Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

205 submissions , 163 unreviewed
5,082 questions , 2,232 unanswered
5,353 answers , 22,789 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

  On the implications of one particle double slit experiments

+ 0 like - 0 dislike
1558 views

Is it true that measurement is purely an objective action and that the possibility function is collapsed due to an interaction of detectors and the measured particles? Or is it clear today that it is really the knowledge (awareness) of the trajectory that actually determines the collapse, giving measurement and thus physical reality a fundamentaly subjective nature, as indicated by the fathers of QM?

This is not a matter of a particular interpretation of QM.

The most important type of such experiments in the context of this question would be the delayed choice quantum eraser .

asked Mar 3, 2019 in Theoretical Physics by anonymous [ no revision ]
recategorized Mar 4, 2019 by Dilaton

1 Answer

+ 1 like - 0 dislike

Is it true that measurement is purely an objective action?

Yes.

and that the possibility function is collapsed due to an interaction of detectors and the measured particles?

What possibility function? There is no possibility function. You have a photon going through two slits, and a detector in the guise of a screen. The photon interacts with the detector, and you see an image on the screen.

Or is it clear today that it is really the knowledge (awareness) of the trajectory that actually determines the collapse, giving measurement and thus physical reality a fundamentaly subjective nature, as indicated by the fathers of QM?

No. Take a look at Physics World reveals its top 10 breakthroughs for 2011. It said this: “after much debate among the Physics World editorial team, this year’s honour goes to Aephraim Steinberg and colleagues from the University of Toronto in Canada for their experimental work on the fundamentals of quantum mechanics”. It also said this: “Using an emerging technique called ‘weak measurement’, the team is the first to track the average paths of single photons passing through a Young’s double-slit experiment – something that Steinberg says physicists had been ‘brainwashed’ into thinking is impossible”. The relevant article was the secret lives of photons revealed:

3D plot of a single photon showing wavelike behaviour, image from physicsworld

You can read more about it in the paper on observing the average trajectories of single photons in a two-Slit Interferometer, and in the article furtive approach rolls back the limits of quantum uncertainty. Note that the photons definitely go through both slits. That's what you'd expect, because photons have an E=hf wave nature. They aren't little billiard-ball things. They might seem that way, but they aren't. I think the best way to understand this is to say this: when you detect the photon at the screen, you perform something akin to an optical Fourier transform on it, so you convert it into something pointlike. Then when you detect the photon at one of the slits, you perform something akin to an Optical Fourier transform on it, so you convert it into something pointlike. So it goes through that slit only. So the interference patterns disappears. There are no miracles. There is no magic.

Note this in the Wikipedia delayed choice quantum eraser article: "Elementary precursors to current quantum-eraser experiments such as the "simple quantum eraser" described above have straightforward classical-wave explanations. Indeed, it could be argued that there is nothing particularly quantum about this experiment". I find the non-simple quantum eraser experiments unconvincing myself. 

answered Mar 10, 2019 by John Duffield (-20 points) [ revision history ]

Nice references! They cannot measure the path of a single photon, only the mean path of a whole bunch of them. This matches the thermal interpretation, in which the mean path is an beable (now proved observable), while individual photon properties are not.

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\hbar$ysics$\varnothing$verflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...