[General] Can a single indivisible photon interfere?

Wed Sep 27 05:58:30 PDT 2017

Hi Chandra

I have read your presentation.

Maybe I am missing something, but I don’t currently see how this experiment in any way precludes the concept of light quanta (photons).

The action of the BC can also be explained if light is in the form of photons.

In order to have the detected signal as shown, there would be so many of the light quanta that it is quite reasonable to assume that two would arrive simultaneously at opposite sides of the BC with a phase relationship which would activate the BC in the manner observed.

What do you think I am missing?

Chip

From: General [mailto:general-bounces+chipakins=gmail.com at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] On Behalf Of Roychoudhuri, Chandra
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2017 4:43 PM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion <general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org>
Subject: Re: [General] Can a single indivisible photon interfere?

Andrew: 

You are accepting the traditional “particle” philosophy as the final knowledge for light that was started erroneously by Einstein since he wanted to “dare” Planck as a young kid. Planck, the original father of “quanta of light hν”, said in his 1913 book that only the absorptions and emissions are quantized during energy transfer. However, the emitted light packets diffractively diffuse within the blackbody cavity to establish steady-state EM energy density. 

Einstein’s brilliance was in noticing the “quantumness” in the data for the photoelectric effect – below certain frequency, no electrons are released. However, instead of tying that quantumness to the universal binding energies of electrons in atoms, molecules and solids (quantum mechanical resonant dipole frequency), he assigned it to the classical wave packets of EM waves. [Please, see again my derivation of “Photoelectric equation using modern QM principle.]  

Had Einstein assigned this newly discovered quantumness to the electrons, he would have invented Quantum Mechanics some 20 years earlier in Einsteinian version. Then, we would not have been going through 112 years’ of, and counting, divisive debates as to “what are light quanta” and a sustained retardation in the progress in Physics.

By the way, Einstein did say, shortly before his death that, in spite of 50 years’ of brooding over “what are light quanta”, he still was confused. It is this statement, which has inspired me to create the SPIE forum (now closed) and this on-going web-forum. This is one of the key reasons that we should conceptually challenge the prevailing acceptance of “indivisible light quanta”; in spite of all the follow-on theories quantizing classical EM waves. 

This is why I have proposed: Photons are transient but real physical entities, which facilitate the quantum mechanically released energy packets to evolve into classical wave packets. This makes fundamental QM as a correct theory. Dirac’s “a” and “a-dagger” are nothing more than quantum mechanical transitions experienced by quantum dipoles. 

Let us recognize that the field of optical science and engineering could not have emerged and thrived for centuries without the classical Huygens-Fresnel diffraction integral and Maxwell’s wave equation. No optical scientist or engineers have figured out how to propagate “indivisible light quanta” to design diverse optical instruments, interferometers, fiber optic propagation modes, etc., etc. So, I have more faith in optical engineering tools than accepting the unnecessary postulate of “indivisible light quanta”. 

The interferometer experiment that I have presented, clearly shows that the superposition effect could be completely classical depending upon the optical arrangement and the detection method used. By the way, this is a routine experiment that is being done by innumerable students around the world since the availability of coherent laser beams. The classical dielectric boundary of the beam-combiner re-directs energy from one beam to the other; and both the beams must be physically present simultaneously. So, an “indivisible light quanta” cannot generate this interference effect. In this set up, theoretically and experimentally, you do not need the postulate of  the “minimum quantum of energy” until you bring in a modern quantum detector. Only a quantum detector needs to absorb a discrete amount of energy hν. Classical dielectric boundary does not suffer from this limitations!

Sincerely,

Chandra.

From: General [mailto:general-bounces+chandra.roychoudhuri=uconn.edu at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Meulenberg
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2017 4:40 PM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion <general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org <mailto:general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org> >
Subject: Re: [General] Can a single indivisible photon interfere?

Chandra,

Does not the Lorentz contraction make the photon appear to be a zero-length object?

Andrew

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 12:59 PM, Roychoudhuri, Chandra <chandra.roychoudhuri at uconn.edu <mailto:chandra.roychoudhuri at uconn.edu> > wrote:

Chip: Good luck in your approach to model electron.

While my cerebral eyes are quite blind to the detailed “looks’ of electrons; I think I am seeing the photons a bit better, at least for now.

Photons are transient entities satisfying both the nineteenth century Quantum Mechanics (quantum transitions) and the seventeenth century wave mechanics proposed by Huygens (in contrast to Newton). 

Yes, the wave-particle duality is that old (started during around the third quarter of 1600). However, Newton and Huygens understood that their “quarrel” on the “wave-particle duality” was due to both of their ignorance about the deeper nature of light. Unfortunately, the fathers of our QM formalism declared “wave-particle duality” as the new knowledge to hide our deeper ignorance. Bohr was “Hell Bent” to [prove that QM formalism was “Complete” and successfully defeated Einstein in the famous Bohr-Einstein debate!  However, Einstein was an eternal enquirer like a true scientists, critiquing effectively all of his successful theories. Nature is not mischievous. She does not play “duality” or “non-causality” games with us. Those are just our over-confidence on the human invented mathematical logics; which are not god’s logics. 

However, maths are the best “slide calipers” for us to keep modeling nature iteratively with many different starting postulates. We must keep our enquiring minds alert constantly.

Chandra.

From: General [mailto:general-bounces+chandra.roychoudhuri <mailto:general-bounces%2Bchandra.roychoudhuri> =uconn.edu at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org <mailto:uconn.edu at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org> ] On Behalf Of Chip Akins
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2017 12:16 PM
To: 'Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion' <general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org <mailto:general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org> >

Subject: Re: [General] Can a single indivisible photon interfere?

Hi Wolf and Chandra

While my conjecture for the formation of elementary fermions and “photons” works quite well to explain the properties of electrons and the forces of nature, it still does not mean that a “photon” does not evolve into a propagating wavepacket after emission.

My current belief is that the photon exists as a particle which exhibits wave-like properties due to its configuration and topology, and does not evolve into a different topology once emitted.

But I agree with Chandra regarding the fact that a photon cannot be emitted unless there is a dipole field involved. The emission of radiation in accelerators is caused by the interaction of the accelerating field with the electron.  A lone charged particle cannot emit a photon, there must be a dipole to create a photon, and there must be a dipole to absorb energy from a photon.  So this limits the conditions under which emission and absorption can occur.

The reaction of an electron in a double slit experiment is not strictly due to the electron interfering with itself, but rather due to the interaction of the electron’s fields with the fields of the particles in the double slit mask.  So the topology of the mask, and its dimensions, have a pronounced effect on the detected pattern.

If this is the case with electron double slit experiments, it is likely also the case with photon double slit experiments.

I finally have a pretty good understanding of how to model this, so I will start working on a double slit simulation in MATLAB.  It will be interesting to see how well the predicted behavior from my model agrees with the observed behavior for electron and photon double slit experiments.

Once this is done correctly, if the predicted does not agree with the observed for the photons, then we have to consider the possibility that the photon is not what I think it is.

I have already done some checking on the electron model and double slit behavior, and that works out quite well so far.

Will keep you posted.

Chip

From: General [mailto:general-bounces+chipakins=gmail.com at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] On Behalf Of Wolfgang Baer
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2017 12:51 AM
To: general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org <mailto:general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org> 
Subject: Re: [General] Can a single indivisible photon interfere?

I've been on your side of this issue for a long time since I further believe the near field effects and resonant absorbers unknown when Qm was first postulated show the small point absorption of an atome for a spread out wave is a likely explanation for the photon postulate. However Chip is makeing some interesting arguments for a self confining Em propagation, how self confined photons then explain the double slit interference without the quantum baggage is then always a problem. 

Of course your argument that more than one photon is necessary for interference in a Mach Zender setup is perfectly correct but experiments are always done with a beam so photons interfere with each other - I do not know if single photon MZ experiments have ever been done 

Your slide on Einstein - I wonder if quantum effects are in fact confined to the material of the instruments that are infact the Hilbert space?

wolf

Dr. Wolfgang Baer
Research Director
Nascent Systems Inc.
tel/fax 831-659-3120/0432
E-mail wolf at NascentInc.com <mailto:wolf at NascentInc.com> 

On 9/25/2017 2:56 PM, Roychoudhuri, Chandra 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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