14–18 Jun 2021
America/Toronto timezone

Times of arrival and gauge invariance

18 Jun 2021, 10:00
20m

Speaker

Siddhant Das (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)

Description

"We revisit the arguments underlying two well-known arrival-time distributions in quantum mechanics, viz.,
the Aharonov-Bohm and Kijowski (ABK) distribution, applicable for freely moving particles, and the quantum
flux (QF) distribution. An inconsistency in the original axiomatic derivation of Kijowski’s result is pointed out,
along with an inescapable consequence of the “negative arrival times” inherent to this proposal (and generalizations thereof). The ABK free-particle restriction is lifted in a discussion of an explicit arrival-time setup
featuring a charged particle moving in a constant magnetic field. A natural generalization of the ABK distribution is in this case shown to be critically gauge-dependent. A direct comparison to the QF distribution,
which does not exhibit this flaw, is drawn (its acknowledged drawback concerning the quantum backflow effect
notwithstanding).

Based on a recent paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.02661), to be published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A."

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