Is it possible to truly simulate the double slit experiment with a classical computer?

Question

Can we design a program that simulate the quantum double slit experiment where we feed one electron at a time to the interferometer and after any no of iterations the resultant intensity pattern produces the interference pattern?

Comments

This problem (a wave equation with an incident plane wave and some boundary conditions) has an analytical solution. It can be programmed, in my humble opinion.

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hi @Vladimir : quantum description by images exists. In a simulation, the coder must act as if he was not knowing another solution,start from the beginning and obtain the same results as experiments. The problem for such simulations is that the algorithm must consider an interaction between 2 something to produce interference ; the challenge is to succeed with only one particle at the time. A recent simulation works well but,  IMHO, it seems far from "natural mechanisms". I collected and produced labs raw data to use it as a model. But I have no idea on how to program it without difficult assumptions ( ie interference of correlations). At the same time, I simulate EPR with the fair sampling loophole ( and many other SG exp ), almost perfectly, almost naturally. If the question is not closed, I'll will look for my links to datasources and to the "not natural simulation" this night. These subjects are very difficult to explore with the public, see the downvote. On another hand, it may be ( mis)taken as a bachelor subject, not really at the level of this site.

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@igael: This QM problem must deal with waves (or operators in the Heisenberg picture). One particle at a time means a low intensity incident beam so the particles in this beam do not interact with each other, but with themselves ;-) An interference picture implies many dots, many particles collected on one plane. No interference can be obtained (experimentally) if only one particle is launched. Concerning physics, according to the wave equation (Schroedinger one), everything is a source of "one particle". The boundary conditions are simplified solutions of an underlying wave equation with numerous interactions of the particles constituting the material boundaries.

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@Vladimir Kalitvianski : what try the simulation coders is to find a way to get the same with particles passing through one slit only ( not both, like a wave ), possibly with smooth algorithms. Or else, it is trivial : "we" know how to code active and computing qubits, applying only the theory. I did it for an application and it works. But the expected results are not observed because it is hard to deal with physical qubits using the current ( and public ) technology. Others hope to get from simulations tricks to reduce the noise and to raise the detection efficiency.

Answer 1

Any physical system can be simulated by a computer. Nobody could have found an exception to this. This is called Church-Turing principle. However some physical process can not be simulated efficiently. 

Comments

A principle discussed in a fundamental experiment becomes an hypothesis. This principle seems to be violated by quantum entanglement, if any.

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No it is not. Quantum entanglement can be simulated classically.  

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For the moment, ,no one found a software able to recover the missing information efficiently, ie crossing the 75% limit. You could reply that no one experiment did better than softwares but it would be another topic.

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Are you talking about some quantum chemistry or something like that?