Many different formalisms exist for computing the phase of a matter-wave interferometer. However, it can be challenging to develop physical intuition about what a particular interferometer is actually measuring or about whether a given classical measurement provides equivalent information. Here, we investigate the physical content of the interferometer phase through a series of thought experiments. In low-order potentials, a matter-wave interferometer with a single internal state provides the same information as a sum of position measurements of a classical test object. In high-order potentials, the interferometer phase becomes decoupled from the motion of the interferometer arms, and the phase contains information that cannot be obtained by any set of position measurements on the interferometer trajectory. This phase shift in a high-order potential fundamentally distinguishes matter-wave interferometers from classical measuring devices.

中文翻译：

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物质波干涉法中物理上明显的相移

存在许多不同的形式主义来计算物质波干涉仪的相位。但是，要发展出关于特定干涉仪实际测量的内容或给定的经典测量是否提供等效信息的物理直觉可能具有挑战性。在这里，我们通过一系列思想实验研究了干涉仪相的物理含量。在低阶电势下，具有单个内部状态的物质波干涉仪可提供与经典测试对象的位置测量值总和相同的信息。在高阶电势下，干涉仪相位与干涉仪臂的运动解耦，并且该相位包含无法通过干涉仪轨迹上的任何位置测量集获得的信息。