Spatial translations in quantum mechanics

…anonical commutation relations known as the Weyl CCRs, . It only takes one line to check this, so do give it a try. In fact, this equation is equivalent to the Weyl CCRs. Second consequence: when we take the derivative of both sides with respect to , we get the normal canonical commutation relations. This is also a nice exercise, which only uses the product rule and the definition of the derivative for exponentials, so I’ll let you give it a go.  …

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2009 Nobel Laureates in Physics

…hour’s discussion, the two got the basic idea sketched on a chalkboard: to store a charge in a confined region using a metal-oxide semiconductor. The surface of the device is a matrix of little capacitors, or pixels. When light hits a pixel on the surface, it knocks out electrons that are stored in the capacitor. The lucky feature of this process is that the number of electrons is proportional to the intensity of light. (That’s an essentially quan…

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How Time Really Passes

…cribe this situation is to say that, once a now has been specified, we are guaranteed a definite future and a definite past. These categories never get mixed up: the past cannot arrive after now; the future cannot arrive before now. There is some real regularity that guarantees future, present, and past will be delivered to us in the right order. The regularity underlying our experience of passage reflects the same reality as the regularity underl…

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New Directions in Foundations of Physics 2008

…box guarantees. For example, one type of box, which he called a “PR Box,” guaranteed that input1 * input2 = output1 + output2. Each of Gisin’s crisp, clear explanations and carefully analyzed experiments were delivered with the punctual precision of the Swiss old school. In the end, he related his new conceptual tool to the Hamiltonian formalism. You won’t find it in nature, but it teaches you something interesting about the physics. The difficul…

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An argument for hidden variables

…are completely specified, then our description of the physical process is guaranteed to have determinate values at any given time. The wave-function description of the measurement processes is *not* guaranteed to have determinate values at any given time. All physical processes are governed by the same fundamental physical laws (and hence by equally deterministic equations of motion). So, since Schrödinger evolution is governed by deterministic l…

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