Double slit experiment with magnetic field near the slits

[Anama Skout]

I just thought about this one, suppose we have the classic double slit experiment setting, and we add near the holes in the slits a strong magnetic field, what will happen? what if the magnetic field was only on one slit? What if we put that magnetic field in place (2) instead of (1), would that yield different results? Has this experiment ever done?

 

[Vanadium 50]

I don't know of any such experiment, but why do you think it would be any more interesting that the million of other such experiments one could run. Why is it more interesting than, say, to squirt some ketchup near the slit? What would you expect to see?

 

[Anama Skout]

I don't know of any such experiment, but why do you think it would be any more interesting that the million of other such experiments one could run. Why is it more interesting than, say, to squirt some ketchup near the slit? What would you expect to see?

I don't know, the magnetic field could affect the electrons and the results of the experiment, some ketchup wouldn't for sure

 

[Nugatory]

some ketchup wouldn't for sure

You're sure? I'd expect ketchup would do a fair job of absorbing some of the incident electrons, so would detectably attenuate the interference pattern. That's a prediction. Is it worth performing an experiment to verify that prediction? Probably not, unless and until someone comes up with a hypothesis that ketchup has some special property that makes it different than any other electron absorber in this setup.

Of course you aren't asking about ketchup and electrons, you're asking about a magnetic field and electrons. However, the point that Vanadium50 is making with his rhetorical question still applies. We can predict the effects of the magnetic field in this setup (of course we'll make very different predictions depending on things such as the strength and orientation of the field and the energy of the incident electrons). Do you have a hypothesis that one or more of these predictions is incorrect, and if so, in what way?

 

[Vanadium 50]

What is a magnetic field going to do? It's going to change the electron path. You can do the same thing by moving the source, and/or the other elements of the setup (after all, only relative orientation matters).So, as Nugatory says, you need to explain why and how you think things will be different. If the answer is ":you should look just in case", that exact same argument could be applied to ketchup. If you want to argue magnetic fields are sane and ketchup is crazy, you need to come up with a reason why.