Lawrence Frolov – Rutgers
Date/Time/Location
Thursday, April 16, 2026, 12:10 pm; Hill Center 705
Overcoming the arrival time quantum Zeno effect
In classical mechanics, there is a conceptually clear method for computing the time at which a particle will arrive at the boundary of some region in physical space. This is famously not true in the quantum mechanical setting, where a derivation of the probability distribution for a particle's time of arrival has remained an open problem for several decades. In fact, several theoretical treatments of the arrival time measurement procedure have led some prominent physicists to conclude that arrival times cannot be precisely measured in quantum mechanics. In this talk, we will review multiple arguments that quantum mechanics cannot accommodate an arbitrarily precise arrival time measurement procedure, and then we will provide one anyways.