{"id":236274,"date":"2026-04-30T22:28:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T03:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/sudden-quantum-jolts-may-not-break-adiabatic-behavior-after-all"},"modified":"2026-04-30T22:28:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T03:28:31","slug":"sudden-quantum-jolts-may-not-break-adiabatic-behavior-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/sudden-quantum-jolts-may-not-break-adiabatic-behavior-after-all","title":{"rendered":"Sudden quantum jolts may not break adiabatic behavior after all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/sudden-quantum-jolts-may-not-break-adiabatic-behavior-after-all2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In thermodynamics, an \u201cadiabatic process\u201d is a system change that transfers no heat in or out of the system. Any and all energy change in that system are therefore accomplished by doing work on the system, work being action that moves matter over a distance. (An example is a bicycle tire pump or lifting a box from the floor.) <\/p>\n<p>The \u201cadiabatic theorem\u201d says that if you change a system slowly enough, it will remain in the same energy state. For example, if you walk slowly enough holding a full cup of coffee, the coffee will not spill\u2014the coffee system has time to relax back to its steady state\u2014but if you make a quick and sudden change while holding the coffee cup, some coffee will spill over the cup\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n<p>There is a similar theorem in quantum mechanics\u2014a quantum system that is changed (perturbed) slowly enough will remain in its existing quantum state (often its ground state), while a sudden change, such as a photon impinging upon an atom, changes its energy state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In thermodynamics, an \u201cadiabatic process\u201d is a system change that transfers no heat in or out of the system. Any and all energy change in that system are therefore accomplished by doing work on the system, work being action that moves matter over a distance. (An example is a bicycle tire pump or lifting a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}