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Physics Education

A variant of Young’s double slit experiment for educational purposes

Francois B. Hénault, Alain Spang

Published Dec 21, 2010• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We describe a variant of the classical Young's double slit experiment that can be easily realized in any classroom, in order to evidence the wave nature of light. The proposed apparatus and its simplified theory are described and pictures of fringes, readily obtained using only cheap and off-the-shelf optical components, are reproduced. The apparatus may also be used to explain the principles of holography, stellar interferometry or diffuse surface measurement techniques.

DOI
10.1088/0031-9120/46/1/004

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We describe a variant of the classical Young's double slit experiment that can be easily realized in any classroom, in order to evidence the wave nature of light. The proposed apparatus and its simplified theory are described and pictures of fringes, readily obtained using only cheap and off-the-shelf optical components, are reproduced. The apparatus may also be used to explain the principles of holography, stellar interferometry or diffuse surface measurement techniques.
Young's double slit experiments representing the mystery of quantum mechanics have been descripted by wave theories. To study the mystery, the double slit experiments were extended to the cross-double slit experiments. A description should explain all the double slit and cross-double slit experiments consistently. To test the wave description, the two postulates are proposed, which state that before passing through the double slit and before landing on the detector, photons behave as particles, but not as waves. To test the two postulates, the comprehensive double slit/cross-double slit experiments are proposed and performed. By placing shields and/or blockers near the detector/screen, the comprehensive double slit/cross-double slit experiments show that the fringes are created independently and partially, which discloses the particle nature of photons in the double slit/crossdouble slit experiments and violates the wave descriptions. The comprehensive double slit/cross-double slit experiments provide the comprehensive phenomena for developing theoretical model to study the mystery of double slit, complementarity principle, wave-particle duality, and wave theory of light.
The double slit experiment was first conceived of by the English physician-physicist Thomas Young in 1801. It was the first demonstrative proof that light possesses a wave nature. In this experiment, light is made to pass through two very narrow slits that are spaced closely apart and a screen placed on the other side captures a pattern of alternating bright and dark stripes called fringes, formed as a result of the interference of ripples of light emanating from either slit. The relative positions and intensities of the fringes on the screen can be calculated by employing two assumptions that help simplify the geometry of the slit-screen arrangement. Firstly, the screen to slit distance is taken to be larger than the inter-slit distance (far field limit) and secondly, the inter-slit distance is taken to be larger than the wavelength of light. This conventional approach can account for the positions and intensities of the fringes located in the central portion of the screen with a fair degree of precision. It however, fails to account for those fringes located in the peripheral portions of the screen and also, is not applicable to the case wherein the screen to slit distance is made comparable to the inter-slit distance (near field limit). In this paper, the original analysis of Young’s Experiment is reformulated using an analytically derived hyperbola equation, which is formed from the locus of the points of intersections of two uniformly expanding circular wavefronts of light that emanate from either slit source. Additionally, the shape of the screen used to capture the interference pattern is varied (linear, semicircular, semielliptical) and the relative positions of the fringes is calculated for each case. This new approach bears the distinctive advantage that it is applicable in both the far field and the near field scenarios, and since no assumptions are made beyond the Huygens-Fresnel principle, it is therefore, a much more generalized approach. For these reasons, the author suggests that the new analysis ought to be introduced into the Wave Optics chapter of the undergraduate Physics curriculum.
Science, as it is generally described at school, starts with experimental data. Scientists then have to find some hypothesis which explains these results. Using this hypothesis, a prediction is made about what might happen in a slightly different experiment. The double-slit experiment is a modified version of the setup first used by Thomas Young in 1801. Young’s version is a classic experiment that, at the time, seemed to have settled the dispute between wave and particle views of light decisively in favour of waves. The idea that particles might display some wavelike properties dates to the mid-1920s when a young PhD student called Louis De Broglie was thinking about the dual wave/particle nature of light. A quantum mechanical description of the double-slit experiment must involve a set of amplitudes governing the passage of an electron through the slits to the far detector.
A simple variation of the traditional Young's double slit experiment can demonstrate several subtleties of interference with polarized light, including Berry and Pancharatnam's phase. Since the position of the fringes depends on the polarization state of the light at the input, the apparatus can also be used to measure the light's polarization without a quarter-wave plate or an accurate measurement of the light's intensity. In principle this technique can be used for any wavelength of photon as long as one can effectively polarize the incoming radiation.
The double-slit experiment is a fundamental experiment in physical optics, currently regarded as a demonstration of the wave-like properties of microscopic particles. This is due to the pattern of alternating bright and dark fringes that appear on the screen as a result of the experiment. However, another characteristic of the double-slit fringe pattern—the nested fringes—has not been previously discussed. In this paper, the authors propose a novel theory of double-slit separation based on this feature and design a new double-slit experimental apparatus to conduct the experiment, allowing for the adjustment of the slit width during the process and thus observing the variation in the fringe pattern. The experiment reveals that the double-slit fringe pattern is actually a localized magnification at the center of the Single filament diffraction pattern, inheriting the nested feature of the Single filament diffraction fringes. A set of obstruction theories utilizing relativity is summarized to explain the double-slit experiment. This new discovery opens up a fresh direction for research into the double-slit experiment.
"Quantum interferometry uses the quantum properties of light to surpass the Rayleigh diffraction limit inherent in classical interferometry. We have used Fock and coherent states, which describe the electromagnetic input field, a multi-photon counting apparatus, and an operator-based approach to a multi-slit Young’s experiment to present the principles behind quantum interferometry. Our calculations show interference fringes that depend on the wavelength of the source h, the number of slits in the Young’s screen-both characteristics present in the classical scheme-, and the number of photons m, that the measurement apparatus detects. The latter dependence generates an effective de Broglie wavelength, h/m, a phenomenon that can only be observed by taking advantage of the quantum properties of light."