In the 5th century B.C.,the philosopher and logician Zeno of Elea posedseveral paradoxes which remained unresolved for over two thousand five hundredyears. The $20^{th}$ century saw some resolutions to Zeno's mind bogglingproblems. This long journey saw many significant milestones in the form ofdiscoveries like the tools of converging series and theories on infinite setsin mathematics. In recent times, the Zeno effect made an intriguing appearancein a rather unlikely place - a situation involving the time evolution of aquantum system, which is subject to "observations" over a period of time.Leonid Khalfin working in the former USSR in the 1960s and ECG Sudarshan and B.Misra at the University of Texas, Austin, first drew attention to this problem.In 1977, ECG Sudarshan and B. Misra published a paper on the quantum Zenoeffect, called "The Zeno's paradox in quantum theory". Their fascinating resultrevealed the bizarre workings of the quantum world. Misra and Sudarshan's 1977paper activated over two decades of theoretical and experimental explorationsinto the subject and still continues to evoke a lot of interest. In thefollowing, the quantum Zeno effect is described and a brief outline of some ofthe work following Misra and Sudarshan's paper is given. The quantum Zenoeffect is yet another example of the myriad unimaginable possibilities that liewaiting in the magical world of the quantum.
展开▼
