Abstract: When we conduct scientific experiments and measure the world around us, we are attempting to fill gaps in our missing knowledge. This absence in knowledge is called ignorance and it too, is worthy of scientific investigation. Ignorance inherent in a system can be distributed and located in many of its constituent parts. Naturally one might ask does ignorance of the whole system imply ignorance of its parts? Our classical intuition tells us yes, if youare ignorant of the whole, you must be ignorant of at least one clearly identifiable part However, in the quantum world this reasoning is not correct and you can be ignorant of the whole whilst having some knowledge about each of the parts. Experimental proof of this conjecture requires controlling and measuring quantum systems of high dimension (d≥9). We provide this experimental evidence using spatial modes of light, an extremely resourceful platform for testing high dimensional quantum phenomenon.
Host: M. Aspelmeyer