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7.12 Comm Mx commentary The quantum centennial One hundred years ago, a simple concept changed our world view forever. spectrum, but did not agree with experi- tion of this experimentally successful radia- Anton Zeilinger ments for all wavelengths. Planck had the tion law from other known laws of physics, When Max Planck announced his quantum advantage of close access to the most recent but he slowly had to accept that he had found assumption in his talk at the German Physical experimental results obtained by Otto Lum- something fundamentally new. Society in Berlin on 14 December 1900, mer and Ernst Pringsheim and by Ferdinand The next important step in the early days nobody, including himself, realized that he Kurlbaum and Heinrich Rubens, also work- of quantum mechanics came in 1905, when was opening the door to a completely new ing in Berlin, on the spectral distribution of Albert Einstein introduced his radical theoretical description of nature. Quantum black-body heat radiation emerging from a hypothesis of quanta of light to explain the physics has had unsurpassed success in hole in a box kept at a certain temperature. photoelectric effect. For a while, this explaining many phenomena — from the Planck eventually found a full explana- remained the only significant instance of the structure of elementary particles, through tion, but only after forcing himself “to an act quantum being taken seriously. Einstein’s the essence of chemical bonds or the nature of of despair” by assuming that energy can only hypothesis met with strong objections from many solid-state phenomena, all the way to be exchanged between the light field inside the his contemporaries, including Planck him- the physics of the early Universe. To date, all box and the walls of the container in discrete self. As late as 1913, Planck, together with his experiments magnificently confirm all quan- quanta, multiples of the energy E4hn, where fellow physicists Heinrich Rubens, Walther tum predictions with impressive precision. n is the light’s frequency and h is now called Nernst and Emil Warburg, wrote in a recom- Quantum mechanics also led to an Planck’s constant. Planck tried unsuccessfully mendation letter for Einstein’s election to the immense number of technological applica- for many years to find an alternative deriva- Prussian Academy of Sciences: “One should tions. Modern high-tech developments not hold against him too much that in his would have been inconceivable without it — speculations he might have occasionally lasers and semiconductors are just two such overshot the goal, as for example in his examples. But most significantly, quantum hypothesis of the quanta of light.” Ironically, mechanics changed our view of the world in it was this hypothesis that gained Einstein the a way that was completely surprising and had physics Nobel prize in 1921, three years after unprecedented depth. Planck had received it. Born in 1858 and educated in Munich and Berlin, Planck became interested in thermo- A change of perspective dynamics early in his career. In 1894, a very It was also Einstein who first realized that the basic problem captured his attention: how to quantum hypothesis would lead to a major explain the colours emitted by glowing bod- change in our view of the world, particularly ies. The classical explanation of the period by giving randomness a new and much more worked well for the short parts of the light fundamental role than before. This discus- sion about interpreting quantum mechanics A new beginning: in 1900 Max Planck (right) — which occupied the minds of many lead- articulated the concept that underpins quantum ers in the field, especially after the formula- theory and that sparked debate between Einstein tion of modern quantum mechanics by and Bohr at the 1927 Solvay congress (below). Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger in 1925–1926 — is still going to this day. Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics of 1925 BERLIN-DAHLEM ZUR GESCHICHTE DER MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT, ARCHIV and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics of 1926, soon found to be equivalent theoretical descriptions of quantum phenomena, launched probably the most successful peri- od of theoretical science in human history. In atomic physics, energy levels in atoms could at last be explained. And later, with the introduction of group theory into quantum mechanics, this explanation was extended even to complicated molecules. At the same time, simple molecules could be described quantitatively, and there were enormous successes in applying quantum mechanics to the solid state. INSTITUT INTERNATIONAL DE PHYSIQUE SOLVAY/VISUAL ARCHIVES SOLVAY/VISUAL DE PHYSIQUE INSTITUT INTERNATIONAL Hans Bethe, in his article “Quantum the- ory” in More Things in Heaven and Earth, celebrating the centennial of the American Physical Society in 1999, wrote: “1926, the year when I started graduate work, was a wonderful year for theoretical physicists. Whatever problem you tackled with the new © 2000 Macmillan Magazines Ltd NATURE | VOL 408 | 7 DECEMBER 2000 | www.nature.com 639 commentary tools of quantum mechanics could be suc- cessfully solved, and hundreds of problems, from the experimental work of many decades, were around, asking to be tackled.” Another important discovery in 1925 was Pauli’s exclusion principle, which says that no two electrons can occupy the same quan- tum state. This principle plays a central role in many fields — for example in solid-state physics it helps explain the electrical conduc- IN WONDERLAND ADVENTURES ALICE’S tivity of metals. It also tells us why chemical elements are so different. Modern quantum theory then entered a stage of maturity over the next two years, during which Paul Dirac developed the quantum theory of the electromagnetic field, the mother of all mod- Here and not here: the Cheshire cat may have been the first observation of macroscopic superposition. CARROLL’S LEWIS FROM ern field theories, which are so important in the physics of elementary particles, and the Technological progress since then has led transistors on a chip doubles every 18 relativistic quantum theory of the electron, to the possibility of performing not only months. If this law continues to hold which predicts the existence of antimatter. many of the early Gedanken experiments but unabated, we will reach the quantum realm The discussion of the philosophical inter- also a plethora of new ones. Most significant- in about 20 years, when an individual bit is pretation of quantum mechanics continued ly, it is now possible to do real, detailed exper- carried by just one electron. in parallel with the enormous successes of iments with individual quantum systems The big increase in activity in fundamen- the new theory. It culminated in the famous such as individual photons, electrons, tal experiments over the past two decades debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr, positrons, neutrons and atoms (even some has also renewed the debate about the inter- which began at the Solvay congresses of 1927 made of antimatter) and molecules as large as pretation of the theory. Richard Feynman and 1930 and continued later in writing fullerenes. Quantum experiments with more once commented, “I think I can safely say because of Einstein’s emigration from Nazi complicated systems have also become rou- that nobody today understands quantum Germany. Using a series of elegant Gedanken tine, where particles are entangled with each mechanics”, and Sir Roger Penrose remarked experiments — thought experiments — other just as originally postulated by Einstein, that, although the theory agrees very well Einstein initially tried to show that quantum Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. All mod- with all experiments and it is of profound mechanics is inconsistent, in that it is possi- ern experiments confirm the quantum pre- mathematical beauty, it “makes absolutely ble to extract from an individual quantum dictions with unprecedented precision. And no sense”. So, where is the problem, if the phenomenon more information than is so, although one tiny loophole still remains theory fits all experimental results so nicely? described by the limit represented by the for advocates of a classical world view, the evi- The problem arises when we dare to ask what Heisenberg uncertainty relation. Yet, in all dence overwhelmingly suggests that a local quantum mechanics might mean for our instances, Bohr showed that consequent realistic explanation of nature is not possible. view of the world (Weltanschauung) in a application of the new quantum laws avoid- But the story does not stop here. As often broad sense. Can we safely, as many do, ed any contradictions. in the history of physics, investigation of fun- restrict the counterintuitive notions of damentals has given rise to a new field. This quantum mechanics such as quantum Intellectual tug-of-war fledgling field, which can be called the superposition and entanglement to the Although Einstein clearly did not have the physics of quantum information, deals with microscopic world? upper hand in his debate with Bohr, it is very the novel possibilities of encoding, transmit- much to his credit that he was one of the few ting and processing information through An absurd idea? who saw that quantum physics fundamen- individual and entangled quantum systems. Schrödinger formulated his famous cat tally challenges our view of the world. This is Quantum cryptography promises to provide paradox in 1935, just to show how absurd the because it forces us to give up what can be us with a communication technology guar- consequences of quantum mechanics are if called the naive classical realism so central anteed to be secure against eavesdropping. applied to macroscopic or even living not only to the views of physicists but also Quantum teleportation can be seen as the objects. We all know that a cat cannot be alive part of our approach to, and interpretation possibility of directly transferring informa- and dead at the same time as we never expe- of, everyday life.
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