If You Remove a Mirror While a Photon Is Reflecting, It Somehow Makes Infinite Photons

Researchers at the University of Oslo found that removing a mirror while a photon is reflecting can create a highly complex quantum state.

In theory, the state can include photon-number components all the way to infinity, but the expected photon number remains finite.

How many photons are effectively produced depends on how quickly the mirror is removed.

Published in Phys. Rev. Lett., the study deepens understanding of photon truncation, vacuum energy, and quantum measurement.