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No, in a particle model there could be no interference pattern. That is the whole point. You can do the experiment - and it has been done - with a single photon
by jeremyjh 7y ago
No, in a particle model there could be no interference pattern. That is the whole point. You can do the experiment - and it has been done - with a single photon and you still get interference.
- platz 7y agoYou've misunderstood my point.
- jeremyjh 7y agoMaybe so, but this sentence: "interference pattern emerges as a property of the whole collection of individual photon strikes." Is incorrect and seems to miss the whole point of the experiment. We don't need a "whole collection" to get interference, we can see it with one photon. If that doesn't mean the wave function is real, how else can it be explained?
- platz 7y agoThere is both the "interference pattern" on the target wall made by individual photons over time, which we can directly observe, and the interference of the photon's wavefunction with itself, which we cannot directly observe. I was referring to the former. We know the photon interferes with itself, via the wavefunction as you describe, but this interaction is entirely unobservable and invisible to us, and in that sense, we don't understand the ontological status of the wavefunction and what it's physical status is.
- jeremyjh 7y agoSorry, what is it we cannot observe in the latter? We see the pattern on the screen. Do you mean we cannot observe the interference that leads to that pattern? That is quite right since the only way to see a photon is to bounce it off of something.