Optical Interference

George B. Arfken, David F. Griffing, Donald C. Kelly +1 more

Hui Peng

Young’s double slit experiments revived the wave theory of light. The standard interpretation is that the light behaves as waves before and after passing through the double slit, and the superposition of waves produces the interference pattern. Feynman called the double slit experiment the only mystery in quantum mechanics. In this article, we experimentally show the novel universal phenomena: (1) the light is particles, but waves: within macro-distance from a diaphragm, the light rays produce non-interference patterns; while near the screen, the photons produce orthogonal interference patterns; (2) the non-interference patterns evolve to the orthogonal interference patterns gradually in the same experiment; (3) the evolution of the patterns cannot be interpreted by either classic optics or the quantum optics; (4) the non-interference patterns and the orthogonal interference patterns can show on the screen simultaneously; (5) The convex lens stops the further evolution. The experiments: (1) challenge the classical optics and quantum optics; (2) violate both Bohr’s complementarity principle and wave particle duality; (3) provide profound phenomena for developing optics and for studying the nature of light; (4) suggest that a complete theory should be able to consistently interpret all phenomena, including the non-interference pattern, the interference pattern, and the evolution from the non-interference to the interference pattern in the same wave experiment.

Kazuyasu Shigemoto

We formulate photon interference using de Broglie-Bohm quantum optics instead of standard quantum optics. We address the most basic interference experiments: Young’s double-slit single-photon interference and Hanbury Brown-Twiss two-photon interference. We found that the conditions for strong interference in both interference experiments can be expressed in a generalized Bohr’s quantum condition.

George B. Arfken, David F. Griffing, Donald C. Kelly +1 more

Bibhash Paul, Sammi Kamal, Tabish Qureshi

It is well known that in classical optics, the visibility of interference, in a two-beam light interference, is related to the optical coherence of the two beams. A wave-particle duality relation can be derived using this mutual coherence. The issue of wave-particle duality in classical optics is analyzed here, in the more general context of multipath interference. New definitions of interference visibility and path distinguishability have been introduced, which lead to a duality relation for multipath interference. The visibility is shown to be related to a new multipoint optical coherence function.

M. Ley, R. Loudon