Analyzing a Spin-1 Interferometer

Highlights of the activity

1. Students are placed into small groups and must find the final probabilities that result from different beam configurations of a Spin-1 interferometer.
2. The small groups will also practice using projection operators in a spin-1 system to find the states in a spin-1 system resulting from the combination of several Stern-Gerlach output beams.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

Generally, students have already performed the Analysis of a spin-1/2 interferometer and are familiar with using the projection operator to predict the bra-ket representation of states produced by several beams combining in an interferometer. This activity gives students an opportunity to explicitly calculate the projected states in bra-ket notation, find the theoretical probability of a particular result occuring, and compare the theoretical value to the experimentally measured probabilities.

Reflections

• Reflections from the original implementation.

• Reflections from "official" adapters/adopters.

• Reflections from the general public.

Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version

Student Handouts

spanalyzespinoneinthand.doc

spanalyzespinoneinthand.pdf

spanalyzespinoneinthand.tex