The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which underlies many quantum key features, is under close scrutiny regarding its applicability to new scenarios. Using both the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem establishing that observables do not have predetermined values before measurements and the measurement postulate of quantum mechanics, we propose that in order to describe the disturbance produced by the measurement process, it is convenient to define disturbance by the changes produced on quantum states. Hence, we propose to quantify disturbance in terms of the square root of the Jensen-Shannon entropy distance between the probability distributions before and after the measurement process. Additionally, disturbance and statistical distinguishability of states are fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics that have thus far been unrelated; however, we show that they are intermingled thereupon we enquire into whether the statistical distinguishability of states, caused by statistical fluctuations in the measurement outcomes, is responsible for the disturbance’s magnitude.

The concept of disturbance is of transcendental importance in Quantum Mechanics (QM). This key concept has been described in two different ways, the first one considering that the disturbance affects observables like x and p, as in the Heisenberg’s analysis of the measurement process and the other one takes into consideration that disturbance affects the state of the system instead. Entropic information measures have provided a path for studying disturbance in these both approaches; in fact, we found that initially it was studied by employing these entropic measures. In addition, in the last decade, there was an extensive amount of analyses and several new definitions of the disturbance concept emerged. Many crucial factors like this have inspired this concise paper which gathers the different concepts and definitions that have emerged through time for the better understanding of this topic.

To the quantum mechanics specialists community it is a well-known fact that the famous original Stern–Gerlach experiment (SGE) produces entanglement between the external degrees of freedom (position) and the internal degree of freedom (spin) of silver atoms. Despite this fact, almost all textbooks on quantum mechanics explain this experiment using a semiclassical approach, where the external degrees of freedom are considered classical variables, the internal degree is treated as a quantum variable, and Newton's second law is used to describe the dynamics. In the literature there are some works that analyze this experiment in its full quantum mechanical form. However, astonishingly, to the best of our knowledge the original experiment, where the initial states of the spin degree of freedom are randomly oriented coming from the oven, has not been analyzed yet in the available textbooks using the Schrödinger equation (to the best of our knowledge there is only one paper that treats this case: Hsu et al (2011 Phys. Rev. A 83 012109 )). Therefore, in this contribution we use the time-evolution operator to give a full quantum mechanics analysis of the SGE when the initial state of the internal degree of freedom is completely random, i.e. when it is a statistical mixture. Additionally, as the SGE and the development of quantum mechanics are heavily intermingled, we analyze some features and drawbacks in the current teaching of quantum mechanics. We focus on textbooks that use the SGE as a starting point, based on the fact that most physicist do not use results from physics education research, and comment on traditional pedagogical attitudes in the physics community.

The Stern–Gerlach experiment (SGE) is one of the foundational experiments in quantum physics. It has been used in both the teaching and the development of quantum mechanics. However, for various reasons, some of its quantum features and implications are not fully addressed or comprehended in the current literature. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the SGE possesses a quantum nonlocal character that has not previously been visualized or presented before. Accordingly, to show the nonlocality into the SGE, we calculate the quantum correlations $\mathcal{C}(z,\theta )$ by redefining the Banaszek–Wódkiewicz correlation in terms of the Wigner operator, that is $\mathcal{C}(z,\theta )=⟨\mathsf{\Psi }|\widehat{W}(z,p_z)\widehat{\sigma }\left(\theta \right)|\mathsf{\Psi }⟩$ , where $\widehat{W}(z,p_z)$ is the Wigner operator, $\widehat{\sigma }\left(\theta \right)$ is the Pauli spin operator in an arbitrary direction $\theta$ and $|\mathsf{\Psi }⟩$ is the quantum state given by an entangled state of the external degree of freedom and the eigenstates of the spin. We show that this correlation function for the SGE violates the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt Bell inequality. Thus, this feature of the SGE might be interesting for both the teaching of quantum mechanics and to investigate the phenomenon of quantum nonlocality.

In this short Corrigendum we correct a little mistake (mainly in the sign) in the derivation of the evolution of the wave function in the Stern–Gerlach experiment that appears in our published paper.