[Zurück]

H. Rauch:
"Non-classical neutron beams for fundamental and solid state research";
Pramana - Journal of Physics, 71 (2008), 4; S. 785 - 796.

The vurious dual nature of the neutron, sometimes a particle, sometimes a wave, is wonderfully manifested in the various non-local interference and quantum contextuality effects observed in neutron interferometry. Non-classical states may bevome useful for novel fundamental and solid state research. Here we discuss unavoidable quantum losses as they appear in neutron phase-echo and spin rotation experiments and we show how entanglement effects in a single particle system demonstrate quantum contextuality. In all cases of interactions, parasitic beams are produced wich cannot be recombined completely with the original beam. This means that a complete reconstruction of the original state would in principle, be impossible wich causes a kind of intrinsic irreversibility. Even small interaction potentials can have huge effects when they are applied in quantum Zeno-like experiments. Recently, it has been shown that an entanglement between external and internal degrees of freedom exists even in single particle systems. This contextuality phenomenon also shows that a quantum system carries much more information than usually extracted. The path towards advanced neutron quantum optics will be discussed.

Neutron interferometer; neutron optics; quantum optics; matter waves

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/PubDat_167409.pdf