Why the Afshar experiment does not refute complementarity [An article from: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics]

This digital document is a journal article from Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
A modified version of Young's experiment by Shahriar Afshar demonstrates that, prior to what appears to be a ''which-way'' measurement, an interference pattern exists. Afshar has claimed that this result constitutes a violation of the Principle of Complementarity. This paper discusses the implications of this experiment and considers how Cramer's Transactional Interpretation easily accommodates the result. It is also shown that the Afshar experiment is analogous in key respects to a spin one-half particle prepared as ''spin up along x'', subjected to a nondestructive confirmation of that preparation, and post-selected in a specific state of spin along z. The terminology ''which-way'' or ''which-slit'' is critiqued; it is argued that this usage by both Afshar and his critics is misleading and has contributed to confusion surrounding the interpretation of the experiment. Nevertheless, it is concluded that Bohr would have had no more problem accounting for the Afshar result than he would in accounting for the aforementioned pre- and post-selection spin experiment, in which the particle's preparation state is confirmed by a nondestructive measurement prior to post-selection. In addition, some new inferences about the interpretation of delayed choice experiments are drawn from the analysis.