Is spin coherence like Humpty-Dumpty? I. Simplified treatment Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • When Humpty-Dumpty had his great fall nobody could put him together again. A vastly more moderate challenge is to reunite the two partial beams of a Stern-Gerlach apparatus with such precision that the original spin state is recovered. Nevertheless, as we demonstrate, a substantial loss of spin coherence always occurs, unless the experimenter is able to control the magnetic field's inhomogeneity with an accuracy of at least one part in 105. 1988 Plenum Publishing Corporation.

published proceedings

  • Foundations of Physics

altmetric score

  • 1

author list (cited authors)

  • Englert, B., Schwinger, J., & Scully, M. O.

citation count

  • 68

complete list of authors

  • Englert, Berthold-Georg||Schwinger, Julian||Scully, Marlan O

publication date

  • October 1988