The “Past” and the “Delayed-Choice” Double-Slit Experiment

Publisher Summary Partway down the optic axis of the traditional double­slit experiment stands the central element, the doubly-slit screen. This chapter discusses the question whether the photon—or the electron—shall have come through both the slits or only through one of them after it has already transversed that screen. The possibility to use the receptor at the end of the apparatus to record well-defined interference fringes is known. One can determine the lateral kick given to the receptor by each arriving quantum and can record the fringes or the kicks but not both. The arrangement for the recording of the one automatically rules out the recording of the other. It is easy to complicate the double-slit interference pattern. For that purpose, it is enough to have a complicated single-slit diffraction pattern and let the waves from two such slits interfere. It is not necessary to understand every point about the quantum principle in order to understand something about it.

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