page_title: Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester
section_title: How it works
hierarchical_section_title: Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester / How it works
caption_attribution_description: overview of Elitzur Vaidman bomb tester. for proposed rewrite.
context_page_description: The Elitzur–Vaidman bomb-tester is a quantum mechanics thought experiment that uses interaction-free measurements to verify that a bomb is functional without having to detonate it. It was conceived in 1993 by Avshalom Elitzur and Lev Vaidman. Since their publication, real-world experiments have confirmed that their theoretical method works as predicted.
  The bomb tester takes advantage of two characteristics of elementary particles, such as photons or electrons: nonlocality and wave-particle duality. By placing the particle in a quantum superposition, it is possible for the experiment to verify that the bomb works without triggering its detonation, although there is still a 50% chance that the bomb will detonate in the effort.
context_section_description: Consider a collection of light-sensitive bombs, of which some are duds. When their triggers detect any light, even a single photon, the light is absorbed and the bomb explodes. The triggers on the dud bombs have no sensor, so the photon cannot be absorbed. Thus, the dud bomb will not detect the photon and will not detonate. Is it possible to determine which bombs are functional and which are duds without detonating all of the live ones?
caption: Figure 1: An illustration of the experiment using a Mach–Zehnder interferometer
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