Imaging Entanglement

The Internet is an amalgam of forms blurred under epistemological pressures. In Søren Kierkegaard’s words, under this flat shower of leveled information, where everybody is interested in everything and nothing is too trivial or too important, people just accumulate information and postpone decisions indefinitely, i.e., nobody takes action and nobody is responsible for truth — there is no mastery, just gossip. He called this the æsthetic sphere of existence, exhorting us to evolve to the ethical sphere, where we do not just accumulate information but take action and make commitments. Blogs are instruments to overcome flatness by creating opportunities for vertical activities. In this sense this blog is a view from my window — a collection of tidbits I judged relevant to computational color science and in general to the promotion of scientific excellence in areas of strategic importance for the future of research, economy and society.

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» Imaging Entanglement

Thank you to RocketRoo for this post:

This press release http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=2664.php from University College London, shows a computer-generated image based on neutron-beam scattering of (anti-ferro)magnetically aligned electron spins which are entangled. So, now we have the complementary set as far is this blog is concerned: imaging with entanglement (e.g., quantum ghost imaging with photons), and imaging of entanglement (with neutrons).

Aside: The astute reader may be wondering how neutrons (which are electrically neutral by definition) can be used to image entangled electrons that are negatively charged. How can there be any interaction between these particles; a necessary condition for imaging anything?

Although electrically neutral (as is an atom that is not ionized), the neutron is a baryon and therefore composed of 3 quarks (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron), 1 of which (the 'up' quark) has +2/3 the magnitude of the electron charge and the other 2 quarks ('down' quarks) have 1/3 the electron charge. If the neutron comes close enough to an electron the individual charges will begin to influence each other and cause scattering.

It's also blog-worthy that just last week it was reported that the neutron has a negative charge both in its inner core and its outer region with a positive charge sandwiched in between to make the particle electrically neutral. Previously, Fermi had proposed in 1947 (pre-quark model) that the neutron core was postitive with the outer region negative.

Credits: RocketRoo

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