Wave-Particle Duality Controlled by Single-Photon Self-Entanglement

[Lord Crc]

I stumbled over this[1] paper recently, in which they report of experimental evidence for the claim made in earlier work[2] that the amount of "waveness" V and "particleness" P of a photon is related to the amount of self-entanglement C via the equation V^2 + P^2 + C^2 = 1.

I found it interesting but being a layman I don't really know if it brings anything useful to the table, so to speak, in terms of improving our understanding of QM. Does it?

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.01749

[2]: https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/abstract.cfm?uri=optica-5-8-942 (open access)

 

[Dale]

Note that this paper is not published in any peer reviewed journal. Nor is it likely to be.

EDIT: see below, a related peer reviewed paper does exist

 

[Lord Crc]

Good catch, got a bit mislead by the nice looking website. So no point in spending much effort on understandung these papers then?

 

[phinds]

Good catch, got a bit mislead by the nice looking website. So no point in spending much effort on understandung these papers then?

Since Dale said "nor is it likely to be", I think you'd most likely be wasting your time.

 

[Nugatory]

Good catch, got a bit mislead by the nice looking website. So no point in spending much effort on understandung these papers then?

Arxiv.org is a legitimate website and there's nothing wrong with it - it is an invaluable resource - but you have to understand that is used for sharing and distributing preprints and ideas in progress as well as fully baked ideas.

 

[Lord Crc]

Thanks for the replies.

Arxiv.org is a legitimate website and there's nothing wrong with it - it is an invaluable resource - but you have to understand that is used for sharing and distributing preprints and ideas in progress as well as fully baked ideas.

Yes I know about arXiv, so I assumed Dade was referring to the other paper where the equation in question is derived. I thought I had mistaken it for a peer-reviewed journal, but I see now that I was a bit hasty in my reply as it appears Optica is indeed a peer-reviewed journal?

So, is this just a minor thing then which is likely ok but not very interesting?

 

[Cthugha]

Note that this paper is not published in any peer reviewed journal. Nor is it likely to be.

This statement is highly questionable.

First, it is very unlikely that one of the maybe three most successful and famous optics professors still alive does not get his paper published
Second, the full version of this paper has already been published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal (https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.012016 ).
Third, the results presented here are not even controversial. This is rather pretty trivial.

Yes I know about arXiv, so I assumed Dade was referring to the other paper where the equation in question is derived. I thought I had mistaken it for a peer-reviewed journal, but I see now that I was a bit hasty in my reply as it appears Optica is indeed a peer-reviewed journal?

Optica is the high-impact journal of the OSA. It is roughly comparable to Physical Review X. This is a very respectable journal.

 

[Dale]

This statement is highly questionable.

First, it is very unlikely that one of the maybe three most successful and famous optics professors still alive does not get his paper published
Second, the full version of this paper has already been published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal (https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.012016 ).
Third, the results presented here are not even controversial. This is rather pretty trivial.
Optica is the high-impact journal of the OSA. It is roughly comparable to Physical Review X. This is a very respectable journal.

Thanks, good catch. I have to say that “waveness” and “particleness” seem like crackpot ideas, so I was knee-jerk critical

 

[Cthugha]

Thanks, good catch. I have to say that “waveness” and “particleness” seem like crackpot ideas, so I was knee-jerk critical

Yes, I agree that the terminology is not ideal. However, it originated back in the days when people were discussing whether "duality" or the uncertainty relation was more fundamental. In the simple double slit, people noticed that interference and which way information were not completely mutually exclusive, but you could have a bit of both. The simplest example would be unequal illumination of the two slits in a double slit, which yields an interference pattern of reduced visibility and some which-way information proportional to the difference in intensities at the two slits. The visibility was used to quantify "waveness" and the path distinguishability was used to quantify "particleness", which is indeed unfortunate terminology - like so many terms from the early days of qm.

 

[Demystifier]

Thanks, good catch. I have to say that “waveness” and “particleness” seem like crackpot ideas, so I was knee-jerk critical

Such vague terminology is quite common in the experimental community, especially for papers published in the highest impact journals. That's because such terminology helps to better promote and sell the paper. In fact, I myself plan to soon submit a paper with similar terminology, in which I propose a measurement in which, in a certain sense, both wave and particle properties can be observed simultaneously. Sure, I could write the paper without such terminology, but in that case nobody would read it and I would lower my chances to publish it in a high impact journal. I know it's stupid, but that's how it works.

 

[Demystifier]

In fact, I myself plan to soon submit a paper with similar terminology, in which I propose a measurement in which, in a certain sense, both wave and particle properties can be observed simultaneously.

Here it is: http://de.arxiv.org/abs/2003.14049

 

[vanhees71]

That's very interesting. I'm not very familiar with the details of current-density measurements with a Hall probe. The key issue seems to be whether the spatial resolution is sufficient to see these wiggles predicted by your calculation.

 

[Demystifier]

Well, I'm also not an expert for Hall probe measurements. It's a challenge for experimentalists, which I am not.

 

[Demystifier]

Here it is: http://de.arxiv.org/abs/2003.14049

It's accepted for publication now.
http://de.arxiv.org/abs/2003.14049