[General] Can a single indivisible photon interfere?

[Andrew Meulenberg]

Dear Chandra,

In your slides #4 & 5, you talk of a push-pull process in photo-absorption:

"A remarkably low flux of EM field energy passes through an atomic
volume! Some very complex process lies behind the delivery of
amount of energy for the transfer of a photo electron from one state to
another, which QM has not succeeded in explaining, or modeling!"

I use two models that I have not seen in the literature. Perhaps you have.

   1. Anomalous dispersion provides large but finite variations in
   dielectric constant (refractive and absorption index) at resonance
   (absorption edge) frequencies.
   - on the atomic, rather than in the bulk material, scale, I would expect
      to see much greater extremes because there is not the 'averaging' and
      'loss' mechanisms associated with surrounding, non-absorbing, atoms.
      - For an absorber, with the bound electron(s) in the correct phase
      relationship, a very high refractive index (low velocity of light) will
      focus an incoming photon, as would a graded refractive index (Grin) lens.
      - Thus, a photon, which is very large relative to the atom. will
      suddenly shrink in the resonator 'lens'.
      2. .In a model from Feynman's Lectures, a portion of the incident
   photon (wave) is scattered by the atom and destructively interferes with
   the rest of the photon (wave).
   - alternatively, the absorber electron(s) is stimulated and reradiates
      energy at the frequency and phase necessary to cancel the EM energy that
      would otherwise bypass the absorber.
      - (not mentioned by Feynman) the reradiation process acts as an
      optical delay and thus reduces the speed of light in the
      absorption/scattering region. This provides a mechanism for the local
      change in refractive index.
      3. For an absorber atom in bulk material, an incident photon (wave)
   is partially absorbed and reradiated by all the atoms in the influence
   region of the EM excitation.
      - again, the (most) resonant absorber will provide the highest
      refractive index / absorption coefficient region to focus and capture the
      reradiated energy.
      - Here, and in 2, the EM energy is not configured as a free photon.
      It is interacting with its non-scattered self and/or with the surrounding
      oscillators. It is a complex field in a nearly loss-free environment. If
      not sufficiently absorbed, the EM energy/momentum will
'reassemble' (with a
      time delay related to the refractive index of the environment) and the
      photon will move on (not necessarily along its original path).

Looking at the reverse process - photo-emission - is instructive for what
is going on inside and about the atom during photo-absorption. The
mathematics does not help much here. Physical mechanisms must be explored.

Both items 2 & 3 depend on scattered light interacting with the unscattered
light and changing its characteristics. In 3, there is matter in which to
sum (absorb or reradiate) the wave energies. This is not the case for 2, So
Feynman was a bit glib about how the small cross-section of the absorber
(relative to the photon size) was able to reradiate enough energy to cancel
the rest of the photon. Nevertheless, he showed the mathematics of wave
cancellation in a vacuum environment. Perhaps in a later course he expanded
on this process.

Andrew M.
___________________
On Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 5:56 PM, Roychoudhuri, Chandra <
chandra.roychoudhuri at uconn.edu> wrote:

> Hello Everybody: Here is a potentially new “thread” for debate for our
> community.
>
> “Can a single indivisible photon interfere?”
>
> My answer is a strong “No”.
>
>
>
> I just presented this paper at the OSA Annual meeting last week, held  at
> Washington, DC. It was well accepted by many.
>
> It is only an 11-slide presentation. However, it experimentally
> demonstrates that, for Superposition Effect to emerge, we must have the
> simultaneous presence of two physical signals carrying two physically
> different phase information incident on the opposite sides of the
> beam-combiner of a two-beam Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The superposition
> effect emerges as purely a classical effect facilitated by the dielectric
> boundary of the beam combiner (classical light-matter interaction; no QM).
> The energies in the two superposed beams can have any value, no lower limit
> like “h-nu”. Thus, single photon interference is causally and physically an
> untenable logic, in my view point.
>
>
>
> The experiment also underscores that the postulate of the “Wave-particle
> duality”, is completely unnecessary for EM waves. In fact, the Copenhagen
> Interpretation becomes more logical and causal without this postulate. The
> QM formulation is essentially correct. We do not need to degrade it by
> imposing non-causal postulates.
>
> In the past, I have also proposed an experiment to validate that for
> “particle interference”, we also need pairs of out-of-phase particles to
> nullify the stimulation of the detector molecule to generate “dark fringes”.
>
>
>
> Chandra.
>
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