On the occurrence of interference in special two-slit experiments

Fonte, G, B. Zerbo

Published Sep 18, 2006• 1 citation

Abstract

We investigate numerically the occurrence of the interference fringes in experiments where an initial Gaussian wave packet evolves inside billiard domains of several shapes with two narrow slits on a side. Contrarily to what claimed in the literature, our results seem to show that the occurrence of interference fringes does not depend on the billiard integrability but on a spatial reflection symmetry concerning both the billiard domain and the initial Gaussian wave packet. Indeed, whether the billiard is regular or chaotic, we find clear interference fringes when this symmetry is verified whereas when it is not verified, we find that the interference patterns are perturbed in various measure according to the effects of the symmetry violation.

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