After reading the article at
http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.2068, I came to certain ideas about the physics of probability waves.
The holes behave as three point-like light sources. The three-wave interferential pattern must exist on large scales in the universal case, but it does not in this experiment on micron scales and with the coherent light.
Note: Some portion of space is covered with shadows made by the walls between the holes, given a single underlying source behind the holes. The shadows are rarely mentioned or non-existent in similar experiments.
Maybe its not the scale that matters the most. The interference depends from the quantum coherence: after a single interaction, the photons decohere.
While the light from the laser remains coherent after the diffraction and interference, after the first interaction, such as the one that would determine which hole the photon went through, it would lose its magic that allows it to go through both holes statistically speaking.
www.answers.com…quantum-decoherence[/URL]
One particle is a statistical (quantum) ensemble. It can go through either of the two holes with the probabilities p1, p2, until we actually determine the hole through which it went by interacting with the particle at that hole. The probabilities are a wave-like physical property.
All particles are not waves, and waves are not waves because as they are quantized, they hit the film one by one and imprint dots. If they were just waves, any single wave would produce the entire interferential pattern at once each time it went through a large number of holes (the size of which is comparable to its wavelength).
This points out that the light is sometimes more or less suitable for interference. The question is whether the rules that determine the possibility of interference are more complex than my explanation based on decohering (in a single sentence). That is where the Born's rule comes in.
[url]http://www.answers.com/topic/double-slit-experiment[/url]
We are sending single, sparse photons and the expectation is that there is a single interaction between the coherent wavepackets. The two wavepackets are two photons, or perhaps a single photon interacting with itself, as suggested in numerous previous works interpreting the double-slit experiment. The sparse, single photons appear to fly at random times in slightly different, random directions from the source. Presumably, they are still adequately coherent on average for the interference.
On the borderline with madness, a single source photon interacting with itself could represent a perfect, singular source of the coherent beam. This case creates a self-amplifying photon in some portions of the space, unless its energy is kept constant by setting the result of the constructive self-interference to its existing amplitude.
The photons or other particles enter a grid of any kind of holes from where they emerge as interacting "beams". The beams are narrow because they possesses the particle-like properties. The interferential pattern appears cumulatively, solely by particle number count per unit area per unit of time.
There is not any interaction of light with the holes or at least it is not spoiling the result, the virginity of the statistical ensemble before the first interaction. That is an odd conclusion given that the ordinary waves passing through ordinary holes bend at (after) the holes, approximately speaking; later, they interfere. The explanation for the fringe development is in any case the extinction by interference of particles at certain pathways taken out of the statistical set of all the initial directions. If holes change the direction of wavepackets, then they do so by respecting their particle nature.
A material such as the diffraction grating is likely absorbing the extra light and converting it into heat.
The interesting moments for further discussion are the shape of a wavepacket, the interaction of wavepackets with matter and the mutual interactions of wavepackets.
For example, when an electron beam interacts with the diffraction grating, we expect many electrons to pass at once through the holes to mutually interact. However, single, sparse electrons do not seem to have any companions during the flight to drive them in the direction (and speed) at which they will hit the film.
One could propose that the electrons (or photons) have invisible companions that appear after the diffraction grating. Some propose that the electron wavepacket cannot break apart at the entrance to a hole, but that its wavefunction consisting of the probabilities p1, p2… can. Other suggestions include the interaction with the matter. As the particle is passing through the grid of holes, it only needs to interact with a long-gone particle that passed the similar journey. How? I would say by interacting with the trace memory contained in the diffraction grating.
Another possibility is to revise the idea of the field as the space that contains the beam of light or electrons. Even though the photon’s energy is concentrated in the photon loosely speaking, the neighborhood of its path contains the physical probability wave as a non-energetic component that does contain information sufficient to define the interference of a single photon after diffracting through two holes.
I wonder if the Born’s rule actually talks about the magic of the statistical ensemble and when it is lost. If that happens after the first interference (as the magic is lost at the first interaction in other experiments), then the triple-slit experiment truly walks along the crucial edges of the quantum phenomena. This is why we should give into learning more about these details of the quantum mechanics.
