tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34480619.post141251497306720075..comments2024-03-11T13:47:03.621-05:00Comments on Physics and Physicists: Single Photon Quantum Erasing: A Demonstration ExperimentZapperZhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15861398273820851809noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34480619.post-3876563132157165152010-04-13T16:29:19.374-05:002010-04-13T16:29:19.374-05:00Perhaps this is acceptable as an explanation of a ...Perhaps this is acceptable as an explanation of a demonstration for undergraduates, but I think it's misleading enough to be worrying to say that by decreasing the intensity of a coherent light source one can produce a single photon state. Shouldn't we give Greenstein & Zajonc level material to undergraduates?<br /><br />The analysis that is given, in terms of a single-particle Hilbert space, will work well enough for this experiment, but with this measurement scheme one can't distinguish a coherent state from a state created by the action of a single creation operator on the vacuum state.<br /><br />This experiment is different from a double-slit demonstration only in that it demonstrates the orthogonality of the interference of polarized components and uses transformations of polarization. Otherwise it shows, as usual, that if we decrease the light intensity enough, and we use the kind of apparatus that is engineered to manifest discrete events in the presence of very low intensity light, then we observe discrete events. Unsurprisingly, the calculation of light intensity at a given point is identical to the calculation of the expected rate of events at the same point.Peterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08654675777726560464noreply@blogger.com