Problem with the two slit experiment, Observing later

Hi Jal,

IMO, since there are 3 symmetrically spaced pinholes on a 2D (x,y) plane surface, and
considering that we are sampling a 3D wavefront with x, y, z coordinate
references at symmetrical "points" along the wavefront, it appears that the
equal geometric spacing of the holes are sampling the wavefunction by applying equal spacial "dimensional" separation. To simplify this, the holes are sampling
equal portions of the standing wavefront energy that are equally separated. This
"spacial" separation also represents a timing separation of the wave at the points
sampled.

IMO, this seems to indicate that the wave lengths along the wavefront are being
phase matched by the geometry of the holes. Instead of our standard 2D
Gaussian curve with the zero baseline along the x axis, this geometric
arrangement of the holes has established 3 overlapping Gaussian curves with their
zero baselines 120 degrees out of phase (a delta configuration), which matches
the sides of the equilateral triangle of the hole pattern. If you were only looking
at any 2 holes in any orientation, we should expect to see the normal interference
bars of the DSE. If you overlap the individual 2D Gaussian distributions at 120
degree offset angles to each other and combine their signals, the overlapping
signals should provide the interference pattern that is shown in the paper.

This is only my interpretation/opinion, and it could be very wrong or partially correct.

Other opinions and discussion welcomed.
LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jan 24 2007, 06:43 PM

Hi Laserlight!
We have just gotten over the weirdness of two slits.
Now we are into canceling superimposing etc. for three holes.
I suspect that this simple explanation is really complicated.
Would you not subscribe to a really,really simpler idea?
There is validity to my simple packing model.
jal

This post has been edited by jal on Jan 24 2007, 08:08 PM

Hi Jal,

Perhaps, but IMO your packing spheres model does't describe how or why
the packing relates to a propagating light wavefront. Can you provide a
simple and elegant verbal description to describe the relationship without
resorting to posting circle diagrams? If you can easily and simply explain
the phenomenon so that everyone can understand it, then I will certainly listen and
consider your conceptualization.


Regards,
LL

Laserlight!
I'm still stunned from seeing the 2d packing of photons.
There's discussions on cancellations that I think will help TRoc in his approach that will also shed light on why there is 2d packing.
I'm keeping an open mind with my model in the back of my mind as the final simplest explanation.
I eagerly await everyones analysis.
jal

Jal,

My intuition tells me that if the 3 holes were equally separated further apart that
the circles would get larger, and if the holes were spaced closer together that
the circles would get smaller. If true, what that infers is that the circle spacing is a
purely geometrical relationship that can uniformly set up overlapping interference
patterns that cancel or add according the 120 degree phase relationship established
by the holes. I know that GE will bring up the Airy rings and the relationship that
120 degree offsets offer to that overlap as presented by the circular apertures.

I am not sure that we are actually seeing any packing density, since the circles
are not physically touching each other, there is separation due to cancellation
effects.

IMO, if we cover any one of the holes, the Airy Rings will be seen in the same
baseline angle orientation as the line that exists between the remaining two holes.
Obviously, there must also be some vertical and horizontal wavefunction polarity
considerations that come into play that help determine where the cancellation
takes place, but the triangular geometrical relationship seems like the first order
issue here.

Regards,
LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jan 24 2007, 09:36 PM

Hi Laserlight et al,

That link .. http://www.nat.vu.nl/~tvisser/neweffects.pdf .. I can see there are a lot of new effects there.

That fig 1

That might be what Lisa's applet was all about .. http://www.hmi.de/bereiche/info/dualismus/exp.java_en.html .. but with the applet you can only see how the phases add up .. it doesn't actually tell you.

Equation (20)

Looks like .. if you took a point that was say 10 wavelengths from the first pinhole and 25 wavelengths away from the second pinhole then they'd add up in phase .. then try 25 wavelengths from the first pinhole and 10 wavelengths away from the second pinhole and that would be in phase too .. like the DSE equation but with pinholes.

One of the other works recently quoted points out that cancellation occurs between points where the wave goes flibber-flobber on one side and and flobber-flibber on the other .. a phase change of pi (or 180 degrees). Just like the ripple tank where you see a red peak next to a yellow peak with the cancellation between the two...

[ Sorry if I stoop to sarcasm .. I am (clearly) far from perfect. ]

Unfortunately Scouten,Visser and Wolf and Lisa's applet and the ripple tank and the DSE equation are all assuming continuous sinewave excitation.

The problem that puzzled Feynman and practically everyone else would seem to be .. How does a single photon do it? My feeling is that we have certainly collectively failed to explain and/or understand the problem .. let alone answer it.

I think even Good Elf would agree that the amount of information to be relayed back to the starting point would be prodigious .. depending on how accurately the pilot wave identifies the target. If we accept the possibility of a pilot wave then it would would seem to operating on the basis of continuous sinewave excitation .. how does it do that? My best stab at answering this would be a more careful examination of the way the path divides .. ie the analysis must start before the slits .. perhaps that is too dull.

A thousand or so posts ago I proposed lining a box with CD's and shining a light into it and seeing what came out through a hole in a face at 90 degrees to the point the light entered. Unfortunately it turns out that CD's are a lot mirror and not a lot diffraction grating .. if CD's were a bit more diffraction grating then I think it can be seen that the problem would be beyond the power of the greatest of our supercomputers .. yet intuitively I think we can see that a photon would solve the problem 'instantly' .. can we asses the amount of information required to 'solve' such a problem.. all with continuous sinewave excitation?

IMHO the DSE gives one of the best shots at understanding what is actually happening in reality .. if I'm the only one left feeling "I know nothing" then so be it for the present.

Best wishes,

-C2.

Hi C2!

Just because we can mathematically reduce any photon to many composite waves, does it mean that the actual photon can be so reduced? Is a photon made up of an irreducible number of waves? Do we have the equipment to test it out and observe?
Due to technological restraints, do we have to live with a photon being a “packet of waves”?
The following might help answer or not.
http://departments.colgate.edu/physics/fac...les/Absence.pdf
Existence and Absence of Geometric Phases Due to Mode
Transformations of High-Order Modes
Enrique J. Galvez and Megan A. O'Connell

jal

Hi C2,

I think that the idea of a single propagating photon is somewhat incorrect in that
it assumes that an electron only makes a single transition from steady state to
excited state and back to steady and ends at that point. It seems that this is
improbable to only consider only a single electron step transition when
energy is applied to an atom. It is more likely that the atom/electron makes
millions/billions of oscillations, depending upon the amount and frequency of energy
applied to energize the atom which results in a continuous sequence of energy
pulses, each of which is a component of the continuous photon wave energy being
released. The question immediately arises, is the notion of a photon a single EM
pulse, or a stream of sequential EM pulses of finite duration, commonly called a
ray but which is really an expanding EM wavefront of overlapping, partially
coherent, frequency events? Then one must also consider that other
nearby atoms in any excited matter matrix must also be acting the same but with
slightly different timing and phase relationships relative to the lead "pilot" photon
pulses. If so, an EM wavefront is a phase progressive series of individual and
nearly coherent photon EM wavelet sequences.

If the above is true, then what is considered a single photon is really an energy
pulse of some finite duration, with lead timing wavelets, followed by a buildup of
bulk energy wavelets that exponentially peak at some maximum intensity level
and then exponentially "decay" until the last wavelet energy oscillations tail off and
end. So the size of a photon might better be considered the time duration and
intensity of a photon.

Individual EM pulses (photons) will have a different timing, phase, and origination
point relationship from those that come before and after. If standing waves are
established in the cavity in front of the slits (a question that I raised about 4-5 pages ago) then that might have some bearing on the phase relationship of subsequent photons as they enter the slits.

Edit added: Jal, I think you and I are in agreement on your comment about
how far a single photon can be "reduced". What is a single photon?

Other comments, opinions welcomed.

LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jan 25 2007, 12:20 AM

Laserlight!

Two holes do not make Airy rings ???

Which implies that even though we can calculate that an electron gives off a specific wave/energy level that there is more to the photon than that ONE energy level. (a packet of energy???)
I wonder????
jal

Jal,

Of course they do, but the 3 hole layout geometry and the interference patterns
are the primary issues, IMO.

It would seem logical that a "photon" pulse could be divided all the way down to
one single sinewave transition, a wavelet, of some low energy intensity level.

LL

Calling for TRoc
jal

Hi Confused2, Laserlight, Aerohead, TRoc, Fivedoughnut, Yquantum, Neil et al,

I am as surprised as anyone about this information. I only wish I knew about it years ago. What I now realize is the significance of this theory is to particle creation... not the full significance... some of the significance. What we must all realize is the solutions that Taco Visser supply are two dimensional and the real world is three dimensional. It just so happens that the symmetry of our Universe (for highly symmetric situations) provide very symmetric answers to the many of the questions we ask. One very simple example are the "linear" equations of motion (in a plane) seem to closely represent motion in our real complex world. It is less useful to "capture" the complex relationships that three dimensions of a real world provide unless we really need to such as the influence of large masses relative to the mass of the Earth, the variation in gee with altitude and density and volumetric distribution and three dimensional non-inertial modifications to the path in space to break that simple symmetry. The underlying principle remains but it requires some discernment to understand just what the simplification really means.

Confused2 asks what about what happens before the slits?... well obviously if you look at Visser's animations (see my link previously) the process at the slits starts well before the slits., even on the other side of the slits, and this is part of just the "one slit problem". The animation does not show the "evolution of the defects in time but the way the defects multiply, divide and migrate for a large number of "constant" slit width and wavelengths at just that one frequency. The two dimensional analysis only looks at that single slit as a source of the phenomenon (this is not a real world just as the simplification to only two dimensions is not real either but a solution based on the symmetry as noted above. The next obvious extension to this process is one that extends to global space not to a single slit. The theory is not "just about slits" it is the behavior of electromagnetic waves at whatever frequency and at whatever scale. Separate nodes and anti-nodes occur at all excitation frequencies and we only see one wavelength and one slit width when in fact in our real world there are many sources and many slits and many different wavelengths of photons. Naturally it is scale dependent but it is a general principle starting at any source such as the original laser that excited to slit in the first place as well as the space between the ends of the resonant laser tube and then extending between the tube (through the slit of the end of the Laser) into the space between the laser and the spatial filter near the apparatus (another slit) and then into the space beyond that to the double slit (more slits... etc).

It is very important not to confuse people with inexact terminology and there is a tendency to unlearn everything here and I already see "unraveling" going on. Laserlight is speaking about "rays" and other concepts that have no place here, exact terms please. The idea that a single atom emitting "rays of photons"... all of that is not very helpful since you have no evidence of this. A single photon is emitted by a single atom during a single transition.. that is all (look back at virtual photons). Do not claim Visser is telling you to do it. What seems to be the issue is the concept of "coherence" you referenced and indications that show that coherence between "rays" occurs on the basis on mixing theorems demonstrated in the paper of Visser (superposition etc.). This is not an "optical" ray but spatial coherence between individual photons (which we agree seeks all paths ... on both sides of a slit by spreading.. all photons fill the same physical spaces) which does indeed occur especially if this mixing is occurring. So "rays" are privileged points/lines in the "fields" only in relation to other points/lines. Remember each photon seeks all paths (therefore... as you have also previously mentioned... a single photon passes both slits so it interferes with itself... that has not changed)... it does not travel along rays but there are points along mirror planes where this photon superposition leads to symmetry between individual photons and correlation. These photons are co-moving in the same spaces and not along so called rays.


I do not want to get too technical since once I start to do that everyone loses the plot and suddenly we are back into chaos. This is no time for thinking outside the box. We have a lot more unanswered questions and little very little experimental data to go on before we truly understand what is the next task. Just process accurately and coherently the information at hand using unambiguous terms. This is not "fairyland" or "quantum weirdness" but electromagnetism and everything is logical and you have sufficient maths between you all to make sense of this.

What Jal has said about Berry (Geometric) Phase is very true. We have discussed this previously and you are forgetting much in between. Jal is trying to remind us all here. It also must be remembered that Berry Phase is path sensitive ... very path sensitive. Remember the relativistic wagon wheel and the way there is time dilation and length contraction tied to that refractive index. Refractive index is another way about describing the speed of light "externally" to "outside observers".... consider "dimensions" and "speed" inside a block of glass ... check it out with parallax and distances. No glass here but the local speed of light has changed and "empty" space is behaving like glass. You have much to pick up with simple "Berry Phase". This goes further to the incidence of "slow light" and the way bosons move inside that space.



Very Important Point: What you are learning here is in addition to what we already know not instead of what you already know.

Remember the thread is about "Problem with the two slit experiment... Observing later" That last bit "observing later" is just as critical now as before. It is tied to Wheeler Feynman Absorber Theory and related to events and how we can determine them. Without "events" and a way to compare them you really do not know if you are going back in time or forward in space... or both. Everyone keep a grip on thing please... I am only warning all of us here since this is a crucial area not to completely foul yourselves up. The difference between a scientist and a total crackpot is in this "detail".

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Jan 25 2007, 01:36 AM

Hello all

After reading T.D. Visser's papers about the vortex action of the power pointing vectors, I recalled reading something similar about "super lenses". See what you think.
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/Ge...=cvips&gifs=yes
http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~shvetsgr/lens.html
http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/te.../mg18624975.400
There are plasmons here.
http://boss.solutions4theweb.com/Zhang_tal...pictures__1.pdf

Is the evanescent waves being generated by the slits part of the solution?

GE,

You are correct...I actually thought about whether to use ray or beam ...from my old radar days...in retrospect "beam" or wavefront would have probably been
more descriptive to describe a type of expanding "light cone".

Re: a single atom oscillating

Visser had nothing to do with it. It is self evident.. most energy systems have
some longevity aspect of continuous energy emission, like a nebula that radiates
a continuous output of light, or a picture that imprints on our memory.
Discrete, individual photons (like a cosmic "ray") occur so fast that without
specialized equipment they are nearly non-detectable.

Humans, and most detection equipment, observe energy patterns of extended
duration that imprint "pictures" on our consciousness. We are creatures that can
recognize patterns (pattern recognition) which stems from long term images provided by a continous stream of energy. We cannot process individual bits of
information that does not describe some pattern and make sense of it.

Single atoms combine their outputs to generate energy patterns that humans and
higher lifeforms can relate to. We are the culmination of billions of years of
adaptation and survival and our senses are finely tuned to natural events that
occur around us, even if we don't completely understand them. But our consciousness relys on pattern recognition not discrete, one off, random events.

Atoms and electrons oscillate in the presence of energy that is applied to them,
and energy has time relevance/duration. If you look at an orange, you are seeing
the energy of light stimulating the surface atoms of that orange and you see the
very finest of details of that orange. If you were to take an SEM of that orange
and zoom to 50KX power you would see the fine details of those oscillating
surface atoms as they respond to the electrons impinging upon their surface and
observe the finest details of that orange. The surface atoms of the orange
respond to the energy that interacts with them, and they oscillate continuously to
any energy applied to them.

IMO, you are either misinterpreting my discussion or misrepresenting my intention
of trying to simplify the discussion so that anyone can understand it on the
layman's level. Not everyone is a scientist or physicist and the discussion should
accomodate everyones comprehension level, within reason. If something is wrong
it is wrong, but please do not presume that everyone who reads this thread is
at your educational or professional level. To do so seems ostentatious and
counterproductive, IMO.

I suggest that we attempt to provide information so that anyone can easily
understand what we are proposing, otherwise we are not including everyone who
has an interest in this topic/subject.

Comments welcomed,
LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jan 25 2007, 04:01 AM

Hi Laserlight,

You are right. Not everyone reading this needs this level of information and I am restricting freedom of expression.I apologize.

Cheers