Varon said:
According to Richard Feynman, the double-slit experiment contains the only mystery of quantum mechanics. After we have unveiled the mystery, we will be able to understand quantum mechanics.
I want to challenge someone in the Independent Research section and I need to know some facts about the detection events.
It goes like this.
Initially the emitter emits one electron which is really an electron quantum field which we can say is like a wave. When it reaches the slits, the electron quantum field splits in two. But how come the detector only detects one electron. The secret is that the detector contains many electrons as ingredients in the detection. So what happens is the quantum field or wave simultaneously inpinge on all area of the detector at once.. and one electron in the detector is triggered! This made us assume that this one electron triggered is the same one as the initial electron sends off. But it is not! Herein lies the solution to the 80 year old mystery of the double slit experiment! So claimed
Arnold Neumaier. For details. See this thread in Independent Research.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=490492
Now some basic questions.
Is it true that all detectors have electrons as their ingredients in the detection event? We know photosensor has electron and photoelectric effect has to do with the electrons in the detector. So the secret of the double slit is the emitter didn't send a solid particle with a classical trajectory to either slit. But pure quantum wave that splits after reaching the slits and then trigger one of the electrons in the detector. But why only one detector is triggered.
Neumaier explained:
I asked: "After it pass thru the slits, it became smeared. Now how does the smeared field converge back into a single electron detected at the screen?"
Neumaier answered:
Questions:
Can anyone think of detectors that don't use electrons? Or think of a unique setup that can refute the above theory? Double slit experiment is very basic and this is why I post it here.
This message is to increase my knowledge about details of detection events in the double slit experiments.
The below paragraph (from the link that Dr Chinese posted) tends to support that idea that "bucky balls" actually went (say one-by-one) through the slits, and not just waves. The paragraph discusses reduction in width (calling it effective width) due to interaction between the molecule and the slits...known as the van der Waal's interaction.
In principle, the diffraction patterns can be understood
quantitatively within the Fraunhofer approximation of Kirchhoff’s
diffraction theory as it can be found in any optics
textbook.38 However, Fraunhofer’s diffraction theory in the
context of optics misses an important point that becomes
evident in our experiments with matter waves and material
gratings: the attractive interaction between molecule and
wall results in an additional phase of the molecular wave
function after the passage of the molecule through the slits.39
Although the details of the calculations are somewhat
involved,40 it suffices here to say that the qualitative effect of
this attractive force can be understood as a narrowing of the
real slit width toward an effective slit width. For our fullerene
molecules the reduction can be as big as 20 nm for the unselected
molecular beam and almost 30 nm for the velocity
selected beam. The stronger effect on slower molecules can
be understood by the longer and therefore more influential
interaction between the molecules and the wall. However, a
complete description would need to take into account the
correct shape of the complex ~imaginary and real! transmission
function, which implies the position-dependent modulation
of both the molecular amplitude and phase.
