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Measurement Problem Solved!


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One of the main problems with solving the measurement problem, is the problem of quantum decoherence. This is a problem because it makes it difficult to distinguish between whether it was the decoherence effect or the act of measurement which caused the wave nature of particles to disapear, in experiments such as the quantum eraser experiment. However an experiment has been concieved which distinguishes between the two, in order to determine the cause of wave function collapse. It does so by controlling the process of decoherence(as best as possible), and then observing the wave nature of the decohered system, by virtue of diffraction, and then carrying out a measurement to see whether the wave nature disapears or not. The exact experiment is a modification of the davisson germer experiment. At the start of the experiment, there will be a vaccum chamber containing a single proton, and an electron gun which will fire electrons slowly into the system in order to decohere the proton. It will be bombarded with about 5 electrons in order to decohere it, and once it has decohered, an anode shall be switched on with a hole in the middle of it and the whole object shall be fired towards a nickel plate, which leads to scattering in various directions. The nickel target can also be rotated, in which electrons can be deflected towards a detector on a mounted arc which could be rotated in a circular motion. The detector, which would be used during the experiment is a faraday cup. When the particle touches the nickle plate in order to test whether measurement causes collapse, the location of the proton shall be measured. There will be two groups. The first group will not have the location of the proton measured on contact of the nickle plate, whereas the second group will have it's location measured on contact with the nickle plate, by virtue of a detector. Because the location of the proton has been measured in group 2, it could affect the scattering of the decohered particles, because the wave function has collapsed for that individual particle(it would be different to those not measured), and so the measurement problem could be solved by being able to see whether the act of measurement has any affect on the scattering of the decohered particles, and distinguish between whether it was decoherence which caused it to behave classically because it has already decohered and therefore the experiment would be testing the causality of measurement on wave function collapse because we are able to measure the wave nature of the decohered system and so any change upon measurement would be down to the act of measurement not decoherence because it is being measured via the diffraction of the particles. 

Please tell me what you think of this experiment conceptually rather than from an engineering/design perspective.

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