Setting up Young's double slit experiment with a diode laser

[VantagePoint72]

What would be the best set up to repeat Young's double slit experiment with a diode laser?

 

[Claude Bile]

As long as the light is coherent when it hits the slits, any set up should be fine.

A good experiment to try if you have a photomultiplier is to enclose the experiment so no light can get in. Attenuate the laser until only one photon is present in the box at anyone time (on average). Scan the photomultiplier across the interferance pattern and show that it matches the pattern that would be expected for a macroscopic wave traveling through the slits.

It is a simple illustration of the quantum behaviour of light.

Claude.

 

[VantagePoint72]

Sounds like a good experiment...either way, is there an optimum distance to have between the two slits?

 

[dextercioby]

Though it should depend on the wavelength of the radiation,I guess anything below $$10\mu m$$ would do.

I may be wrong,i'm just another ordinary theorist.