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How long does a quantum jump take?
It was one of the crucial experiments in quantum physics: when light falls on certain materials, electrons are released from the surface. Albert Einstein was the first to explain this phenomenon in 1905, when he spoke of "light quanta" -- the smallest units of light that we call photons today.
In tiny fractions of a second, an electron of the material absorbs a photon, "jumps" into another state and leaves the surface. This "photoelectric effect" is so fast that until now it has mostly been regarded as instantaneous -- as a sudden change of state, from one moment to the next. However, new measurement methods are so precise that it has now become possible to observe such a process and to measure its duration precisely. A team from the Vienna University of Technology, together with research groups from Garching, Munich and Berlin, determined the duration of the photoelectric effect at a tungsten surface. The results were published in the journal Nature.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tara Li on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:57PM (1 child)
Now, the question that comes to mind is this: is the duration of these events in proportion to the "distance" traveled in this jump, and how does it relate to C?
Now, I'm aware that electrons do not "orbit" in the same manner as planets orbiting the Sun, so "distance" is not quite the right word, but that the probability waveform is shaped such that the most likely position is at some particular surface around the nucleus (or even in the nucleus) and that its extent before reaching an arbitrate cut-off grows as the electron gains energy, so the "speed" here might be the velocity of the changes to the waveform as it evolves from one extent to the other - aka, how fast does the boundary of that cut-off expand?
And what does it mean if this transition happens faster than C would allow for - aka, information is transferred from the point of interaction to the full extent of the waveform faster than it should be? (All this, of course, colored by the cloud of virtual particles that surrounds every real particle. Does that sound as whacked to everyone else as it does to me?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @06:08PM
Makes sense to me. Sounds fascinating. I doubt it would lead to FTL travel or communication. Probably would be yet another discontinuity that occurs in the realm of the very small.
Though who knows. Experiments that try to pinpoint the scale necessary for quantum phenomena to break down are interesting. Superconductors come to mind.