Quantum mechanics survives triple-slit photon test

[drwayne]

Interesting article over at Ars Technica. (It doesn't excerpt well)

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/201 ... t-test.ars

 

[Mee_n_Mac]

Let me try to summarize what I take from it ... y'all let me know if I butcher it.

They observed the interference pattern from a triple slit experiment, built up 1 photon at a time. It was the superposition of the patterns you'd get from doing the 3 independant dual slit experiments, the 3 dual slits being left + center, center + right, left + right. This was the 1'st experimental verification of Max Born's prediction ??

 

[emperor_of_localgroup]

Let me try to summarize what I take from it ... y'all let me know if I butcher it.

They observed the interference pattern from a triple slit experiment, built up 1 photon at a time. It was the superposition of the patterns you'd get from doing the 3 independant dual slit experiments, the 3 dual slits being left + center, center + right, left + right. This was the 1'st experimental verification of Max Born's prediction ??

That was exactly my immediate conclusion after reading the thread , then the link does not offer much info on the outcome of this experiment.

First of all, this is an interesting experiment, why curious physicists after double-slit confusion have not tried this triple slit experiment before?

My guess is
a) when one slit is blocked, they'll observe interference pattern from the other 2 slits.
b) They will see 3 different interference patterns (with 1 slit blocked) depending on separations of 2 unblocked slits.
c) when all 3 slits are open, they will observe superposition of 3 interference patterns from 3 sources as pointed out by Mac above.

What I want to know is
a) What happens when a detector is placed behind a slit to confirm passing of a photon?
Will there be an interference pattern of 2 slits? Or
All interference pattern will vanish?? If this happens, physicists have a lot of explaining to do.

 

[captdude]

Thanks for sharing that article. Very thought provoking. The dual slit experiment is what started it all for me. Reading about that experiment is what sent me down the quantum rabbit hole in search of schrodinger's cats and kittens. I find that experiment, along with quantum entanglement, Bose Einstein condensate and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle as proof that the cosmo's we know and understand is but the tip of a far larger iceberg that lays hidden beneath the waves of higher dimensions.

 

[darkmatter4brains]

Here's the paper on the experiment:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.4787