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Science 11 February 2005:
Vol. 307. no. 5711, pp. 875 - 879
DOI: 10.1126/science.1107787
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Review

Time and the Quantum: Erasing the Past and Impacting the Future

Yakir Aharonov1,2 and M. Suhail Zubairy 3*

The quantum eraser effect of Scully and Drühl dramatically underscores the difference between our classical conceptions of time and how quantum processes can unfold in time. Such eyebrow-raising features of time in quantum mechanics have been labeled "the fallacy of delayed choice and quantum eraser" on the one hand and described "as one of the most intriguing effects in quantum mechanics" on the other. In the present paper, we discuss how the availability or erasure of information generated in the past can affect how we interpret data in the present. The quantum eraser concept has been studied and extended in many different experiments and scenarios, for example, the entanglement quantum eraser, the kaon quantum eraser, and the use of quantum eraser entanglement to improve microscopic resolution.

1 School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
2 Department of Physics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA.
3 Institute for Quantum Studies and Department of Physics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: zubairy{at}physics.tamu.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)