- #1
Ciokko
- 21
- 0
hi all, I'm new here :shy:
i'm italian, so i apologize for my english
i never studied quantum physics (i only read scientific books) but i have a question that concerns the mach-zehnder interferometer experiment
i hope you all know how this interferometer works, otherwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-Zehnder
let's consider the case of a single foton instead of a light beam: if we don't know the photon's path we know which detector will detect the photon, viceversa if we know the photon's path the two detectors have a 50% chance to detect the photon.
a little digression:
correct me if I'm wrong, but, at a quantum level, reflection and refraction are viewed as scattering events, and a scattering event can cause decoherence, right?
well, why doesn't decoherence occurs after the photon passes through the first beam splitter (that of course refracts the photon)?
or, in other words, why is this experiment supposed to work?
i'm italian, so i apologize for my english
i never studied quantum physics (i only read scientific books) but i have a question that concerns the mach-zehnder interferometer experiment
i hope you all know how this interferometer works, otherwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach-Zehnder
let's consider the case of a single foton instead of a light beam: if we don't know the photon's path we know which detector will detect the photon, viceversa if we know the photon's path the two detectors have a 50% chance to detect the photon.
a little digression:
correct me if I'm wrong, but, at a quantum level, reflection and refraction are viewed as scattering events, and a scattering event can cause decoherence, right?
well, why doesn't decoherence occurs after the photon passes through the first beam splitter (that of course refracts the photon)?
or, in other words, why is this experiment supposed to work?