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Annual Meeting Optical Society of America

Experimental Test of the deBroglie Guided Wave Theory for Photons

L. J. Wang, X. Y. Zou, L. Mandeļ

Published Jan 1, 1990• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An experiment has been carried out to test a prediction of the deBroglie guided wave theory for photons. According to this theory, there exist electromagnetic waves as well as photons, with the former acting as guide for the latter. The wave not only determines the probability for the detection of a photon, but it also has an independent physical reality which can result in photodetection, As a result the guided wave theory predicts an interference effect when two photons pass through an interferometer with a particular geometry and one measures the rate of simultaneous detections by two photodetectors in coincidence as a function of optical path difference, By contrast, quantum mechanics predicts no interference under the same conditions. The experimental results clearly violate the prediction of the guided wave theory, but are in agreement with quantum mechanics.

DOI
10.1364/oam.1990.pdp27

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An experiment has been carried out to test a prediction of the deBroglie guided wave theory for photons. According to this theory, there exist electromagnetic waves as well as photons, with the former acting as guide for the latter. The wave not only determines the probability for the detection of a photon, but it also has an independent physical reality which can result in photodetection, As a result the guided wave theory predicts an interference effect when two photons pass through an interferometer with a particular geometry and one measures the rate of simultaneous detections by two photodetectors in coincidence as a function of optical path difference, By contrast, quantum mechanics predicts no interference under the same conditions. The experimental results clearly violate the prediction of the guided wave theory, but are in agreement with quantum mechanics.
Although we tend to think of optical interference as a classical wave phenomenon, recent experiments have revealed a number of effects that are not describable in classical terms. This is particularly true of interference effects involving the detection of a photon pair. We shall refer to them as fourth order interference, on the grounds that the joint probability density for the detection of one photon at r sub 1 at time t and another r sub 2 at time t is proportional to the fourth order correlation function of the field. This probability is readily measured when two photodetectors are positioned at r sub 1 and r sub 2 and the signals from the two detectors are fed to a coincidence counter that registers 'simultaneous' detections by the two detectors in coincidence. The topics covered include: fourth order interference measurements; the Franson experiment; and experimental test of the de Broglie guided wave theory.
Two-photon interferometry started to play an important role in quantum optics since 1980’s. In that time, Dirac was criticized to be mistaken because he stated in his book, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics , that “photon only interferes with itself. Interference between two different photons never occurs”. Two-photon interference was considered as the interference between two photons. In fact, neither classical theory nor quantum theory suggested the interference between different photons. Classical theory views optical interference the result of coherent superposition between electromagnetic waves. The two-photon interference picture provided reasonable interpretation to that observation too: under the condition of complete overlapping, when the two biphoton amplitudes superpose in phase the joint-detection of the two distant photodetectors reaches its maximum counting rate as the sign of “correlation”. When the optical path difference is increased from zero to unbalanced values, a coincidence curve of “dip” is observed.
It may be possible to empirically discriminate between the predictions of Orthodox Quantum Theory and the deBroglie-Bohm Theory of Quantum Mechanics. An experiment using the measurement methods of Atom Optics is suggested in which an atom trap having evanescent light mirrors in front of each of its walls is used to determine whether trapped atoms are in motion inside the trap. An absence of detected motion would be contrary to the prediction of Orthodox Quantum Theory and would support the deBroglie-Bohm Theory.
Quantum optics has offered new possibilities for experimental tests of basic principles of quantum mechanics. It enables us to experimentally investigate such phenomena as quantum interference and quantum non-locality. By means of cascade transitions or spontaneous parametric down- conversion, entangled photon pairs can be prepared. It makes possible to test the violation of Bell's inequalities and to study other issues connected with the question of completeness of quantum theory. The results of experiments of this kind pronounce in favor of quantum mechanics. The entangled pairs can further be used to demonstrate the violation of other classical inequalities, `non-local' interference in frequency domain, induced interference without induced emission, etc. They are also employed for quantum teleportation. Another family of interesting quantum optical experiments relates to single-photon interference. These experiments demonstrate wave-particle duality and correspondence between the interference visibility and the degree of knowledge of the photon's path in an interferometer. A spectacular example is the so-called interaction-free measurement. Quantum optical experiments open a new window on the quantum world and help us understand it. Further, quantum optics provides the ground for new interesting applications: quantum cryptography, quantum communications, and quantum computation.