quantum pigeonhole principle

A 2016 result (Aharonov, Colombo, Popescu, Sabadini, Struppa & Tollaksen, PNAS 113:532) showing that three or more non-entangled, identically pre- and post-selected particles can — via weak-value reasoning — occupy fewer "boxes" than particles, with no two ever found together, violating the classical pigeonhole principle without relying on entanglement. In the vault it is Yakir Aharonov's and Sandu Popescu's joint demonstration that pre/post-selection alone, not correlation between particles, can produce counting-defying results.

References

• claim-aharonov-2016-quantum-pigeonhole-three-particles-two-boxes-weak-value
• claim-quantum-pigeonhole-paper-won-2016-cozzarelli-prize