Quantum mechanics in a quicker, more intuitive, and accessible way

Edward Deveney; Elif Demirbas; Samuel Serna

doi:10.1117/12.2670760

28 June 2023 Quantum mechanics in a quicker, more intuitive, and accessible way

Edward Deveney, Elif Demirbas, Samuel Serna

Proceedings Volume 12723, Seventeenth Conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics: ETOP 2023; 1272334 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2670760
Event: Seventeenth Conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics: ETOP 2023, 2023, Cocoa Beach, Florida, United States

Abstract

Quantum Mechanics in the headlines today captures the imagination of the public, deep wallets of investors and industries, and prioritizes academic and national research programs throughout the world. It all begins with superposition and entanglement. Canonical educational approaches, however, may not build the intuitive or the computational ability required of practitioners where quantum is center-stage. An APS News front-page article by Meredith Fore details and explores the current situation: ”The Newest Frontier: Building a Skilled workforce. Education in Quantum Mechanics has lagged for years. Experts are trying to change this.” Here we highlight innovations and experiences coupling our curriculum, advanced labs, and undergraduate research to best address these educational questions and skills-based needs. Our approaches are based on ready-available two-state, two-particle entangled light source table-top experiments and finite-dimensioned (familiar) vector spaces as opposed to infinitely dimensioned function-space solutions to differential equations with little intuitive connection and/or easy access to experimental experience. Our Physics and Photonics and Optical Engineering Quantum I course has migrated from a traditional text to one espousing these new directions (M. Beck. Quantum Mechanics, Theory and Experiment) and our experiments are centered around a commercially available educational entanglement source (Quantum Design, quTool’s quED) with avalanche single-photon detectors, coincidence electronics, with standard and add-on experiments that are in step with the text but, as a kit, come more student-ready. This approach may better promote quantum technologies, prepare scientists, technicians, and engineers, and offer deeper insight to what quantum is really telling us.

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Edward Deveney, Elif Demirbas, and Samuel Serna "Quantum mechanics in a quicker, more intuitive, and accessible way", Proc. SPIE 12723, Seventeenth Conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics: ETOP 2023, 1272334 (28 June 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2670760

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KEYWORDS

Quantum mechanics

Quantum physics

Quantum entanglement

Photons

Quantum optics experiments

Quantum systems

Physics

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