4 ms·
You are asking that the screen be moved back to the slits - less than a slit-slit distance away. The wave aspect of the EM field remains downstream of the slit
by wrycoder 5y ago
You are asking that the screen be moved back to the slits - less than a slit-slit distance away.
The wave aspect of the EM field remains downstream of the slits. The photon aspect is only exhibited at the screen.
There may be no such images, because it’s not interesting to observe two bright spots. There has to be enough path length difference to allow the phase difference causing the interference. Think about the classical case.
The mystery is not the interference, it’s that the photon density at the screen tracks the predicted interference pattern, even if they arrive at one per second.
Bohm’s pilot wave theory has an explanation for this.
- russellbeattie 5y ago> There may be no such images, because it’s not interesting to observe two bright spots. *Seriously?* There are an unlimited amount of uninteresting pictures on the internet, but no one has bothered to take a picture of a fundamental claim of quantum mechanics because it's so trivial as to be boring? Really??
- aeternum 5y agoYou can do the experiment yourself with a laser pointer and two slits.
- russellbeattie 5y agoLOL. See paragraph #2 of my original post. Thank you so much.
- aeternum 5y agoIf you try it yourself and continue moving the 'screen' closer towards the two slits, the wave pattern will eventually disappear and you will have the two 'piles' of photons you refer to. There's nothing like testing it yourself in 'real life' if you remain unconvinced.
- russellbeattie 5y agoOhh. If this is true, I won't just apologize, I'll send you flowers. Looking into it now.