Este trabalho relata a produção, implementação e avaliação de um curso sobre física quântica destinado a alunos do Ensino Médio. A unidade didática foi inspirada nas propostas de Ostermann et al. (2009) e Pessoa Jr. (1997, 2003). Ela introduz a física quântica considerando a óptica ondulatória como um contexto para introduzir algumas analogias conceituais básicas para conceitos fundamentais da física quântica. O conceito central desta abordagem é a dualidade onda-partícula e o Interferômetro Virtual de Mach-Zehnder (IVMZ) é utilizado como sua ferramenta didática principal ou, em termos vygotskyanos, ferramenta de mediação. A proposta foi aplicada no formato de uma oficina extracurricular em uma escola privada de Porto Alegre no Brasil. Um dos professores de Física da escola se engajou e colaborou com este projeto. As aulas ocorreram entre os meses de Outubro e Novembro de 2013, em encontros semanais de uma hora. A perspectiva sociocultural de Vygotsky foi utilizada para embasar as aulas do curso. A translinguística de Bakhtin e os conceitos vygotskyanos foram utilizados para a análise das falas dos estudantes durante as atividades do curso. Nesta perspectiva analítica buscamos compreender como os estudantes elaboram estratégias discursivas para entender o conceito de dualidade onda-partícula, analisando a importância das interações com parceiros mais capazes (como professores), textos, simulações e outras ferramentas didáticas. Os resultados indicam que os estudantes desenvolveram algum domínio das ferramentas mediacionais necessárias para compreender a dualidade onda-partícula em um nível satisfatório. O Interferômetro Virtual de Mach-Zehnder, os roteiros exploratórios e os professores mostraram-se importantes para tornar mais efetivas as experiências de aprendizagem dos estudantes. / This dissertation reports the development, implementation and evaluation of a quantum physics course directed to high school students. The course was conceived inspired in proposals of Ostermann et al. (2009) and Pessoa Jr. (1997, 2003). It introduces quantum physics considering wave optics as a context to introduce some basic conceptual analogies to quantum fundamental concepts. The core concept of this approach is the wave-particle duality and the Virtual Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (VMZI) is used as its main didactical tool or, in vygotskyan terms, a mediational tool. The course was applied as an extracurricular workshop in a private school from Porto Alegre, Brazil. One of the school´s Physics teacher collaborated and engaged in this project. The classes took place between October and November 2013, in a set of one-hour weekly meetings. Vygotsky´s sociocultural perspective is adopted to ground the practices of the course. Both Bakhtin´s translinguistics and Vygotsky’s concepts were used to perform the analysis of students’ utterances along didactical activities at the classes. In this analytical framework, we try to understand how students elaborate discursive strategies to understand the concept of wave-particle duality, analyzing the importance of interaction with more experienced peers (like teachers), texts, simulation and other teaching tools. The results indicate that the students developed some mastery of mediational means needed to understand the wave-particle duality at a satisfactory level. The Virtual Mach-Zehnder Interferometer, the exploratory guides and the teachers were important to enhance the students’ learning experiences.

A new hypothesis of matter formation after the big bang based on either particle-wave duality or electric dipole asymmetry. Both assumptions allow to postulate that the probability of matter formation is slightly higher than that of antimatter formation. As a consequence, this difference of probabilities ∆Pp for protons and ∆Pe with regard to electrons avoided complete annihilation in the beginning.

Nous présentons deux expériences de plasmonique quantique, c’est-à-dire des expériencesd’optique quantique ayant pour support des plasmons de surface. Dans la première expérience, nous montrons la dualité onde-corpuscule d’un plasmon de surface unique (1) en utilisant la démarche de l’article de Philippe Grangier, Gérard Roger et Alain Aspect (2) sur les interférences à un photon unique. Dans la deuxième expérience, nous mettons en évidence les propriétés d’intrication entre un photon et un plasmon de surface. Nous produisons des photons intriqués en polarisation et les séparons spatialement. / We present two quantum plasmonics experiments, namely quantum optics on surface plasmons. In the first experiment, we show the wave-particle duality of a single surface plasmon along the same lines as the single-photon interferences experiment of Philippe Grangier, Gérard Roger and Alain Aspect (2). In the second experiment, we bring out between a photon and a surface plasmon. We generate paires of polarization entangled photons and separate the pair photons spatially. A former photon is send to a semi-plasmonic Mach-Zehnder interferometer whose first beam splitter is a polarization beam splitter whose output are converted to plasmons and on a plasmonic beamsplitter.