Curiouser and curiouser: delving into quantum Cheshire cats
Most of us have heard of Schrödinger’s eponymous cat, but it is not the only feline in the quantum physics bestiary. Quantum Cheshire cats may not be as well known, yet their behaviour is even more insulting to our classical-world common sense.
These quantum felines get their name from the Cheshire cat in Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which disappears leaving its grin behind. As Alice says: “I’ve often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”
Things are curiouser in the quantum world, where the property of a particle seems to be in a different place from the particle itself. A photon’s polarization, for example, may exist in a totally different location from the photon itself: that’s a quantum Cheshire cat.
While the prospect of disembodied properties might seem disturbing, it’s a way of interpreting the elegant predictions of quantum mechanics. That at least was the thinking when quantum Cheshire cats were first put forward by Yakir Aharonov, Sandu Popescu, Daniel Rohrlich and Paul Skrzypczyk in an article published in 2013 (New J. Phys. 15 113015).
Strength of a measurement
To get to grips with the concept, remember that making a measurement on a quantum system will “collapse” it into one of its eigenstates – think of opening the box and finding Schrodinger’s cat either dead or alive. However, by playing on the trade-off between the strength of a measurement and the uncertainty of the result, one can gain a tiny bit of information while disturbing the system as little as possible. If such a measurement is done many times, or on an ensemble of particles, it is possible to average out the results, to obtain a precise value.
First proposed in the 1980s, this method of teasing out information from the quantum system by a series of gentle pokes is known as weak measurement. While the idea of weak measurement in itself does not appear a radical departure from quantum formalism, “an entire new world appeared” as Popescu puts it. Indeed, Aharonov and his collaborators have spent the last four decades investigating all kinds of scenarios in which weak measurement can lead to unexpected consequences, with the quantum Cheshire cat being one they stumbled upon.
In their 2013 paper, Aharonov and colleagues imagined a simple optical interferometer set-up, in which the “cat” is a photon that can be in either the left or the right arm, while the “grin” is the photon’s circular polarization. The cat (the photon) is first prepared in a certain superposition state, known as pre-selection. After it enters the set-up, the cat can leave via several possible exits. The disembodiment between particle and property appears in the cases in which the particle emerges in a particular exit (post-selection).
Certain measurements, analysing the properties of the particle, are performed while the particle is in the interferometer (in between the pre- and post-selection). Being weak measurements, they have to be carried out many times to get the average. For certain pre- and post-selection, one finds the cat will be in the left arm while the grin is in the right. It’s a Cheshire cat disembodied from its grin.
The mathematical description of this curious state of affairs was clear, but the interpretation seemed preposterous and the original article spent over a year in peer review, with its eventual publication still sparking criticism. Soon after, experiments with polarized neutrons (Nature Comms 5 4492) and photons (Phys. Rev. A 94 012102) tested the original team’s set-up. However, these experiments and subsequent tests, despite confirming the theoretical predictions, did not settle the debate – after all, the issue was with the interpretation.
A quantum of probabilities
To come to terms with this perplexing notion, think of the type of pre- and post-selected set-up as a pachinko machine, in which a ball starts at the top in a single pre-selected slot and goes down through various obstacles to end up in a specific point (post-selection): the jackpot hole. If you count how many balls hit the jackpot hole, you can calculate the probability distribution. In the classical world, measuring the position and properties of the ball at different points, say with a camera, is possible.
This observation will not affect the trajectory of the ball, or the probability of the jackpot. In a quantum version of the pachinko machine, the pre- and post-selection will work in a similar way, except you could feed in balls in superposition states. A weak measurement will not disturb the system so multiple measurements can tease out the probability of certain outcomes. The measurement result will not yield an eigenvalue, which corresponds to a physical property of the system, but weak values, and the way one should interpret these is not clear-cut.
1 Split particle property
Quantum Cheshire cats are a curious phenomenon, whereby the property of a quantum particle can be completely separate from the particle itself. A photon’s polarization, for example, may exist at a location where there is no photon at all. In this illustration, the quantum Cheshire cats are photons are at a pachinko parlour. After being prepared in a certain superposition state, known as pre-selection, the cats end up, post-selection in one location (the photons being on one arm of the detector or the other), while their grins end up somewhere else (on the chairs).
To make sense of this in a quantum sense, we need an intuitive mental image, even a limited one. This is why quantum Cheshire cats are a powerful metaphor, but they are also more than that, guiding researchers into new directions. Indeed, since the initial discovery, Aharonov, Popescu and colleagues have stumbled upon more surprises.
In 2021 they generalized the quantum Cheshire cat effect to a dynamical picture in which the “disembodied” property can propagate in space (Nature Comms 12 4770). For example, there could be a flow of angular momentum without anything carrying it (Phys. Rev. A. 110 L030201). In another generalization, Aharonov imagined a massive particle with a mass that could be measured in one place with no momentum, while its momentum could be measured in another place without its mass (Quantum 8 1536). A gedankenexperiment to test this effect would involve a pair of nested Mach–Zehnder interferometers with moving mirrors and beam splitters.
Provocative interpretations
If you find these ideas bewildering, you’re in good company. “They’re brain teasers,” explains Jonte Hance, a researcher in quantum foundations at Newcastle University, UK. In fact, Hance thinks that quantum Cheshire cats are a great way of getting people interested in the foundations of quantum mechanics.
Physicists were too busy applying quantum mechanics to various problems to be bothered with foundational questions
Sure, the early years of quantum physics saw famous debates betweeen Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, culminating in the criticism in the Einstein–Podolski–Rosen (EPR) paradox (Phys. Rev. 47 777) in 1935. But after that, physicists were too busy applying quantum mechanics to various problems to be bothered with foundational questions.
This lack of interest in quantum fundamentals is perfectly illustrated by two anecdotes, the first involving Aharonov himself. When he was studying physics at Technion in Israel in the 1950s, he asked Nathan Rosen (the R of the EPR) about working on the foundations of quantum mechanics. The topic was deemed so unfashionable that Rosen advised him to focus on applications. Luckily, Aharonov ignored the advice and went on to work with American quantum theorist David Bohm.
The other story concersn Alain Aspect, who in 1975 visited CERN physicist John Bell to ask for advice on his plans to do an experimental test of Bell’s inequalities to settle the EPR paradox. Bell’s very first question was not about the details of the experiment – but whether Aspect had a permanent position (Nature Rev. Phys. 3 674). Luckily, Aspect did, so he carried out the test, which went on to earn him a share of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics.
As quantum computing and quantum information began to emerge, there was a brief renaissance in quantum foundations culminating in the early 2010s. But over the past decade, with many of aspects of quantum physics reaching commercial fruition, research interest has shifted firmly once again towards applications.
Despite popular science’s constant reminder of how “weird” quantum mechanics is, physicists often take the pragmatic “shut up and calculate” approach. Hance says that researchers “tend to forget how weird quantum mechanics is, and to me you need that intuition of it being weird”. Indeed, paradoxes like Schrödinger’s cat and EPR have attracted and inspired generations of physicists and have been instrumental in the development of quantum technologies.
The point of the quantum Cheshire cat, and related paradoxes, is to challenge our intuition and provoke us to think outside the box. That’s important even if applications may not be immediately in sight. “Most people agree that although we know the basic laws of quantum mechanics, we don’t really understand what quantum mechanics is all about,” says Popescu.
Aharonov and colleagues’ programme is to develop a correct intuition that can guide us further. “We strongly believe that one can find an intuitive way of thinking about quantum mechanics,” adds Popescu. That may, or may not, involve felines.
This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.
Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.
Find out more on our quantum channel.
The post Curiouser and curiouser: delving into quantum Cheshire cats appeared first on Physics World.