From: xjeldc@lustorfs.ldc.lu.se (Jan Engvald LDC)
Subject: Wave/particle duality
Summary: Not EITHER particles OR waves, but simultaneously BOTH
Keywords: photon,particle,dual slits,interference,quantum waves
Organization: Lund University
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 11:54:48 GMT

In article <BuDIn8.C6J@nntp-sc.Intel.COM> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com
 (Blair P. Houghton) writes:

>That is, they are particle-like in that they occupy small
>regions of space and time; they are wave-like in that they
>interfere.  Their waveness has nothing to do with whether
>they are waves or not, since it's a waveness of their
>aggregate distribution, not of individual particles.  They
>interfere even though they occupy small regions of space
>and time but very rarely occupy the same region of space
>and time (in particular, they very rarely occupy the
>slits or the detectors simultaneously).

>Feynman goes on about how he's mystified by the incredible
>things this implies about how quantum particles affect each
>other even if they don't exist simultaneously, and if he
>didn't get it, I'm not even going to try.


Is there any hard proof that such a spooky action occur (that one
particle interferes with another particle sent through the double slit
earlier)?

It seems to me much more likely that the particle interferes with
*itself*. This hypthesis should even be testable. Send one particle
through each of a lot of double-slits. I don't know if this test has been 
done, but I predict you will see exactly the same interference pattern
distribution when you plot each hit in relation to the double-slit used as 
when you send a lot of particles, one at a time, through one and the same 
double-slit.

This because I believe that particles ALWAYS behaves as waves. I know there 
are a lot of experiments that try to prove that they EITHER behaves as
waves OR behave as particles, but never both ways at the same time.
The proof being that every time one is able to tell WHICH path was
used (regarded as a particle behavour) the hit pattern is not an interferens 
pattern any longer. This either/or rule however leads to a lot of
spooky interpretations, like that a photon billions of years ago had
to choose if it should behave as a particle or wave when it at THAT
time passed a heavy galaxy depending on how you NOW want to detect it
(see Scientific American July 1992 p 73).

My interpretation is that it always behaves as a wave. I propose that
if you have been able to detect which slit was used, then you have
also disturbed one or both of the waves through the slits so that the
two are not able to interfere any longer. Remember, with ordinary light
you dont get interference unless the light is enough coherent. I 
imagine that any process used to detect a particle will destroy
the "coherency" of the two quantum waves through the slits. It would
explain all of the experiments I've seen described so far, they all
conclude that interferens pattern disappearance means particle
instead of wave behaviour.

I think the above proposal removes most of the spooky interpretation
of dual path experiments. There are still a lot of strange
wave/particle interaction, but they don't seem spooky, more like not
yet fully known. Comments anyone?

_____________________________________________________________________________
Jan Engvald, Lund University Computing Center, Box 783, S-220 07 LUND, Sweden
Telephone: +46 46 107458, Telefax: +46 46 138225, Telex: 33533 LUNIVER S
E-mails: Jan.Engvald@ldc.lu.se,  xjeldc@seldc52,  psi%2403732202020::xjeldc

_____________________________________________________________________________
Jan Engvald, Lund University Computing Center, Box 783, S-220 07 LUND, Sweden
Telephone: +46 46 107458, Telefax: +46 46 138225, Telex: 33533 LUNIVER S
E-mails: Jan.Engvald@ldc.lu.se,  xjeldc@seldc52,  psi%2403732202020::xjeldc