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A simplified MIT experimental scheme, where two atoms are considered instead of a laser beam and act as two cracks that can dispel individual photons by creating a pattern of interference. ; | Credit: V. Fedoseev et al.
For more than 100 years, quantum physics taught us that light is both a wave and a particle. Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have conducted a bold experiment using single atoms that confirm that although light may behave as a particle or photon, cannot be seen as both at the same time.
Discussions on the nature of light dates back to the 17th century and Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens. Some, like Newton, thought the particles needed to make light to explain why the mirror images were sharp and our inability to see the corners. And yet, Huygens and others pointed out that light is characterized by wave -like behavior, such as diffraction and refraction.
1801 Physicist Tom Young came up with a famous double slit experiment, where he shone a consistent light source through two narrow cracks and on the wall. If the light was a particle, we would believe that there would be two coincidence light spots on the wall, with different photons pass through each of the two cracks. Instead, what the Young found was that the light was distributed on the wall alternately in the patterns of light and dark interference. This could only be explained if the light waves spread from each crack and interact with each other, resulting in constructive and destructive interference.
A century later, Max Planck showed that heat and light were emitted in tiny packaging called Quanta, while Albert Einstein showed that the amount of light is a particle called a photon. In addition, quantum physics has shown that photons are also showing waves of similar behavior. So Newton and Huygens were right: light is both a wave and a particle. We call it a strange duality of wave particles.
However, the principle of uncertainty states that we can never observe a photon acting as a wave and a particle at the same time. The father of quantum physics, Niels Bohr, called it “complementary” in the sense that the additional properties of the quantum system, such as wave and particle, can never be measured.
Einstein was never an amateur of a coincidence, which is supplemented by the principle of uncertainty introduced into the laws of nature. So he was looking for ways to deny the complementment, and in doing so, he returned to the classic Young Double Slip Experiment. He said that when the photon passes through one of the cracks, the sides of the rupture should feel a little strength because they were “exclaimed” by a passing photon. In this way, we could measure the light at the same time as a photo particle when it moves through the slit, and as a wave interacting with other photons.
Bohr disagreed. The principle of uncertainty describes how, for example, we cannot know the photon’s impulse and its exact position – both additional properties – at the same time. Therefore, according to Bohro, measuring the “bustle” of the passing photon will only be removed into wave -like behavior, and the interference model created by a double fiber experiment will be replaced with only two bright points.
Experiments have shown that Bohr is right over the years, but there has always been a small, rude doubt that an awkward apparatus can cause effects that see the light as a wave and a particle at a time.
The main image of a standard double flat experiment you may have performed in school science lessons. | Credit: Future
To solve this, the MIT team led by physicists Wolfgang Ketterle and Vitaly Fedoseev increased the atomic scale of a double slit to the main possible apparatus. Using lasers, they arranged 10,000 individual atoms cooled to only degree, exceeding the absolute zero. Each atom acted as a crack, in the sense that photons can dispel them in different directions and through many tests create a model of light and dark areas, based on the likelihood that the photon will be dispersed in certain directions more than others. In this way, scattering creates the same diffraction model as a double slit experiment.
“What we have done can be considered a new version of the double lung experiment,” the Ketterle report said. “These single atoms are like the smallest cracks you can create.”
The experiment showed that Bohr was really right when he was arguing for supplementation and that Einstein was mistaken. The more measured the atoms’ bustle, the weaker the diffraction model became, as those photons that were measured as particles were no longer obstructed by photons that were not measured as a particle.
Experiments also showed that the machine – in this case, laser rays holding atoms did not affect the results. The Ketterle and Fedoseev team were able to turn off the lasers and measure the measurement within a million seconds for the atoms to dance about gravity or move. The result was always the same – the nature of light particles and waves could not be seen at the same time.
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“It is only important for atoms,” said Fedoseyev. This non -curriculum means quantum, which surrounds the exact position of the atom as stated on the principle of uncertainty. This blur can be adjusted by how the lasers hold the atoms firmly, and the more uncertain and freely stored at the atoms, the more they feel that the photons scream them, so they reveal the light as a particle.
“Einstein and Bohr would never have thought it was possible to do such an experiment with single atoms and single photons,” Ketterle said.
The experiment further confirms the strangeness of quantum physics, in which particles have a double nature, and we can never measure additional properties at the same time, such as a wave, a wave, or a particle, or the position and acceleration of that particle. It seems that the universe works on the likelihood of the universe, and the emerging properties we see from the quantum kingdom are just statistics that include a lot of particles, manifest, all Einstein’s propagation, “play dice”.
The investigation was published on July 22. In the Magazine “Physical Review Letters”.