When does a particle arrive?

Abstract

We compare the proposals that have appeared in the literature to describe a measurement of the time of arrival of a quantum particle at a detector. We show that there are multiple regimes where different proposals give inequivalent, experimentally discriminable, predictions. This analysis paves the way for future experimental tests.

11 pages, 8 figures; [v2] Minor changes to Fig. 1; [v3] Statistical considerations added in Sec. 3; Minor changes to Fig. 5; Overall improvements; [v4] Minor improvements and corrections

References in corpus (4)

• Hypersonic Bose-Einstein Condensates in Accelerator Rings
• Particle Weights and their Disintegration I
• Questioning the adequacy of certain quantum arrival-time distributions
• The solution to the problem of time in quantum gravity also solves the time of arrival problem in quantum mechanics

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Can the double-slit experiment distinguish between quantum interpretations?
• Quantum delay in the time of arrival of free-falling atoms
• Space-time-symmetric extension of quantum mechanics: Interpretation and arrival-time predictions
• Inequivalence of stochastic and Bohmian arrival times in time-of-flight experiments
• Arrival time from Hamiltonian with non-hermitian boundary term
• Non-Heisenbergian quantum mechanics