simply put - relates detection probabilities to the modulus square of the wave function. Born’s rule can be tested in interference experiments, where the configuration of possible paths can be precisely controlled and compared. In such experiments, according to Born’s rule, M-particle correlations of mutually coherent sources (MCS) are limited to order 2M, while M-particle correlations of mutually incoherent sources (MIS) are limited to order M. Excluding any higher-order correlations is hence a direct test of Born’s rule and thus quantum mechanics itself. We demonstrate the vanishing of such higher-order terms in two-particle experiments for MCS and in two-, three-, and four-particle experiments for MIS.