Half silvered mirror experiments

[erwinskat]

Can I ask a stupid q? Using Wheeler's delayed choice experimental setup, one can vary the path length of one of the legs. This enables making all the photons end up at one detector and none at the other. Is this correct? If so, where did the uncertainty go? Can the interference pattern be manipulated by the experimenter to essentially cancel out the quantum jitters so the photons can be aimed at a silver atom or between silver atoms?
Thanks in advance your help.

 

[DaTario]

In my opinion, the working mechanism of a beam splitter doesn't have to do with aiming the photon at the silver atoms or between them. All silver atoms may have a cross-section for the process of scattering/absorbing the photon, and is this cross-section which provides the statistical character of this system.

Adjusting the legs of the interferometer produces quantum interference which cancels out one of the channels, leaving to the photon just one way to go, just one way to be scattered.

 

[erwinskat]

In my opinion, the working mechanism of a beam splitter doesn't have to do with aiming the photon at the silver atoms or between them. All silver atoms may have a cross-section for the process of scattering/absorbing the photon, and is this cross-section which provides the statistical character of this system.

Adjusting the legs of the interferometer produces quantum interference which cancels out one of the channels, leaving to the photon just one way to go, just one way to be scattered.

Thank-you DaTario

Can you address why the one way the photon can go can be made to repeat every time the experiment is done?

 

[DaTario]

Interference. It was made Constructive in one channel and Destructive in the other.