Experimental demonstration of separating the wave‒particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat

Jia-Kun Li; Kai Sun; Yan Wang; Ze-Yan Hao; Zheng-Hao Liu; Jie Zhou; Xing-Yan Fan; Jing-Ling Chen; Jin-Shi Xu; Chuan-Feng Li; Guang-Can Guo

doi:10.1038/s41377-022-01063-5

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Experimental demonstration of separating the wave‒particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat

Original Articles

- Experimental demonstration of separating the wave‒particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat
- Experimental demonstration of separating the wave‒particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat
- 光：科学与应用 2023年12卷第1期页码：128-135
- Affiliations：
  
  1.CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026 Hefei, China
  2.CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026 Hefei, China
  3.Hefei National Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, 230088 Hefei, China
  4.Theoretical Physics Division, Chern Institute of Mathematics, Nankai University, 300071 Tianjin, China
- Author bio：
  
  Kai Sun (ksun678@ustc.edu.cn)
  Jing-Ling Chen (chenjl@nankai.edu.cn)
  Jin-Shi Xu (jsxu@ustc.edu.cn)
  Chuan-Feng Li (cfli@ustc.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-022-01063-5
  中图分类号：
- 纸质出版日期：2023-1-31，
  
  网络出版日期：2023-1-5，
  
  收稿日期：2022-8-15，
  
  修回日期：2022-12-13，
  
  录用日期：2022-12-17
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Experimental demonstration of separating the wave‒particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat[J]. 光：科学与应用, 2023,12(1):128-135.

Li, J. K. et al. Experimental demonstration of separating the wave‒particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat. Light: Science & Applications, 12, 128-135 (2023).
Experimental demonstration of separating the wave‒particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat[J]. 光：科学与应用, 2023,12(1):128-135. DOI： 10.1038/s41377-022-01063-5.

Li, J. K. et al. Experimental demonstration of separating the wave‒particle duality of a single photon with the quantum Cheshire cat. Light: Science & Applications, 12, 128-135 (2023). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-022-01063-5.

摘要

Abstract

As a fundamental characteristic of physical entities

wave‒particle duality describes whether a microscopic entity exhibits wave or particle attributes depending on the specific experimental setup. This assumption is premised on the notion that physical properties are inseparable from the objective carrier. However

after the concept of the quantum Cheshire cats was proposed

which makes the separation of physical attributes from the entity possible

the premise no longer holds. Furthermore

an experimental demonstration of the separation of the wave and particle attributes inspired by this scenario remains scarce. In this work

we experimentally separated the wave and particle attributes of a single photon by exploiting the quantum Cheshire cat concept for the first time. By applying a weak disturbance to the evolution of the system

we achieve an effect similar to the quantum Cheshire cat and demonstrated the separation of the wave and particle attributes via the extraction of weak values. Our work provides a new perspective for the in-depth understanding of wave‒particle duality and promotes the application of weak measurements in fundamentals of quantum mechanics.

关键词

Keywords

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