Double slit experiment

The essential features of the particle-wave duality are clearly illustrated by Young s double-slit experiment. In order to explain all of the observations of this experiment, light must be regarded as having both wave-like and particlelike properties. Similar experiments on electrons indicate that they too possess both particle-like and wave-like characteristics. The consideration of the experimental results leads directly to a physical interpretation of Schrodinger s wave function, which is presented in Section 1.8. 

Figure 1.8 Diagram of Young s double-slit experiment.

Young s double-slit experiment and the Stem-Gerlaeh experiment, as described in the two previous sections, lead to a physical interpretation of the wave function associated with the motion of a particle. Basic to the concept of the wave function is the postulate that the wave function contains all the... 

If the motion of a particle in the double-slit experiment is to be represented by a wave function, then that wave function must determine the probability density P(x). For mechanical waves in matter and for electromagnetic waves, the intensity of a wave is proportional to the square of its amplitude. By analogy, the probability density P(x) is postulated to be the square of the absolute value of the wave function (x)... 

Figure 3.1 (a) Schematic diagram (not to scale) of Young s double-slit experiment. The narrow slits acts as wave sources. Slits S and S2 behave as coherent sources that produce an interference pattern on screen C. (b) The fringe pattern formed on screen C could look like this. (Reproduced with permission from R. A. Serway Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics, 3rd ed, 1990, Saunders, Figure 37.1.)... 

It is observed in Young s double-slit experiment with electrons by Tonomura and coworkers that single electrons observed as dots on the detector screen are accumulated in time to show interference fringes delocalized over the screen [45]. When... 

There is a direct analogy with the fringe pattern that is seen in a Young s double slit experiment, in which the diffraction pattern from two slits produces periodic fringes whose spacing varies inversely with the separation of the slits. The oscillations can also be interpreted in terms of the distortions of the reflected wavefronts in Fig. 7.2 at the Rayleigh angle (Atalar 1979). 

Figure 3. Double-slit experiment in de Broglie causal picture.

J. and M. Andrade e Silva [7] in the early 1980s. The basic idea relates to a variant of the Young double-slit experiment where a 0 wave produced by an independent incoherent source is mixed to the usual two coherent waves, producing a blurring of the interference pattern. A sketch of this conceptual three-slit experiment is shown in Fig. 8. 

C. Dewdney, A. Kyprianidis, and J. P. Vigier, Causal non-local interpretation of the double slit experiment and quantum statistics, Epistemol. Lett. 36, 71 (1984). 

Sofar the imaging results of Fig. 3.1 were discussed in very classical terms, using the notion of a set of trajectories that take the electron from the atom to the detector. However, this description does not do justice to the fact that atomic photoionization is a quantum mechanical proces. Similar to the interference between light beams that is observed in Young s double slit experiment, we may expect to see the effects of interference if many different quantum paths exist that connect the atom to a particular point on the detector. Indeed this interference was previously observed in photodetachment experiments by Blondel and co-workers, which revealed the interference between two trajectories by means of which a photo-detached electron can be transported between the atom and the detector [33]. The current case of atomic photoionization is more complicated, since classical theory predicts that there are an infinite number of trajectories along which the electron can move from the atom to a particular point on the detector [32,34], Nevertheless, as Fig. 3.2 shows, the interference between trajectories is observable [35] when the resolution of the experiment is improved [36], The number of interference fringes smoothly increases with the photoelectron energy. 

Therefore, for the Young double-slit experiment we get finally... 

Figure 1.7 In Young s double slit experiment, light passes through one slit and then into two slits. The patterns produced by the light proved that light travels as waves rather than particles.

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