Better Bomb-Detection Through Interaction-Free Measurements

Several years ago a method was proposed (and verified) by which one could optically detect the presence of an object without a photon interacting with it. The method, which relied on the principle of complementarity, worked at best 50% of the time. More recently, we have discovered (and partially demonstrated) a way in which the fraction of interaction-free measurements can be brought arbitrarily close to one, using an application of the quantum Zeno effect. The new method has possible applications in preparing Schroedinger cats, photographing a Bose-Einstein condensate without destroying it, and making Baked Alaska.

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