Gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment

In summary, the double slit experiment can detect a photon without interacting with it in theory through the use of gravitational interaction. However, this is not possible in reality due to the extremely small size of the gravitational effects compared to the electromagnetic interactions. By placing a detector particle between the two slits and ensuring it has a small enough position and momentum uncertainty, it may be possible to measure the gravitational momentum kick from the interaction with the photon. However, this would collapse the wavefunction and result in diffraction patterns rather than an interference pattern. The experiment in the paper mentioned is only testing the Newtonian gravitational potential's effect on the Schrodinger equation and is not attempting to detect gravitational which-way information. Turning off the detector or removing the gravitational detector would
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Herbascious J
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In principal, can the gravitational signature of a photon be used to detect which slit it travels through in a double slit experiment?
I'm trying to think of a how the double slit experiment can detect a photon without interacting with it in theory. In principal (not reality of course) does a photon have a gravitational signature which could be used to detect which slit it traveled through during the double slit experiment? It seems there should always be some kind of gravitational signature, no matter how faint, when energy passes by an observer. Would the detection of this signature 'collapse the waverform'? I apologize for my terminology if it is incorrect.
 
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  • #2
There is of course also a tiny gravitational interaction of the photon with the material building the slits, but it's so tiny that you can forget about it completely. The main interaction is electromagnetic and this makes all the phenomena concerning diffraction and corresponding interference effects.
 
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  • #3
You can make a simple estimate to see that gravitational effects will be far (many orders of magnitude) too small to give a relevant effect.

How could you find out using gravitational interaction which slit the particle was passing through? Well, you could for example place another particle right between the slits, at rest. Then you could argue that if the first particle goes through the upper slit, then our "detector particle" gets a upward momentum kick. If the first particle goes through the lower slit then the detector particle gets a downward momentum kick. So you just look at your detector particle after the interaction and depending on whether it has upwards or downwards momentum you know which slit the other particle went through.

Simple, right?

Well, no. It's not that simple. The devil is in the detail. Especially in the two claims I made about the state of the detector particle before the interaction: "placed between the two slits" and "at rest". Both are important, because if your detector particle was for example placed above both slits, then it would always be pulled down, regardless of which slit the other one passes through. And if it already had upward or downward momentum before the interaction, this could cancel (or even turn around) the momentum kick you actually want to measure. In both cases, your detector would not work

"Placed between the two slits" implies that its position uncertainty ##\sigma_x## in that dimension should be smaller than the distance of the slits ##d##.

[tex]\sigma_x\lesssim d\;.[/tex]

"At rest" should be replaced with "small enough momentum uncertainty in that direction", where "small enough" means that the moment uncertainty ##\sigma_p## should be smaller than the expected momentum transfer ##\delta p## from the interaction of the two particles.

[tex]\sigma_p \lesssim \delta p\;.[/tex]

Of course the state of the detector particle has to obey the momentum-position uncertainty relation
[tex]\sigma_x\sigma_p\geq\frac{\hbar}{2}\,.[/tex].

Putting everything together you find
[tex]\delta p \gtrsim \frac{\hbar}{2d}\;.[/tex]

This is an estimate of the minimum strength of the interaction (given in terms of the typical momentum kick ##\delta p## that your detector particle gets) in order to get a meaningful which-way measurement.

Plug in some reasonable numbers for the distance of the slits and the strength of gravitational interaction, and you'll see: no chance!
 
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  • #4
Wouldn't that simply lead to a change of the phase of the interference pattern? I don't think it would give which-way information.

Observation of Gravitationally Induced Quantum Interference
R. Colella, A. W. Overhauser, and S. A. Werner
Phys. Rev. Lett. 34, 1472 (1975)
Abstract said:
We have used a neutron interferometer to observe the quantum-mechanical phase shift of neutrons caused by their interaction with Earth's gravitational field.
 
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  • #5
DrClaude said:
Wouldn't that simply lead to a change of the phase of the interference pattern? I don't think it would give which-way information.

Indeed, gravity does not destroy interference in cold-atom interferometers, but it does affect them. Atoms are obviously much more sensitive to gravity than photons.
You can even build extremely sensitive gravimeters this way.
 
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  • #6
Indeed, they brought a BEC to the ISS recently in order to avoid disturbance by gravity.
 
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  • #7
DrClaude said:
Wouldn't that simply lead to a change of the phase of the interference pattern?

The experiment in the paper you linked to is not attempting to detect gravitational which-way information. It is only attempting to test whether the Newtonian gravitational potential can be treated like any other potential in the Schrodinger Equation (and it turns out it can). That is a much, much coarser test than what the OP is asking about.
 
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  • #8
Herbascious J said:
It seems there should always be some kind of gravitational signature, no matter how faint, when energy passes by an observer. Would the detection of this signature 'collapse the waverform'?

If you could detect it, then yes, it would. But, as you can see from the numbers others have posted showing how tiny the effect is, that's a very, very big "if".
 
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  • #9
Let's take a step back. Can we tell which slit a photon went through without gravity? Yes. No problem. We don't get an interference pattern when we do this, though. So if it were possible to determine which slit gravitationally, what would happen? Nothing that doesn't already happen: the interference pattern would be replaced by two diffraction patterns.
 
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  • #10
Vanadium 50 said:
...the interference pattern would be replaced by two diffraction patterns.
Ok, this is where I was hung up. Admittedly, this is all theoretical, but something about it seems peculiar to me only because when I imagine the photon passing the slit, i know there is a faint signature from it's gravity albeit undetectable. If the detector (in principle) were to effect the photon, wouldn't also the gravitational fields of just the slits alone also effect the photon and what if we just didn't look at the results or turned off the detector all together? I guess I'm not sure where the breakdown of the wave happens. Is it me looking at the screen of the data results? Is it me turning off the detector? Is it me removing the gravity detector, which has gravity just like the slits do? How far can you push this mind experiment before the wave collapses? Thanks everyone for the input, much appreciated.
 
  • #11
Herbascious J said:
I guess I'm not sure where the breakdown of the wave happens.

It happens when an irreversible result is recorded. Just the tiny gravitational effect of a photon going through one slit or the other does not do that. Only setting up some kind of measuring apparatus that magnifies that effect into an irreversible result (like a light either lighting up or not lighting up, or a pointer swinging one way or the other) will do it.
 
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  • #12
Herbascious J said:
Ok, this is where I was hung up. Admittedly, this is all theoretical, but something about it seems peculiar to me only because when I imagine the photon passing the slit, i know there is a faint signature from it's gravity albeit undetectable...

Why do you expect know that the photon passes through one slit?

In the double slit experiment the photon is, after passing the slits, in a superposition of "slits" states. Why do you think the gravitational field produced by the photon will not also be in a superposition?

Actually, this is an unanswered question and it isstill hotly debated. So far, we really don't know.
 
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  • #13
andresB said:
Why do you think the gravitational field produced by the photon will not also be in a superposition?

The gravitational effect itself might be (as you say, we don't currently know whether a quantum theory of gravity that could describe a superposition of different gravitational fields exists), but if we have a measuring device that amplifies that effect to produce an irreversible result, as described in my post #11, that would count as a which-way measurement on the photon.
 
  • #14
PeterDonis said:
The gravitational effect itself might be (as you say, we don't currently know whether a quantum theory of gravity that could describe a superposition of different gravitational fields exists), but if we have a measuring device that amplifies that effect to produce an irreversible result, as described in my post #11, that would count as a which-way measurement on the photon.

In a related experiment, say, neutron scattering, we could determine through which slit the neutron traveled by measuring the magnetic field produced by the neutron's magnetic moment.

However, in the gravitational case I'm not so sure because the proposed measuring device will measure the gravitational field. You are assuming that that measurement will collapse the photon state to one or the other slit. But we do not know if gravity couple that way.
 
  • #15
andresB said:
In a related experiment, say, neutron scattering, we could determine through which slit the neutron traveled by measuring the magnetic field produced by the neutron's magnetic moment.

Yes.

andresB said:
You are assuming that that measurement will collapse the photon state to one or the other slit. But we do not know if gravity couple that way.

You're missing the point. If we can measure a "gravitational field" at all, then we can make such a measurement yield which-slit information, the same way the measurement of a magnetic field would.

If gravity "doesn't couple that way", that would mean we could not measure a "gravitational field" at all. It would not mean that we could measure it, but measuring it wouldn't yield which-slit information the way other kinds of measurement would.
 
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  • #16
PeterDonis said:
It happens when an irreversible result is recorded. Just the tiny gravitational effect of a photon going through one slit or the other does not do that. Only setting up some kind of measuring apparatus that magnifies that effect into an irreversible result (like a light either lighting up or not lighting up, or a pointer swinging one way or the other) will do it.
One example is to do the experiment with linearly polarized photons (say in ##x##-direction polarized). Then put two quarter-wave plates into the slits one at orientation ##\pi/4## the other at ##-\pi/4## relative to the ##x##-axis. Then photon going through the 1st slit get left-circularly polarized those going through the 2nd slit get right-circularly polarized. The polarization states then are orthogonal to each other. And this means you can in principle know through which slit each photon came when measuring the polarization state to be either left- or right-circularly polarized. Now, however, you don't measure the polarization but just let all the photons hit a screen. Since now the photons going through slit one are orthogonal to those going through slit 2 due to their polarization state, you won't get an interference pattern, because the interference term cancels due to the orthogonality of the polarization states, i.e., you see the incoherent superposition of two single-slit interference patterns. If you remove the quarter-wave plates the photons going through slit 1 are not distinguishable from photons going through slit 2, and the interference term for photons going through either slit is maximal in amplitude, such that you get a two-slit interference pattern in "full contrast" (with ideally monochromatic photons in the minima you get really 0 intensity).

Note that for the two-slit interference pattern to vanish you don't need to measure the polarization state. It's enough that the photons get labelled through which slit they came by the polarization observable in such a way that with 100% probability a certain polarization states means it came through a specific slit, i.e., you have a full entanglement between which-way information and polarization of the photon.

You can also orient the quarter-wave plates in the slits in any other relative angle than ##\pi/2##. Then the polarization states for the photons going through either slit are no longer orthogonal and you get two-slit interference pattern but with lower than maximal contrast. For "full contrast" the quarter-wave plates must be oriented in the same direction. The higher the contrast of the two-slit interference pattern is choosen the less you know through which slit the photon came even when measuring its polarization state.

In Bohr's language this is an example for complementarity: You can either have precise which-way information or a full-contrast interference pattern but never both. In all other setups you get only partial knowledge about which-way information and an interference pattern with correspondingly lower contrast.
 
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  • #17
vanhees71 said:
You can either have precise which-way information or a full-contrast interference pattern but never both. In all other setups you get only partial knowledge about which-way information and an interference pattern with correspondingly lower contrast.
Is there some theorhetical explanation of why the "gravitational detector" (admittedly fiction) would also be physcially limited in this way? The explanation I am currently thinking is that the gravity fields are too faint to detect, therefore practically, it can't be done, but in principal it's still possible. But that doesn't seem very satisfying because the physical principals seem to exist. What I mean is, can't I set up a thought experiment with a magical elf that holds a magic wand that can detect the faintest of all gravitataional signatures in all of the kingdom and if they hold that wand between the slits they can whipser to me in some elven language which slit the photon went through if only I left a cookie crumb after the photon is fired. I can chose to leave the cookie crumb or not, after the results are displayed on the pattern monitor. (groans and eye rolls all around - I get it). My question is, does this experiment not work because there are no such things as magical elves, or is it more satisfying than that. Rather is it because the gravitational field of the wand has now affected the nature of the photon, and so it no longer can interfere with the 'ghost path' it would have taken through the other slit and produce interference? Many apologies for introducing and elven kingdom.
 
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Herbascious J said:
Is there some theorhetical explanation of why the "gravitational detector" (admittedly fiction) would also be physcially limited in this way?

Any detector will be limited in the way @vanhees71 described. That's a basic principle of QM and doesn't depend on any of the details of what the detector is detecting.
 
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Herbascious J said:
The explanation I am currently thinking is that the gravity fields are too faint to detect, therefore practically, it can't be done, but in principal it's still possible.

See my response to @andresB in post #15.
 
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  • #20
PeterDonis said:
Any detector will be limited in the way @vanhees71 described. That's a basic principle of QM and doesn't depend on any of the details of what the detector is detecting.
Yes, and in fact the GW detectors like LIGO/VIRGO are sensitive to the quantum flucutations. AFAIK LIGO also uses quantum effects ("sqeezed light") to enhance their sensitivity further!
 
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  • #21
vanhees71 said:
GW detectors like LIGO/VIRGO are sensitive to the quantum flucutations

If you mean quantum fluctuations in the gravitational waves themselves, no, they're not. Those detectors are way too insensitive to detect quantum fluctuations in the GWs they detect.

vanhees71 said:
LIGO also uses quantum effects ("sqeezed light") to enhance their sensitivity further!

They use quantum effects in the light inside the interferometer, yes. That is not at all the same as detecting quantum fluctuations in the GWs.
 
  • #22
No, of course I didn't mean quantum fluctuations in the gravitational waves but quantum fluctuations of the detectors themselves (uncertainty of the mirrors' positions as well as shot noise due to quantum fluctuations of the light) as detailed in, e.g.,

https://doi.org/10.1088/1464-4266/6/8/008
 
  • #23
Hi,

Because objects with more mass create more gravity, you would want to go for the largest mass particle/object you can find for the proposed experiment.

And it seems that you should certainly be able to do better than with photons.

The following 1999 paper describes how wave-particle duality has been observed with carbon 60 molecules: https://physicsworld.com/a/wave-particle-duality-seen-in-carbon-60-molecules/

Here is another one from 2013, with other molecules: https://arstechnica.com/science/201...ith-big-molecules-approaches-the-macroscopic/

There may have been larger molecules since then, but the above two are the latest I could find after a modest search.
 
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  • #24
Aonghus Lynch said:
you would want to go for the largest mass particle/object you can find for the proposed experiment

The largest mass of any object for which we have observed quantum interference effects in a double slit experiment is still many orders of magnitude too small for us to observe its gravitational effects with our current technology.
 
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  • #25
Point taken,

But it looks like the effort to improve that current technology for (generally) measuring the gravitation of small masses is pretty active.

- Ref to PRL article from 2014, which demonstrates gravitational forces being measured at very small scales: https://www.nature.com/news/bouncing-neutrons-probe-dark-energy-on-a-table-top-1.15062
- PRL article from 2018, where the smallest size is reported be down to 7mg: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.071101
- Nature article from 2017, looking at the gravitational effect of caesium atoms
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys4189

Maybe a method can be found soon enough to measuring the gravity of whatever might passing through the slits. It certainly seems like a sensible prediction to expect the breakdown in the waveform in that setup, but even if it broke down, IMO it would be cool see gravity and the wavefunction interacting in this way.
 
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  • #26
Without directly measuring a gravitational interaction, there are might be other possibilities for observing quantum gravitational effects. One possible path is to look for gravitationally mediated quantum entanglement between previously untangled particles.
 
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I think somewhere in this thread the beautiful measurement of the energy levels of cold neutrons in the gravitational field of the Earth (+total reflection on the bottom) has been already mentioned. The results are precisely as expected from the corresponding result of solving the energy-eigenvector problem (a nice exercise in the QM 1 lecture; hint: it's most easily solved in the momentum representation). This means gravitational interactions (at least on the level of the semiclassical theory where the gravitational field is treated as a classical external field) don't behave different from the other interactions.
 
  • #28
andresB said:
Without directly measuring a gravitational interaction, there are might be other possibilities for observing quantum gravitational effects. One possible path is to look for gravitationally mediated quantum entanglement between previously untangled particles.

"Gravitational interactions" are measured all the the time. Gravimeters as well as inertial navigation systems based on cold atom interferometry have been around for a long time in the labs and are now being commercialised (just google "Cold atom gravimeter").

One of the issues with this and many other threads on PF is that people start talking about photons.
In the early days of QM we did not have systems like cold atoms, ion traps or solid state qubits and since photons interact very weakly with their environment they were "easy" to use which is why most of the early demonstrations of QM effect were demonstrated using photonics.

These days all of these "basic" effects have been demonstrated in many, many different systems, but since pop-sci books still use photons as examples people end of worrying unnecessarily things that are specific to photons (typically that they massless) thinking that this is somehow important; but this is a red herring and not at all of fundamental importance.

.
 
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  • #29
So how exactly would you, in principle, go about measuring the which way information? A couple of masses near each slit and measure relative distance to centerline between slits?
From what I've gathered the particle being sent through the slits wouldn't actually radiate gravitational waves, so LIGO-like interferometers are out. Or am I mistaken here?
 
  • #30
vanhees71 said:
This means gravitational interactions (at least on the level of the semiclassical theory where the gravitational field is treated as a classical external field) don't behave different from the other interactions.

This measurement won't give "which way" information in a double slit scenario, however. All that this measurement, as beautiful as it is, is measuring is whether the Newtonian gravitational potential acts like any other potential in the Schrodinger Equation.

f95toli said:
"Gravitational interactions" are measured all the the time.

For much larger objects than the ones for which interference has been measured in a double slit experiment, yes. A "cold atom gravimeter" is not measuring the gravitational effect of individual cold atoms. It is using cold atoms to measure the gravitational effect of something large.
 
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  • #31
Lord Crc said:
what I've gathered the particle being sent through the slits wouldn't actually radiate gravitational waves

It could, in principle, since its motion through the slits would, in principle, involve a time-varying acceleration due to interaction with the material around the slit. However, the gravitational waves produced by any object for which we have detected interference in a double slit experiment would be much too weak for us to detect.
 
  • #32
PeterDonis said:
It could, in principle, since its motion through the slits would, in principle, involve a time-varying acceleration due to interaction with the material around the slit.
Ah yeah that makes sense. Would the energy radiated cause a slight decrease in frequency of the photon then? Not that I expect that to be measurable either, just curious.

PeterDonis said:
However, the gravitational waves produced by any object for which we have detected interference in a double slit experiment would be much too weak for us to detect.
I know we are in fantasy land here, but has the magnitude and frequency of such a wave been calculated, for a photon or say a buckyball? Just curious how far into fantasy land we are here.

If the frequency is very high then AFAIK a LIGO style detector would be severely limited by quantum effects (shot noise), which would be a double whammy.

But yeah, just curious.
 
  • #33
Lord Crc said:
Would the energy radiated cause a slight decrease in frequency of the photon then?

You mean energy radiated by a gravitational wave? It would in principle affect the photon's wave function, yes, and in principle the effect would be to slightly lower the expectation value of the photon energy. However, in practice this effect would be far too tiny to detect.

Lord Crc said:
but has the magnitude and frequency of such a wave been calculated, for a photon or say a buckyball?

Not that I know of. I am basing my heuristic estimates on the general rules for the relative magnitude of such effects, as compared to the total energy of the object or system and the time variation of the system's quadrupole moment.

Lord Crc said:
a LIGO style detector would be severely limited by quantum effects (shot noise), which would be a double whammy.

This might well hamper any attempt to detect such an effect.
 
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  • #34
To answer this - at least partially - no detector is really needed... impossibly sensitive or not!

The experiment is performed every time a double slit experiment is run. And the answer is NO... there is no collapse of the wave function. Or more precisely: the interference is not affected by gravitational force. Otherwise we'd never see any interference in any experiment... obviously. So here's the catch. We use the term "which slit detection" as a shortcut to the more correct analysis. That has already been mentioned (see for example @vanhees71 post #16, and others), but I will describe again.

We have a double slit photon setup with a polarizers in front of each slit. There is no detector of any kind. When the polarizers are aligned parallel (setup A), there IS interference. When the polarizers are aligned perpendicular (setup B - orthogonal) there is NO interference. The reason for the difference is that there cannot be interference between the orthogonal paths that the photons take. Again, we are comparing 2 different setups, A vs. B, and no detector is necessary. It's all in the setups.

So for a gravitational version of the double slit: we need some way to switch from an "A" setup to a "B" setup. It's pretty easy to see that this cannot be done - no "B' setup (where there is NO interference) can be created. You need there to be "some way" distinguish paths taken through one slit from paths taken through the other. The detector is NOT important at all, no more than it was relevant in the previous example. How to do this? For the gravitational force, we would need something that would delay/distort the paths on one side - but not delay/distort equally on the other side. That would need to create a torque so large that the paths effectively become orthogonal (rather than parallel which is effectively the default). So we need a massive object to be present on one side, very close to the slit. Obviously, the difference in the gravitational "distortion" between an object being diffracted between 2 slits - when we have a distance between the slits on the order of magnitude of the wavelength of the object - will be much smaller in comparison. You cannot create that much gravitational differential (as best I know anyway) at such a small scale. It will be miniscule.

Clearly: regardless of whether gravity is a relativistic phenomena (distortion of spacetime by mass) or whether it is a quantum phenomena (coupled to a quantum field): there is no discernible effect for an "A" setup (full interference, nothing to distinguish the paths). That being what we see in an interference experiment of any kind. If there was, we wouldn't see any interference at all in the first place. Or... it could be that the effect is so slight it is not noticeable. After all: "which slit" setups can be varied from 0 to 100% with any amount in between. I am not aware of any rigorous studies purporting to demonstrate how perfectly interference effects adhere to theoretical predictions. (I.e. whether there is some background effect due to the Earth's gravity that we haven't previously noticed. I.e. that gravity does cause a small amount of "collapse" in typical double slit studies.)
 
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  • #35
DrChinese said:
The reason for the difference is that there cannot be interference between the orthogonal paths that the photons take.

"Paths" is not really correct here. Changing the polarizer settings does not change the amplitude for a photon coming from a particular slit to travel a particular path through space. What it changes is the phase the photon has when it hits the screen after traveling a particular path through space. Changing the phase relationships between the photon paths from the two slits to particular points on the screen is what changes the amount of interference that is observed.

Also, what you are describing, as you say, is not a "which slit" measurement made on the photon. But there are other measurements that could in principle be made on the photon that are. In terms of the basic math of QM, a true "which slit" measurement does not affect further results by changing the relative phases of the two paths (one from each slit); it eliminates one path entirely, by providing a macroscopic, irreversible record of the particle taking just one of the two possible paths (i.e., going through just one slit). No such record is created in the polarizer version.

To put it another way, the truly correct meaning of "which slit" is that an actual measurement--in the sense of "something that forces you to apply the Born Rule to calculate probabilities and then collapse the wave function once you know the result"--must take place. That doesn't happen with the polarizer version with photons. But as I understand it, the OP is asking about whether one could have some kind of device that would make it happen--would amount to an actual measurement of which slit the photon went through, without destroying the photon itself--by detecting the gravitational influence of the photon.

DrChinese said:
I am not aware of any rigorous studies purporting to demonstrate how perfectly interference effects adhere to theoretical predictions. (I.e. whether there is some background effect due to the Earth's gravity that we haven't previously noticed. I.e. that gravity does cause a small amount of "collapse" in typical double slit studies.)

Based on the experiments that have been done with neutrons, the Earth's gravitational potential can be treated as a potential just like any other in the Schrodinger Equation, which means it should have a (tiny) effect on the phase of photons. So if the two slits were oriented vertically in the Earth's gravitational field, so the gravitational potential was slightly different from one to the other, then there should be a tiny relative phase shift that would eliminate a tiny amount of interference. I have not tried to calculate just how tiny, though. And of course if the two slits are oriented horizontally (as I would imagine is typically the case), the gravitational potential is the same at both, so it would not cause any relative phase shift and would not affect interference at all.
 
<h2>1. What is a gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment?</h2><p>The gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment refers to the effects of gravity on the path of a photon as it passes through a double slit. This is a phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which states that gravity can bend the path of light.</p><h2>2. How does gravity affect the path of a photon in a double slit experiment?</h2><p>Gravity affects the path of a photon in a double slit experiment by bending the space around the slits, causing the photon to follow a curved path. This can result in the photon hitting the screen in a different location than it would have without the influence of gravity.</p><h2>3. Why is the gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment important?</h2><p>The gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment is important because it provides evidence for the theory of general relativity and helps us better understand the behavior of light and gravity. It also has implications for other areas of physics, such as quantum mechanics.</p><h2>4. Can the gravitational signature of a photon be observed in a double slit experiment?</h2><p>Yes, the gravitational signature of a photon can be observed in a double slit experiment. However, the effects are very small and may be difficult to detect without precise measurements and advanced equipment.</p><h2>5. How does the gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment differ from the interference pattern created by the photons?</h2><p>The gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment is a result of the influence of gravity on the path of the photon, while the interference pattern is a result of the wave-like behavior of light. The gravitational signature appears as a slight deviation in the photon's path, while the interference pattern is a distinct pattern of light and dark fringes on the screen.</p>

1. What is a gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment?

The gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment refers to the effects of gravity on the path of a photon as it passes through a double slit. This is a phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which states that gravity can bend the path of light.

2. How does gravity affect the path of a photon in a double slit experiment?

Gravity affects the path of a photon in a double slit experiment by bending the space around the slits, causing the photon to follow a curved path. This can result in the photon hitting the screen in a different location than it would have without the influence of gravity.

3. Why is the gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment important?

The gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment is important because it provides evidence for the theory of general relativity and helps us better understand the behavior of light and gravity. It also has implications for other areas of physics, such as quantum mechanics.

4. Can the gravitational signature of a photon be observed in a double slit experiment?

Yes, the gravitational signature of a photon can be observed in a double slit experiment. However, the effects are very small and may be difficult to detect without precise measurements and advanced equipment.

5. How does the gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment differ from the interference pattern created by the photons?

The gravitational signature of a photon in a double slit experiment is a result of the influence of gravity on the path of the photon, while the interference pattern is a result of the wave-like behavior of light. The gravitational signature appears as a slight deviation in the photon's path, while the interference pattern is a distinct pattern of light and dark fringes on the screen.

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