Re: Why do we observe double slit interference?

From: Oz (oz_at_farmeroz.port995.com)
Date: 09/14/04 

Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:13:00 +0000 (UTC)



Peter Shor <peterwshor@aol.com> writes
>I don't think this really answers the question. The speed of light in
>air is slightly (0.03%) less than the speed of light in a vacuum. This
>means that even when the photons aren't scattering, they're still
>interacting with the air. But this interaction doesn't seem to affect
>the double slit experiment much. Why not? Would the double slit experiment
>work in water or glass, which have much higher indices of refraction but are
>still pretty transparent? Why? Anyone have an answer?

My answer would be considered as cranky.

I don't (any longer) believe in photons as existing in a beam of light.
I think its just a maxwellian field (ok with spin), the quantum
behaviour arises because all detectors are quantised (typically
requiring jumping an energy gap).

So there never is any question of 'which slit did the photon go through'
because as a field, it can and will go through both.

That said this isn't actually very much help because all emitters and
all detectors are quantised, you never see light in any other way. So
what you are talking about when you want to understand light is really
the behaviour of an emitter and a detector. Understanding how one (or
more) complex quantised emitters affect another (or more) complex
quantised detectors is a whole different ball game. For that you need
some to very heavyweight theory and mathematics. Pretty scary very
often, too.

Because typically emitters and detectors are not very simple things.

In fact physicists delight in dreaming up ever more devious, complex and
useful ones just to make light hugely annoyed and pissed off with them.

--
Oz
This post is worth absolutely nothing and is probably fallacious.

BTOPENWORLD address about to cease. DEMON address no longer in use.
>>Use oz@farmeroz.port995.com<<
ozacoohdb@despammed.com still functions.

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