Illustration of quantum complementarity using single photons interfering on a grating
Abstract
A recent experiment performed by S. S. Afshar et al. has been interpreted as a violation of Bohr's complementarity principle between interference visibility and which-path information in a two-path interferometer. We have reproduced this experiment, using true single-photon pulses propagating in a two-path wavefront- splitting interferometer realized with a Fresnel's biprism, and followed by a grating with adjustable transmitting slits. The measured values of interference visibility V and which-path information, characterized by the distinguishability parameter D, are found to obey the complementarity relation V^2+D^2=<1. This result demonstrates that the experiment can be perfectly explained by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0807.5079,
title = {Illustration of quantum complementarity using single photons interfering on a grating},
author = {V. Jacques and N. D. Lai and A. Dreau and D. Zheng and D. Chauvat and F. Treussart and P. Grangier and J-F Roch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.5079},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
11 pages, 5 figures