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Physics in Perspective

The Merli–Missiroli–Pozzi Two-Slit Electron-Interference Experiment

Rodolfo Rosa

Published May 14, 2012• 44 citations
Publisher

Abstract

voted Young's double-slit experiment with single electrons as "the most beautiful experiment in physics" of all time. Pier Giorgio Merli, Gian Franco Missiroli, and Giulio Pozzi carried out this experiment in a collaboration between the Italian Research Council and the University of Bologna almost three decades earlier. I examine their experiment, place it in historical context, and discuss its philosophical implications.

DOI
10.1007/s00016-011-0079-0

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voted Young's double-slit experiment with single electrons as "the most beautiful experiment in physics" of all time. Pier Giorgio Merli, Gian Franco Missiroli, and Giulio Pozzi carried out this experiment in a collaboration between the Italian Research Council and the University of Bologna almost three decades earlier. I examine their experiment, place it in historical context, and discuss its philosophical implications.
What is the most beautiful experiment in physics? More than 200 readers replied when Robert Crease asked this question in May, and their top five choices include classic experiments by Galileo, Millikan, Newton and Thomas Young (see pp19–20). But uniquely among the top 10, the most beautiful experiment in physics – the double-slit interference experiment with electrons – does not have the name of an individual associated with it. Most discussions of double-slit experiments with particles refer to Feynman's quote in his 1963 lectures: "[It] is absolutely impossible to explain in any classical way and has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery." But who actually carried out the experiment? Standard reference books offer no answer to this question but a search through the literature does reveal several unsung experimental heroes.
See ”The double-slit experiment“ on p15 When I asked readers earlier this year to submit candidates for the ”most beautiful experiment in physics“ (Physics World May p17), I was pleased to receive more than 200 replies. The responses covered a broad spectrum, ranging from actual experiments to thought experiments, and from proposed experiments to proofs, theorems and models. However, one experiment – the double-slit experiment with electrons – was cited more often than any other, receiving a total of 20 votes.
The two-slit interference experiment is usually adopted to discuss the superposition principle applied to radiation and to show the peculiar wave behaviour of material particles. Diffraction and interference of electrons have been demonstrated using, as interferometry devices, a hole, a slit, double hole, two-slits, an electrostatic biprism etc. A number of books, short movies and lectures on the web try to popularize the mysterious behaviour of electrons on the basis of Feynman thought experiment which consists of a Young two-hole interferometer equipped with a detector to reveal single electrons. A short review is reported regarding, i) the pioneering attempts carried out to demonstrate that interference patterns could be obtained with single electrons through an interferometer and, ii) recent experiments, which can be considered as the realization of the thought electron interference experiments adopted by Einstein-Bohr and subsequently by Feynman to discuss key features of quantum physics.
The double slit interference experiment has been famously described by Richard Feynman as containing the "only mystery of quantum mechanics". The history of quantum mechanics is intimately linked with the discovery of the dual nature of matter and radiation. While the double slit experiment for light is easily undertsood in terms of its wave nature, the very same experiment for particles like the electron is somewhat more difficult to comprehend. By the 1920s it was firmly established that electrons have a wave nature. However, for a very long time, most discussions pertaining to interference experiments for particles were merely gedanken experiments. It took almost six decades after the establishment of its wave nature to carry out a 'double slit interference' experiment for electrons. This set the stage for interference experiments with larger particles. In the last decade there has been spectacular progress in matter-wave interefernce experiments. Today, molecules with over a hundred atoms can be made to interfere. In the following we discuss some of these exciting developments which probe new regimes of Nature, bringing us closer to the heart of quantum mechanics and its hidden mysteries.
There has always been a desire to understand quantum mechanics in terms of classical physics. Quantum analogues of Young's double-slit experiment from classical optics have been fundamental to our understanding of the wave nature of particles and double-slit interference patterns have been observed with beams of electrons and atoms. Now, Michael Noel and Carlos Stroud of the University of Rochester in the US have observed double- slit-like interference phenomena in electron wave packets within a single atom (M W Noel and C S Stroud 1995 Phys. Rev. Lett. 75 1252).
The key features of quantum mechanics are vividly illustrated by the Young-Feynman two-slit thought experiment, whose second part discusses the recording of an electron distribution with one of the two slits partially or totally closed by an aperture. Here, we realize the original Feynman proposal in a modern electron microscope equipped with a high brightness gun and two biprisms, with one of the biprisms used as a mask. By exciting the microscope lenses to conjugate the biprism plane with the slit plane, observations are carried out in the Fraunhofer plane with nearly ideal control of the covering of one of the slits. A second, new experiment is also presented, in which interference phenomena due to partial overlap of the slits are observed in the image plane. This condition is obtained by inserting the second biprism between the two slits and the first biprism and by biasing it in order to overlap their images.