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Results in Optics

Analysis of single-photon self-interference in Young’s double-slit experiments

Jau Tang, Zhibin Hu

Published Aug 2, 2022• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

For centuries Young’s double-slit interference continues to be a hot discussion subject about whether light is waves or particles. This work unravels the self-interference parados, and sheds light on such a concept that assumes a photon can split, self-interfere, and recombine. This work elucidates how coherent photons from a laser source could produce a double-slit interference pattern without the hypothesis of unphysical splitting and recombination of a single photon. Unlike the conventional single wave-function description for the whole ensemble of particles, we develop a pilot-wave trajectory approach to track every photon’s wave-packet propagation and calculate the evolution of the interference intensity in time. We demonstrate how wave packets and phase coherence affect the interference pattern. To resolve the century-old self-interference paradox, we show that such an hypothesis is unnecessary, and the illusion is due to the long coherence length of laser photons and overlaps of delocalized light wave packets.

DOI
10.1016/j.rio.2022.100281

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For centuries Young’s double-slit interference continues to be a hot discussion subject about whether light is waves or particles. This work unravels the self-interference parados, and sheds light on such a concept that assumes a photon can split, self-interfere, and recombine. This work elucidates how coherent photons from a laser source could produce a double-slit interference pattern without the hypothesis of unphysical splitting and recombination of a single photon. Unlike the conventional single wave-function description for the whole ensemble of particles, we develop a pilot-wave trajectory approach to track every photon’s wave-packet propagation and calculate the evolution of the interference intensity in time. We demonstrate how wave packets and phase coherence affect the interference pattern. To resolve the century-old self-interference paradox, we show that such an hypothesis is unnecessary, and the illusion is due to the long coherence length of laser photons and overlaps of delocalized light wave packets.
Abstract In Copenhagen’s interpretation, a self-interference mechanism is assumed for a wave function to split and to pass through the slits simultaneously, then recombine and collapse to generate a dot signal on a detector. Its use of a single wave function to describe a whole ensemble without accounting for a particle’s individuality is incomplete. To better understand the single-electron double-slit interference, we use a wave-packet trajectory approach to track each electron’s dynamics and calculate the time-dependent interference intensity. We analyze the self-interference and cross-interference mechanisms to illustrate how an electron’s coherence length affects the self-interference and how it dictates the wave packet overlaps between adjacent electrons for the cross-interference mechanism to be effective. To circumvent a conflicting dilemma between the electron’s indivisibility and its wave-packet split while passing through the slits, we consider an alternate mechanism involving slit-induced quantized momentum. This mechanism preserves the electron’s indivisibility and avoids the illusive split, recombination and mysterious collapse of a single particle’s wave function.
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.
Summary form only given. Consider an experiment where a single photon is split into two wave-packets by a beam splitter and where the two wave packets are made to overlap in a specific region in space. If the two wave-packets arrive at the same time, an interference pattern can be recorded by a classical detector such as a photographic plate. If however, the difference in arrival time between the two wave-packets is made to be larger than the coherence time of the wave packets, the interference pattern, as recorded by the detector, will disappear. It has been argued that if the classical detector is replaced by a material that can remember the phase of the electromagnetic field, i.e. a material with a long homogeneous dephasing time, it would be possible to record the interference between the two wave-packets even if the time difference between them is much larger than the coherence time. We denote this single-photon self-interference. The interference pattern would take the form of a frequency dependent population grating in the material and could be detected by diffracting a light pulse on this grating. The delayed single-photon self-interference experiment has several unique features. It is a four-wave mixing experiment where the two first pulses share a total of only one photon. Thus interaction between these two pulses and the material, normally considered as a nonlinear multiphoton process, is here carried out by a single photon. We have performed experiments with multiphoton excitation pulses and extrapolated the data to the single photon level. These experiments support the conclusion from the theoretical calculations that delayed single-photon self-interference could be observed.
The Young double-slit interference pattern produced by quantum objects, like photons, that move through a double-slit is regarded, by the conventional Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, as the evidence of the wave-like behaviour potentially contained in the wave function. On the contrary, a more realistic view of this phenomenon considers the quantum object a particle accompanied by a pilot wave which would be the cause of the interference fringes. This paper proposes a feasible experiment, based on an easy variation of the nowadays common double-slit experimental set-ups, aimed at detecting the effects of the pilot wave once 'detached' from the particles that it steers. Besides, a further realistic idea, based on the geometrical violation of Local Lorentz Invariance (LLI), is put forward as to the intrinsic nature of the photon. This new idea along with the possibly positive results of the experiment would allow us to shed new light on the real nature of quantum objects in term of the geometrical violation of LLI.
Quantum interference is a challenging phenomenon in quantum optics. According to this principle of superposition of quantum mechanics, elementary particles such as photon can not only be in more than one place at a given time, but that an individual particle can cross its own trajectory and interfere with the direction of its path. Thomas Young devised the double slit experiment to prove that light consisted of waves. Analysis of the double slit experiment and the interference pattern indicates that each photon not only goes through both the slits simultaneously, but traverses every possible trajectory on the way to the target, not just in theory, but in fact. In the present work we have analysed the situation in terms of quantum superposition and Schrodinger cat states in quantum optics. The nature of photon in this analysis is examined
An experiment is described which is an analog of Young's double-slit interferometer using an atomic electron instead of light. Two phase-coherent laser pulses are used to excite a single electron into a state of the form of a pair of Rydberg wave packets that are initially on opposite sides of the orbit. The two wave packets propagate and spread until they completely overlap, then a third phase-coherent laser pulse probes the resulting fringe pattern. The relative phase of the two wave packets is varied so that the interference produces a single localized electron wave packet on one side of the orbit or the other.