Problem with the two slit experiment, Observing later

Hi TRoc,

Here we again...LOL!

I think we all agree that light waves (rays) do interact in the context of a steady
stream of continuous cyclical energy wave cycles. These can be identified as
constructive or destructive interference as energy waves interact in a phase relationship.

I believe that we were arguing that individual discrete "entity" photons do not interact because they are self contained unto themselves. That refers to your
definition of a single photon being:

If we were to perfectly inversely phase 2 opposing continuous laser beams, would they
cancel each other out? If so, where does the canceled energy go?


Do we really want to go there again?

Regards,
LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Dec 11 2006, 06:40 AM

Hi Laserlight and Confused2, Jal et al,

So we are seeing interference rings with dark areas of "cancellation" as in
a single slit Fraunhofer Diffraction Geometry experiment?

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html

See the "Single Slit Peak Intensities" window under "Intensity for Single Slit"
topic.

LL

Put a question clearly and indicate what you want from them instead of forcing me to "guess" without much luck. We are not talking "slits" here we are talking "apertures" .... "circular" slits if you like. It is fraunhofer diffraction through an "aperture".The source of this light must be diverged and is no longer incident normally on the Interference Crystal. See their illustration.

This picture shows how the diverged beams (not planar beams) have "tilted" the Ordinary ray away from the normal. That will increase the slant path of the O ray sufficiently to remove the zeroth Airy Ring... the one in the middle. It only needs a 5nm path lengthening to do that to completely suppress it.

The middle bright opaque disk will appear when you have a single source of light incident normally on a Interference Filter matched to the primary frequency. Tilt the crystal stage and that disk disappears. Both the E and the O ray cones of illumination are both tilted away from the normal by 1/2 the total angle between them to produce the rings. The bending of the E ray is due to the different refractive index of the rays along that direction of the crystal axis.

My understanding of these experiments is that you cannot have correlated photons that are each different in frequency. That means that each correlated photon is the same frequency as the other. I have no idea just what NIST is trying to say there. Parametric down-conversion producing entanglement involve "splitting" a single UV photon into two IR photons of the same frequency. All the sources (other than this particular NIST source you referred to) refer to two photons at "exactly" the same frequency and this frequency is each exactly 1/2 the primary frequency. This is by design and is an essential part of the experiment. There are no "thermal losses" in these entangled photon sources. My suggestion is this information is general information about what happens when you down-convert UV photons from a single source through a BBO crystal in general. The angle of the crystal can split the photons up into unequal packets (maybe one red and one blue for instance) but only equal packets will produce "entanglement" and that will occur at a pretty sharp "edge". What do you think? No claim about entanglement was made, just down conversion. Tunable lasers have been around for some time and this is the way you can do it by splitting the photons up into unequal fractions with a BBO? crystal and passing the light through a conventional prism giving you all the pretty colors. In that sense the article is only marginally related to the discussion. We should stay with entangled photons.

Assuming what I am saying is right, the double refraction treats the different frequencies of light differently ... by how much in BBO crystals I do not know but it seems it is quite a bit dispersing the frequencies over a spectrum as would occur with an ordinary prism. This is naturally an non-linear effect we can all appreciate. The entangled photons at a single frequency would necessarily be the one true resonant state in the crystal where photons are split symmetrically. This will produce the narrowest band of frequencies possible. Obviously there may be a residual spread at this "minimum" but many of the "spread" photons will constitute noise since the useful photons will need to be 100% entangled.

Cheers

Just because it may be dfficult to show that something is true does not prove that it is false.

Of single photon generation..
Single-photon detector characterization using correlated
photons: the march from feasibility to metrology

http://physics.nist.gov/Divisions/Div844/p...e_metrology.pdf

The above is the physics of particles and snooker tables .. no more, no less. Strangely it seems pumped BBO type II sources at NIST obey this rule (somewhat modified by the birefringent nature of the crystal) - it less easy to know what is going on elsewhere. Observer dependence?.. wishful thinking? .. who knows.

A non-BBO experiment..
http://www.roxanne.org/epr/experiment.html

Again the physics of the snooker table dictate matching of (angular) momentum. The EPR experiment as described is inherently performed with photons of different frequencies (energies).

I don't seem able to see the stream of continuous cyclical energy in quite the same way as everyone else. In fairness I didn't expect it to be quite that simple.

Best wishes, C2.

Good day ALL!
TRoc, my questions are being slowly answered. My model is helping me focus on the harder questions that are being sought in this thread. In the end it does not matter if my model is wrong or right. I’m searching for an answer…. How is the universe made/works.
I’ll use someone else words from a link provided by C2.
http://www.roxanne.org/epr/end.html

I want to add the following:
(Can we take a step backward?)
3. What we have is ONE MEASURING STICK. The speed of light.
4. What we have are problems that arise because of the way we measure (with experiments) what a photon is doing.
5. We do not have a clear/exact definition of a photon. This is reflected in the way we describe it. (Wave-like, particle-like, point-like, and even infinite)
That is a big big problem.
TRoc, your approach, might be a way out of the box that we find ourselves unable to get out.
I would like to investigate how a photon gets defined with your approach.
Can you download or give a link to a spreadsheet of your number crunching?
jal

Hi all,



LL,

The reason I "went there again" is because (as Jal also mentioned) this "conversation" will not get anywhere without the RE-DEFINING of what the term "photon" means. The historical "narrowing down" of the slits won't produce "single photons", and neither will "chopping up a laser beam".

No. You will burn up lasers, though.

As C2 says here, THERE ARE 10^19 "photons" per second from the laser. Where do THEY all go? That is the question someone needs to answer.

Don't forget: the laser is NOT entirely monochromatic either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrome

From the topic at hand:

Are these FILTERS of frequencies, or PRODUCERS of new frequencies? Doesn't PRODUCING a single frequency require a single electron transition?

WHY would these "filters" work at all, IF there were not OTHER FREQUENCIES PRESENT? This is a "702nm" laser: if there are no other "photon" frequencies present, then what is being filtered? Take another look, if you need to, at the manufacturers' specifications of ANY filters that you can find. They do NOT narrow it "cleanly" down to ONE frequency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_%28optics%29

The other thing, that apparently, no one realized right up front: the "media ready" 3 colored photo was NOT indicative of the real frequencies. This experiment was in THREE shades of RED. That's what I was talking about when I said this is only a 1/2 step up or down. Not enough to be a "different color".


Particles do not act this way.

C2 gave the same link (NIST) to show this NEW, preferred method of "photon" counting. This means ALL previous measurements and theories of "single photon" QM strangeness are ERROR prone. The DSE has been around a long time. Everything we are talking about (as far as trying to explain the variations in the experiment methods that have produce "strange" results) is based on the WRONG turn taken ~50 years ago (or ? yrs). It is these assumptions that mislead us today.

The laser BEAM is superimposed frequencies ("photons"). MEASURING them independently would REQUIRE the same number of detectors (electrons) to ALSO exist "in the same place and time"; THIS is IMPOSSIBLE (Exclusion Principle).

One electron CAN NOT measure TWO or more "photons", unless they are STILL the TOTAL energy that is resonant. If there is MORE energy present than is equal to the electrons' resonant state, IT (the excess energy) will NOT be measured. It gets dissipated into the lattice (matter).

When 2 equal halves combine to be resonant with a measuring electron, ONE "photon" (quanta of energy) is measured. Other evenly divisible (integers) quanta, and certain harmonic ratios, will SUM to equal the quanta being measured.

You can see that the ERRORS in counting can happen in BOTH directions. Sometimes, MORE "photons" are passing through, UNCOUNTED, and other times, these "partial photons" (beats) are not enough energy to bump the electron count.


Jal

Non-Local and Non-Separable means NO PHOTONS. (IMO)

Just vibrating electrons interacting with other vibrating electrons, according to the principles of Resonance that I have stated. A "field" type theory, with a new, complete explanation of what is Resonance. The integer approach of QM does NOT fully explain Resonance, and that is why QM has problems explaining things in a way that makes sense.


Take the examples (in many of the papers that have come up in this thread) of the THIRD harmonic generation. How does this quantity arise? Harmonics are either DOUBLE or HALF; so how does the fundamental, according to the limited QM explanation of Resonance, explain the 1.5 lower harmonic of 3? How did the 1.5 quantity come into existence, if we are limited to integer steps?

The simple mathematical problem is this: we KNOW that the relationship between wavelength and frequency is INVERSE. Wavelengths of 20, 10, 5, 2.5 , and 1.25 are harmonics. Their frequencies would be 14,989,622.9 , 29,979,245.8 , 59,958,491.6 , 119,916,983.2 , and 239,833,966.4 . The symmetry of the integer method is broken. The singularity is NOT avoided; the integer harmonics can never reach the fundamental value of ONE. HUGE gaps exist in the frequencies, that are not present in the spectrum of the atomic elements.

Next, you turn to the RATIO method. There is a problem there too. What is the inverse of an integer fraction? 1/4 becomes 4 , 1/3 becomes 3, 1/2 becomes 2, etc. Now, the problem is this: What are the harmonics (+/-) of 1/4? 1/2 and 1/8 . Again, we are headed for problems: we can never get to (or from) ONE. Yet we KNOW that the RATIOS are important for resonance. Think of your 1/2 wave, & 1/4 wave antennae.

We need an idea (for measuring a RESONANT SYSTEM) that meets ALL of these requirements. The inverse, the ratio, and the harmonics (1/2n & 2n), AND discreet quanta.

NON-LOCAL means no "singularity"; NON-SEPARABLE means no Zero.

Our measuring system, or math, needs to avoid ONE and ZERO, FIND the harmonics, "click" in discreet quanta, and work the same in BOTH directions (inverse symmetry).

The decimal system doesn't produce this naturally. 1, 10, 20, 30 are the "harmonics" of our number system; 1, 2, 4, 8 leaves "gaps" in measurements. Measurement with JUST this system will JUMP around unpredictably, or seemingly chaotic.

When the irrational value of 2^(1/12) is used, everything starts to fall into place. All that is needed then is a "starting value" that makes the resonant measurements agree with all of our empirical data.

In the end, all I have is the math. I can no more "prove, or disprove" individual "photons" than anybody else. Planck's hypothesis of h was for explaining the black body radiation curve. Einsteins' photoelectric equation was "heuristic". Neither one supported an individual "photon" theory.

In a few generations of having "simple math", the old QM superstitions will die away with the old "high priests".


This is the direction we need to go:

The Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics of Small Systems
HTTP://WWW.AIP.ORG/PT/VOL-58/ISS-7/P43.HTML


regards,

T.Roc

In case you have problems with the link.

try:

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-7/p43.html



T.Roc

This post has been edited by TRoc on Dec 11 2006, 09:55 PM

Hi Confused2,

I see your point and I understand where you are coming from. But there are two ways to see this problem. Alain Aspects derivation is a closed system and it works. I do not disagree with that. what I am saying is there are alternative explanations for the results. Hidden variables is one way to say it but actually it is the action of taking inner products which is not reversible that leads to the inability to recover the results which may be beyond the three dimensional "box"...
Projection Amplitudes going from linear to circularly polarized light
Once you do this you destroy any hope of finding any additional dimensional "elements". It is the result of the fact that the Lagrangian is self contained in three dimensional space. Naturally when a particle is not in "three dimensional space" it plays no part in this Lagrangian. It is now in the classical "quantum state"... where we know that no energy processes we are studying in three dimensions play any part. There are phenomena in wave theory that still can be seen but we cannot measure through their non-existent energy exchanges... any exchanges with them such as de Broglie matter waves are evanescent and cannot transfer a "test" photon unless the state is collapsed. This leads to such effects as quantum postulates such as "stationary states". Think of the "free Kondo Phantoms" which are "gratis" but dependent on the primary particle for existence. This is also the problem of virtual particles to a lesser extent. A mirror is a potential source of "virtual particles" yet is not "paid for" in terms of energy and momentum. Similarly higher dimensional D6 branes 'reflect" particles in the external environment.

The other point I would like to establish is that of Canonical Typicality. This relates particles within the framework of statistics that lead to individualism on a one on one basis yet leads to apparent randomness when dealt with in large numbers. Statistics cannot find or establish any Canonical Typicality in an ensemble of photons. That is just hte nature of statistics. Quantum Mechanics has never been shown to be mathematically complete... it is just an operational theory. This oversight has been know for quite a long time. if the Quantum Mechanist's could fix it don't you think they would have by now?

Let me make an analogy.... It is like trying to study birds flying in the sky by their shadows they cast on the ground. No matter what you do you cannot reconstruct the "birds" from their "shadows". This is because they are a projection.... An inner product.

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Dec 11 2006, 11:49 PM

Hi TRoc and Jal,

Lasers can be correlated spatially (but that does not necessarily mean entangled). Some experiments exist in the literature. You can then cause nodes to form over large areas of the experiment but not everywhere. The areas where you are unable to force cancellation of the waves will be the areas where anti-nodes will certainly exist and the laser will dump all the energy there. The intervening space the photons "jump" as seen in the Boyd Experiments and animations you have seen ad-nausium. This is equivalent to tunneling IMHO.

I really think that you still have the situation that for a single boson state (on the one wavefront) all photons create the same pattern and interfere with themselves (and not with any other photons). With separate lasers that are simply highly synchronized this forms one single cavity with larger nodes and anti-modes through beats. These standing patterns are not photons interfering with each other they are the property of the space and the cavity at that frequency. Just putting two lasers in line with each other "causes" the cavity (it is just geometry). You then need to switch the laser on... he he he!

Cheers

Ladies and gentlemen,

Just stopping by for a moment and wanted to summit a humble view of what I have read on the last few post.

I understand there is a need to know, Why?

But from my point of view you have tried to explain the why yet you have only conjectures until you can make predictions that will give you theory any validity.

You should understand by now that I would not offend anyone, but the truth be known nothing that I have read, has been looked at before by non professional and professionals in the field of optics.

If a theory has any merit then it can give not only cause, but prediction of results.

If it cannot then it is just a belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof. If you want to accomplish something of worth, I would humbly suggest that you find a way to make a prediction of the, double slit experiment and show what will happen instead of why you think it happens.

I just know those on this one post have the minds to achieve what ever they choose, with in reason of course.

I truly wish you the best, but you have to come up with something NEW and Predictive.

ciao_
yquantum

This post has been edited by yquantum on Dec 12 2006, 01:09 AM

Hi yquantum and all!

Heads I win... tails you lose.
The double slit experiment has the weirdness.
A new approach which would predict that the weirness does not exist would not be believed. It would be called wrong.
Even a new approach that would say that the weirdness is there would lose.
The "standard" theoretical approach predicts the "weirdness".
That is the only acceptable prediction.
see http://www.roxanne.org/epr/end.html
TRoc .... let's see your approach.
jal

Hello All,

Of interest, more info on the diffraction pattern that creates Airy disks.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials...photography.htm




http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/java/im...tion/index.html

I am a bit curious about the effect since it is normally associated with lenses in
microscopes, telescopes, and circular orifices when projected on a 2D surface.
Our camera in the experiment had the lens removed, and no orifice.
Perhaps the shape of the"beam itself", being a focused coherent
beam, acted as the "lens" mechanism and generated the Airy Rings.

In the experiment the central UV component of the beam (the Airy Disk) was
filtered out, which implies that a large component of the UV photons of the
applied UV laser beam must not have undergone down conversion. An Airy disk and
its rings are always "annularly" concentric according to what the demonstrations/
explanations indicate. I understand the issue of polarized divergent beams and
their "offset" from each other, but the central Airy disk, in each separate plane,
maintains its original UV spectrum.

I am also curious why only the Airy Rings are in the IR range, while no
component of the central Airy Disk itself is in the IR range.

Does anyone else see it this way too?



LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Dec 12 2006, 04:20 AM

Hi LL,

Looking at the movie from NIST ( NIST = National Institute for Standards and Technology see http://www.nist.gov/ ) http://physics.nist.gov/Divisions/Div844/f...Type2Movie.html it seems the predicted angle to the straight path at 700nm is about 3 degrees. Given the the path between BBO and film is 106 mm this suggests each ring is about 6mm at 700nm. With higher and lower frequency filters you get the big ring / small ring effect. Of course NIST could be wrong. Personally, at such a small deviation from the normal angle, I wouldn't expect the filters to be far off their claimed passband.

Is it possible that any UV that blasts through the BBO is effectively removed by the UV filter? - hence the UV does not make any contribution to the picture. If there is no IR matching the passband of the filter on the 'straight through' path then there would be no central disk. .. and we see no central disk.

The plot thickens.

Conservation of energy ( hf_UV = hf_1 + hf_2 ) suggests that if the wavelength of one photon is longer than 702nm then the other must be shorter than 702nm. Hence the problem with the bright bit where the rings overlap.

Best wishes,

C2.

Hi Laserlight, Confused2, Yquantum, Jal, TRoc et al,

The distance between the layers in an interference filter will equal a multiple (mostly one) wavenumber at the required frequency. Of course that is the perpendicular distance. This is not the case in this situation with diverged light.
Interference Filters: The Key to It All
The way I see the physical setup is something like this with all the cut-off filters and even the aperture removed.

Click on image to enlarge. I have dotted in the suppressed zeroth order airy disk. It has sufficient "tilt" to be more than 5nm longer than the cutoff bandwidth of the Interference filter. The stage is rotated so that the ordinary ray is "off to the left" and the extraordinary ray is "off to the right". The crystal axis is aligned so the images are displaced as shown. I hope this makes some sense. Notice I have used a converging lens to first converge the laser light to a point then to diverge it from that point onwards... The Airy disks are circles drawn such that the path length as shown by the sloping outside of the cones equal a multiple of the number of wavelengths inside the Interference Filter. The locus of equal paths are the two circles. You need to understand the optics as shown in the original supplied image to make some sense. The zeroth order disks are both suppressed since the outer edge of the dotted areas have longer paths than the straight through paths by being on the diagonal. Therefore destructive interference occurs. Only in the two "heavy" circles does constructive interference occur.

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Dec 12 2006, 01:40 PM

Hi GE,

I get the impression you feel the NIST movie is 'wrong' .. can you explain why?

Best wishes,

-C2.

Hi Confused2,

Not "wrong" just irrelevant. I have already explained that the NIST movie is not about "entangled" photons it is about parametric down conversion and tuning lasers polychromatically.
Earlier post by Good Elf with comment on NIST movies
BBO crystals are a "tool" that is used in more than one place. Entanglement is tested with pairs of matched photons... I think you are not reading the literature and becoming disoriented. You are wandering off the classic experiment and into other areas that are not related. We need to stick with one experiment at a time.

Cheers