Tuesday, December 2, 2014

experimental physics - Is there a double slit experiment that I can perform that will show the photons acting like particles?


I have done many double and single slit experiments where I created clear interference patterns. But one of the amazing things about the double slit is that under certain conditions the wave properties of light go away and the particle properties of light are created. How can I create an experiment where the interference pattern is replaced with a pattern that shows the particle properties of light?



Answer




Actually the particle properties of light are there all along, and the pattern would be the same.


To see light as particles in the double-slit experiment, you have to shoot photons individually and see them form the interference pattern dot by dot.


What would make a different pattern though is a detector able to record which slit a photon uses. You would then not get any more interferences, just the sum of two single-slit diffraction patterns.


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