corner
corner
APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. A » Volume 57 » Issue 6
< Previous Article | Next Article >

Phys. Rev. A 57, 4130–4139 (1998)

Measurement of time of arrival in quantum mechanics

Download: PDF (192 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

Y. Aharonov1, J. Oppenheim2,*, S. Popescu3,†, B. Reznik4,‡, and W. G. Unruh2,§
1School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, IsraelDepartment of Physics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208
2Department of Physics, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z1
3Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge University, 20 Clarkson Road, Cambridge CB3 OEH, United KingdomBRIMS, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol BS12 6QZ, United Kingdom
4Theoretical Division, T-6, MS B288, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545

Received 15 September 1997; published in the issue dated June 1998

It is argued that the time of arrival cannot be precisely defined and measured in quantum mechanics. By constructing explicit toy models of a measurement, we show that for a free particle it cannot be measured more accurately then ΔtA∼1/Ek, where Ek is the initial kinetic energy of the particle. With a better accuracy, particles reflect off the measuring device, and the resulting probability distribution becomes distorted. It is shown that a time-of-arrival operator cannot exist, and that approximate time-of-arrival operators do not correspond to the measurements considered here.

© 1998 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.57.4130
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.57.4130
PACS:
03.65.-w

*Electronic address: jono@physics.ubc.ca

†Electronic address: sp230@newton.cam.ac.uk

‡Electronic address: reznik@t6-serv.lanl.gov

§Electronic address: unruh@physics.ubc.ca

 
< Previous Article | Next Article >