Quantum erase explained with waves

[DParlevliet]

With multiple photons you know 50/50% goes throught one of the two slits. Both for standard double slit and Walborn e.a.

 

[Cthugha]

But you get very different patterns depending on whether you have which-way information or not. An interference pattern or two single slit pattern. If you do circular polarization filtering at the detection port, you get either the first or the second single slit pattern in the case with which-way informationbut you keep the interference pattern if you do not have which way information. That does not change for single photons.

 

[DParlevliet]

But you get very different patterns depending on whether you have which-way information or not.

Can you define what you mean with which-way information?

 

[Dadface]

Can you define what you mean with which-way information?

Can I have a try at this one?

With the two filters in front of the slits it is possible,in principle,to determine which slit a particular photon passes through. This results in the disappearance of the two slit interference pattern. When that possibility is erased we observe the single slit diffraction pattern(s) only. I'm still learning this stuff.

 

[Cthugha]

Can you define what you mean with which-way information?

Can I have a try at this one?

With the two filters in front of the slits it is possible,in principle,to determine which slit a particular photon passes through. This results in the disappearance of the two slit interference pattern. When that possibility is erased we observe the single slit diffraction pattern(s) only. I'm still learning this stuff.

Good one.

If you were interested in a quantitative measure, I consider the distinguishability in the Englert-Greenberger duality relation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englert–Greenberger_duality_relation) as a good measure of how much which-way information is present.

 

[DParlevliet]

With the two filters in front of the slits it is possible,in principle,to determine which slit a particular photon passes through.

So a single photon isn't it?
And "in priciple": are there publications where this is actually done, so is the principle prooven?

 

[Cthugha]

I am still not sure what you are after. This is routinely done in student lab courses for classical light. Do you doubt that it works the same way for single photons?

"Wave-particle dualism and complementarity unraveled by a different mode" (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109, 24 (2012)) shows that along the way to some more complicated experiment. They show that you can get interference and spatial which-way info if you have two other possible "paths" - in this case different emission modes.

 

[vanhees71]

Of course, I've to read the paper first, but the title makes me already disappointed, since there is no wave-particle dualism in physics with the advent of modern quantum theory in 1925/26. Particularly photons have nothing in common with classical particles. It's not even possible to define a proper particle-position operator in a strict sense for massless particles with spin $\geq 1$.

Also the claim the emission of a photo electron in a photomultiplier proves the "particle nature of light" is unbelievable to be stated by people who are experts on photons ("quantum opticians"). It's well-known textbook knowledge that that photo-electric effect can be completely understood using the semiclassical approximation (electrons described by (non-relativistic) quantum theory, electromagnetic fields as classical external fields); see, e.g., Landau-Lifshitz vol. III. It's a nice application for time-dependent perturbation theory and usually given as a problem in recitations in Quantum Mechanics I!

 

[Cthugha]

Of course, I've to read the paper first, but the title makes me already disappointed, since there is no wave-particle dualism in physics with the advent of modern quantum theory in 1925/26. Particularly photons have nothing in common with classical particles. It's not even possible to define a proper particle-position operator in a strict sense for massless particles with spin $\geq 1$.

Kind of true. Some people tend to say wave-particle duality is outdated, other just choose to say that QED paves the way to wave-particle duality done right. Personally I side with the first camp, but I have grown pretty tired of discussing terminology instead of physics, when both camps mean the same thing.

Also the claim the emission of a photo electron in a photomultiplier proves the "particle nature of light" is unbelievable to be stated by people who are experts on photons ("quantum opticians").

I am puzzled. Did somebody make that claim in this thread? The smoking gun for photons being preparable in strongly particle-like states is of course photon antibunching.

 

[vanhees71]

I've tried to read the paper now. It's far better than I feared ;-)).

The main point seems to be the following: The experimenters shoot a T(01)-Gaussian mode coherent state with low intensity on a birefringencing BaO chrystal to produce single entangled photon pairs by spontaneous parametric downconversion. This mode has two maxima in its intensity distribution that can be seen as two lightemitting sources.

Now let's look at the signal photon first: The double slit is not necessary here but to strengthen the contrast. The point is that you can either measure in the near field and clearly can dinstinguish the two spots and one can show that then one has which-way information modulo the natural width of the spot. As long has one is close enough to the source that the resolution due to the finite width is large enough, you don't see interference effects in accordance with the complementary rules of quantum theory of mutual exclusive observables (here the phase of the em. wave field vs. the which-way information). If instead you detect the photons far away from the source such that the which-way information is lost due to the finite width of the T(01) mode, i.e., when these spots start to overlap in certain regions, you get interference patterns. So far the entire thing can be described as well with classical waves.

Now let's take into account that we also have the idler photons entangled with each signal photon. This is now the quantum theoretical situation that cannot be described anymore with classical electromagnetics, because here the entanglement of each photon pair is important. The experimenters indeed verified that with a high accuracy the which-way information, present in the near-field detection is one-to-one readable by detecting the idler photon due to its entanglement with the signal photon without ever touching the signal photon. So we have the which-way information present in the near-field observation setup also present with nearly 100% confidence by measuring the idler photon without ever touching the signal photon.

Now the point is that we have the which-way-information present in the near-field observation without touching the signal photons by measuring only the idler photons but at the same time can observe the interference pattern in the far-field observation of the signal photons.

In my opinion (now again we touch an "interpretation issue") again, that's not very astonishing from the point of view of the minimal interpretation of quantum theory. That's what also the authors state in their conclusion (on page 9317 last paragraph in the right column):

"However, we emphasize that even in our experiment the measurements of the whicht-slit information and interference still require mutually exclusive experimental arrangements. In order to observe the near-field coincidences [...] the detector D2 [measuring the signal photons] has to be just behind one of the slits, whereas the interference fringes [...] emerge only when we move D2 far away from the slits."

This shows that indeed there is no collapse of the quantum state due to the gain of which-way information that we would get in the near-field-observation setup by measuring it using the entangled idler photon but that we can still observe the interference pattern in the far-field observation of the signal photon. For me that's a very important measurement disproving once more (at least naive) collapse hypotheses a la some flavors of the Copenhagen/Princeton interpretation.

I would however strongly object against the first sentence of the conclusion section: "Quantum theory is build on the celebrated wave-particle dualism." There is no such wave-particle dualism as quantum theory (most strongly relativistic QFT, which has used in the present paper to describe the photons, by the way) tells us. The fundamental (elementary) "particles" are neither describable as classical (billard-ball like) little bullets as in classical mechanics nor as wave solutions of classical field equations but only by the rather abstract formalism of quantum theory itself with its strict indeterministic and probabilistic meaning of the quantum state as encoded in Born's rule. I'd call this the "reality" according to the current understanding of physics which is demonstrated with high significance by all known experiments, among them the one discussed in this paper. There is no "classical reality" indeed, but in my opinion, it's wrong to claim there is no reality according to quantum theory. "Reality" in the sense of physics can only mean what's objectively observable, and what's observed is the indeterministic and probablistic "quantum reality" and not "classical reality".