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arXiv:1902.00015

On "Quantum interference with slits" and its "revisited"

J. C. Ye, Y. Li, Q. Chen, Chen, S. G., Q. H. Liu

Published Jan 31, 2019• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Marcella in 2002 published a "quantum-mechanical" treatment of the famous single- and double-slit interference experiment in classical wave optics by a simple assumption that quantum mechanical wave function is a constant anywhere within a slit. Rothman and Boughn in 2011 commented that Marcella introduced no quantum physics into the problem other than\ a symbol substitution $p=\hbar k$, and the used essentially the classical wave optics. In present comment, we point out that though Marcella made a fundamental mistake, the problem is nevertheless remediable to give the satisfactory quantum mechanical results which are in qualitatively agreement with experimental ones with material particles.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1902.00015

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Marcella in 2002 published a "quantum-mechanical" treatment of the famous single- and double-slit interference experiment in classical wave optics by a simple assumption that quantum mechanical wave function is a constant anywhere within a slit. Rothman and Boughn in 2011 commented that Marcella introduced no quantum physics into the problem other than\ a symbol substitution p=ℏkp=\hbar kp=ℏk, and the used essentially the classical wave optics. In present comment, we point out that though Marcella made a fundamental mistake, the problem is nevertheless remediable to give the satisfactory quantum mechanical results which are in qualitatively agreement with experimental ones with material particles.
Marcella [arXiv:quant-ph/0703126] has presented a straightforward technique employing the Dirac formalism to calculate single- and double-slit interference patterns. He claims that no reference is made to classical optics or scattering theory and that his method therefore provides a purely quantum mechanical description of these experiments. He also presents his calculation as if no approximations are employed. We show that he implicitly makes the same approximations found in classical treatments of interference and that no new physics has been introduced. At the same time, some of the quantum mechanical arguments Marcella gives are, at best, misleading.
Marcella has presented a straightforward technique employing the Dirac formalism to calculate single-and double-slit interference patterns.He claims that no reference is made to classical optics or scattering theory and that his method therefore provides a purely quantum mechanical description of these experiments.He also presents his calculation as if no approximations are employed.We show that he implicitly makes the same approximations found in classical treatments of interference and that no new physics has been introduced.At the same time, some of the quantum mechanical arguments Marcella gives are, at best, misleading.
It was recently argued by Catani et al that it is possible to reproduce the phenomenology of quantum interference classically, by the double-slit experiment with a deterministic, local, and classical model (Quantum 7, 1119 (2023)). The stated aim of their argument is to falsify the claim made by Feynman (in his third book of Lectures on Physics) that quantum interference is ``impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way'' and that it ``contains the only mystery'' of quantum mechanics. We here want to point out some problems with their argument.
In a thought-provoking paper, Couder and Fort [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 154101 (2006)] describe a version of the famous double-slit experiment performed with droplets bouncing on a vertically vibrated fluid surface. In the experiment, an interference pattern in the single-particle statistics is found even though it is possible to determine unambiguously which slit the walking droplet passes. Here we argue, however, that the single-particle statistics in such an experiment will be fundamentally different from the single-particle statistics of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanical interference takes place between different classical paths with precise amplitude and phase relations. In the double-slit experiment with walking droplets, these relations are lost since one of the paths is singled out by the droplet. To support our conclusions, we have carried out our own double-slit experiment, and our results, in particular the long and variable slit passage times of the droplets, cast strong doubt on the feasibility of the interference claimed by Couder and Fort. To understand theoretically the limitations of wave-driven particle systems as analogs to quantum mechanics, we introduce a Schrödinger equation with a source term originating from a localized particle that generates a wave while being simultaneously guided by it. We show that the ensuing particle-wave dynamics can capture some characteristics of quantum mechanics such as orbital quantization. However, the particle-wave dynamics can not reproduce quantum mechanics in general, and we show that the single-particle statistics for our model in a double-slit experiment with an additional splitter plate differs qualitatively from that of quantum mechanics.
In a paper from 2006, Couder and Fort [1] describe a version of the famous double slit experiment performed with drops bouncing on a vibrated fluid surface, where interference in the particle statistics is found even though it is possible to determine unambiguously which slit the "walking" drop passes. It is one of the first papers in an impressive series, showing that such walking drops closely resemble de Broglie waves and can reproduce typical quantum phenomena like tunneling and quantized states [2-13]. The double slit experiment is, however, a more stringent test of quantum mechanics, because it relies upon superposition and phase coherence. In the present comment we first point out that the experimental data presented in [1] are not convincing, and secondly we argue that it is not possible in general to capture quantum mechanical results in a system, where the trajectory of the particle is well-defined.
Over the past several decades, single photon-based path interference in double-slit experiment has been well demonstrated for the particle nature of photons satisfying complementarity theory, where the quantum mechanical interpretation of the single photon interference fringe is given by Born rule for complex amplitudes in measurements. Unlike most conventional methods using entangled photon pairs, here, a classical coherent light source is directly applied for the proof of the same self-interference phenomenon. Instead of double slits, we use a Mach-Zehnder interferometer as usual, where the resulting self-interference fringe of coherent single photons is exactly the same as that of the coherent photon ensemble of the laser, demonstrating that the classical coherence based on the wave nature is rooted in the single photon self-interference. This unexpected result seems to contradict our common understanding of decoherence phenomena caused by multi-wave interference among bandwidth distributed photons in coherence optics.