Saturday, 23 June 2018

Double Slit Experiment: How do scientists ensure that there's only one photon?



Many documentaries regarding the double slit experiment state that they only send a single photon through the slit. How is that achieved and can it really be ensured that it is a single photon?



Answer



In the double slit experiment, if you decrease the amplitude of the output light gradually, you will see a transition from continuous bright and dark fringe on the screen to a single dots at a time. If you can measure the dots very accurately, you always see there is one and only one dots there. It is the proof of the existence of the smallest unit of each measurement which is called single photon: You either get a single bright dot, or not.


So, probably you may ask why it is not a single photon composite of two "sub-photon", each of them passing through the slit separately and then interference with "itself" at the screen so that we only get one dot. However, the same thing occurs for three slits, four slits, etc... but the final results is still a single dot. It means that the photon must be able to split into infinitely many "sub-photon". If you get to this point, then congratulation, you basically discover the path-integral formalism of quantum mechanics.


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