Thirty years ago, in a seminal article on the operational approach towards quantum mechanics, Willis E. Lamb described the situation in quantum theory and measurement by quoting Mark Twain: "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it". In the past few years, this situation has changed drastically—we now have precise instructions for two of the main stages of the measurement process in quantum mechanics, preparation and measurement of the quantum state (for an overview, see ref. 3). Another breakthrough is reported on page 233 of this issue by Weinacht et al., who describe an experiment in which they shape an atomic electron's wavefunction and drive it into a chosen state using tailored laser pulses (Fig. 1, overleaf). This work opens a new avenue in the field of coherent control and will have important applications in quantum computing and bond-selective chemistry.
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机译：30年前，威利斯·兰姆（Willis E. Lamb）在一篇有关量子力学的操作方法的开创性文章中，通过引用马克·吐温（Mark Twain）来描述了量子理论和测量的情况：“每个人都在谈论天气，但没人对此做任何事情”。在过去的几年中，这种情况已经发生了巨大变化-我们现在对量子力学测量过程的两个主要阶段，量子态的准备和测量有精确的说明（有关概述，请参见参考文献3）。 Weinacht等人在本期杂志的第233页报道了另一项突破，他们描述了一个实验，其中他们利用定制的激光脉冲对原子电子的波函数进行整形并将其驱动到选定的状态（下页图1）。这项工作为相干控制领域开辟了一条新途径，并将在量子计算和键选择化学中具有重要的应用。
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