Experiments on individual photons, conducted by physicists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw (FUW) and the Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics at the Gdansk University of Technology (PG), have revealed yet another counterintuitive feature of the quantum world. When a quantum object is transmitted, its quantum property – whether it behaves as a wave or as a particle – appears to depend on other properties that at first glance have nothing to do with the transmission. These surprising results were published in the research journal Nature Communications. Wave-interference experiments are some of the simplest and most elegant, and can be conducted by almost anyone. When a laser beam is directed at a plate with two slits, we observe a sequence of light and dark fringes. It has long been known that the fringes are visible even when just individual particles – single electrons or photons – pass through the slits. Physicists assume that every individual particle exhibits wave properties, passing through both slits at once and interfering with itself. The situation is very different when it is possible to detect the path taken by a given photon or electron and determine which slit the particle has passed through, at least in principle. When information about the particle path leaks from the system to the observer, the interference disappears and instead of interference fringes no pattern is observed.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 00:01:47 +0000
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