Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Physicist
If the (good) bombs exploded when hit with a single photon, wouldn't this experiment always detonate the good bombs? Isn't it basically the optical equivalent of throwing them against the wall?

I must be missing something.

23 posted on 02/23/2006 9:11:07 AM PST by IronJack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]


To: IronJack

No. The good bombs will influence your test particle differently than the bad bombs. Zeno principle at work.


39 posted on 02/23/2006 9:47:00 AM PST by Melas (What!? Read or learn something? Why would anyone do that, when they can just go on being stupid)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies ]

To: IronJack
If the (good) bombs exploded when hit with a single photon, wouldn't this experiment always detonate the good bombs?

No, because in the case where the photon appears at detector C, and the bomb remains unexploded, the photon never actually hit the bomb. The wavefunction takes both paths, but the wavefunction is not the photon. The wavefunction is a description of possible paths (or locations, if you will) for the photon. If the detector at B isn't working, then there's no way the photon could ever end up at C, because the wavefunction that describes its allowed paths would cancel out. The two paths to C end up with the opposite phase by construction.

So we see a photon at C, and we see no explosion. What do we know? Well, we know that the detector at B works, else we couldn't have seen the photon at C. (The photon would necessarily have taken both paths, you see, leading to the wave cancellation at C. But since in the exploding case it can't take both paths, the wave cancellation at C never occurs.) We also know that the photon took the path that didn't go past the bomb, or the bomb would have exploded. So we know that although the bomb didn't explode, it must be good.

[Geek alert: the "photon", as we use the term here to describe the thing that makes the bomb go boom, refers to the position eigenstate of the wavefunction. Careful, though: sometimes the word "photon" can refer to the momentum eigenstate of the wavefunction (as in, "what was the frequency of that photon"), and sometimes it can refer to the wavefunction itself. In this example, though, what matters to the bomb is where the photon goes.]

40 posted on 02/23/2006 9:48:12 AM PST by Physicist
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson