Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Rich.lewis (talk | contribs) at 20:48, 1 June 2006 (→Introduction). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

A delayed choice quantum eraser is a combination between a quantum eraser experiment and Wheeler's delayed choice experiment. This experiment has actually been performed and published by Yoon-Ho Kim, R. Yu, S.P. Kulik, Y.H. Shih, and Marlon O. Scully Phys.Rev.Lett. 84 1-5 (2000). This experiment was designed to investigate a very peculiar result of the well known double slit experiment of quantum mechanics, the dual wave particle nature of light, and in fact all matter.

Introduction

In the double slit experiment, a photon passes through a double slit apparatus, in which the photon must pass either through one or the other of two slits, and then registers on a detector, which can determine where the photon reaches the detector, like an image projected on a screen. If you allow many photons to individually pass through either slit A or slit B, and you do not know which slit they passed through, an interference pattern emerges on the detector. The interference pattern indicates that the light beam is in fact made up of waves. However, if you somehow observe which of the two slits each photon actually passes through, you get a different result. In this case, each photon hits the detector after going through only one slit, and you get a single concentration of hits in the middle of the detection field. This result is consistent with light behaving as individual particles, like tiny bullets. The very odd thing about this result is that you get a different outcome based on whether or not you observe the photon after it goes through the slit but before it hits the detector.

Now, in a quantum eraser experiment, you arrange to detect which one of the slits the photon passes through, but also construct the experiment in such a way that this information can be "erased" after the fact. It turns out that if you observe which slit the photon passes through, you get the "no interference" or particle behavior result, which is what quantum mechanics predicts, but if you "erase" the quantum information of which slit the photon passed through, the photons revert to behaving like waves.

However, Kim, et al. have shown that you can also delay the choice to erase the quantum information until after the photon has actually hit the target. But, again, if you erase the information, the photons reverts to behaving like waves, even if you erase the information after the photons have hit the detector.

The experiment

The experimental setup, described in much more detail at , is as follows. First, generate a photon and pass it through a double slit apparatus. After the photon goes through slit A or B, a special crystal (one at each slit) uses spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) to convert the photon into two identical entangled photons with 1/2 the frequency of the original photon. One of these photons continues to the target detector, while the other entangled photon is deflected by a prism to bounce off a mirror some distance away. Now, if the second photon (coming from slit A or slit B) is observed, it is known which slit the original photon went through, so the photon behaves like a particle. If the second photon's paths from slit A and B are combined, the which-way path is not observed, and the first photon behaves like a wave. The experimenter can choose to observe or not observe the which-way information by erasing (or detecting) information about the second photon's path.

The results from Kim, et al. have shown that, in fact, observing the second photon's path will determine the particle or wavelike behavior of the first photon at the detector, even if the second photon is not observed until after the first photon arrives at the detector. In other words, the delayed choice to observe or not observe the second photon will change the outcome of an event in the past.

Discussion

In terms of the conventional way of viewing the physical universe, this result seems disturbing. One possible explanation is that the causality of the second observation travels back through time to affect the outcome of the first observation. In other words, this is time travel. Oddly enough, quantum mechanics does not seem to have much of a problem with time travel. Similarly bizarre results have been shown in other experiments where we have spooky action at a distance, instantaneous communication, or other outcomes that show apparent time travel of some kind, but usually only over quantum scale distances or time intervals. However, the choice in this experiment can, in principle at least, be delayed over an arbitrary interval of time, simply by allowing the initial photon to travel a further distance. The experiment could also be performed with electrons instead of photons, which can be made to move much more slowly.

It should be noted that causality or relativity are not actually violated by this phenomenon as no usable information actually travels faster than the speed of light, or back in time. One can only verify the results of such an experiment using normal speed of light communications.

Another explanation is that in fact both outcomes occur. The universe itself exists in a superposition of states in which either the initial photon goes through slit A or slit B and in which the second photon is either observed or not observed. This is described in detail in the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

External links

• basic delayed choice experiment
• delayed choice quantum eraser
• the notebook of philosophy and physics

• Quantum mechanics