High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The term virtual state is commonly used to refer to two different types of states in physical systems. It may refer to a very short-lived, unobservable quantum state or a real, but unstable, state. Early definitions of the term appear to distinguish the virtual state from the "virtual quantum." In many quantum processes a virtual state is an intermediate state, sometimes described as "imaginary" in a multi-step process that mediates otherwise forbidden transitions. Since virtual states are not eigenfunctions of anything , normal parameters such as occupation, energy and lifetime need to be qualified. No measurement of a system will show one to be occupied, but they still have lifetimes derived from uncertainty relations.