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In a paper published in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature Communications and titled "Direct measurement of a 27-dimensional orbital-angular-momentum state vector," a team of physicists led by the University of Rochester's Mehul Malik describe how they circumvented a basic principle of uncertainty that requires that some states of a quantum system must be understood poorly if other states are to be understood well. Determining a quantum state, such as the position of an electron or the momentum of a photon, is tricky, to say the least. That's because subatomic particles behave nothing at all like billiard balls,...

Schrödinger's cat now has a second box to play in, thanks to an international team of physicists that has created a two-mode "Schrödinger's cat state" for the first time. The experiment brings together two purely quantum properties, in that the "cat" (i.e. the photons) is simultaneously "alive and dead" (in a superposition of states) while also in two locations at once (the two boxes are entangled with one another).

Yale physicists have given Schrödinger's cat a second box to play in. Credit: Michael S. Helfenbein/Yale University ====================================================================================================================== Yale physicists have given Schrödinger's famous cat a second box to play in, and the result may help further the quest for reliable quantum computing. Schrödinger's cat is a well-known paradox that applies the concept of superposition in quantum physics to objects encountered in everyday life. The idea is that a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive source and a poison that will be triggered if an atom of the radioactive substance decays. Quantum physics suggests that the...