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A Note on the ‘Quantum Eraser’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

William Seager
William Seager*
Affiliation:
Scarborough College University of Toronto
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Division of Humanities, Scarborough College, University of Toronto, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, M1C 1A4.
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Abstract

This note aims to make more familiar to philosophers yet another bizarre quantum mechanical effect with disturbing metaphysical implications. It is possible to modify the classic double-slit experiment so that one can register the path of a particle to determine which slit it passes through, and then erase this registered information so that the interference effects which would normally disappear upon registration of the “which path” information are reconstituted. Thus the “trajectory” of particles can be effected by temporally and spatially distant operations on the slit detectors. Nonetheless, no untoward effects (such as superluminal signalling) can result from the operation of the eraser.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 81 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Don Robinson and Jim Brown for helpful discussions of the eraser.

References

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