numerical simulations tagged posts

Students learning quantum mechanics are taught the Schrodinger equation and how to solve it to obtain a wave function. But a crucial step is skipped because it has puzzled scientists since the earliest days—how does the real, classical world emerge from, often, a large number of solutions for the wave functions?

Each of these wave functions has its individual shape and associated energy level, but how does the wave function “collapse” into what we see as the classical world—atoms, cats and the pool noodles floating in the tepid swimming pool of a seedy hotel in Las Vegas hosting a convention of hungover businessmen trying to sell the world a better mousetrap?

At a high level, this is handled by the “Born rule”—the postulate that the probability density for finding an object ...

Location of a possible ninth planet. Analysis of radio data from the Cassini spacecraft defines forbidden areas (in red) where the perturbations created by the planet are inconsistent with observations, and a likely area (green) where the addition of the planet improves the model prediction, reducing the differences between the calculations and Cassini data. The position of minimum residues is the most likely location for a planet at P9. Scales are in astronomical units (AU). Credit: Image courtesy of CNRS

The Kuiper Belt Objects, small bodies similar to Pluto beyond Neptune, have a particular distribution that is difficult to explain by pure chance...