Analysis of single-photon self-interference in Young’s double-slit experiments
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...
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Published in | Results in optics Vol. 9; p. 100281 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Elsevier B.V
01.12.2022
Elsevier |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | 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. |
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ISSN: | 2666-9501 2666-9501 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.rio.2022.100281 |