On Monday, January 14, 2019 at 6:12:43 AM UTC, Brent wrote: > > > > On 1/13/2019 9:51 PM, [email protected] <javascript:> wrote: > > This means, to me, that the arbitrary phase angles have absolutely no > effect on the resultant interference pattern which is observed. But isn't > this what the phase angles are supposed to effect? AG > > > The screen pattern is determined by *relative phase angles for the > different paths that reach the same point on the screen*. The relative > angles only depend on different path lengths, so the overall phase angle is > irrelevant. > > Brent >
*Here are two links from Stackexchange which show that the global phase angle does not effect the interference, but that relative phase angles do, which is what you're saying. * * https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/177588/the-meaning-of-the-phase-in-the-wave-function* *https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/275890/does-overall-phase-matter?noredirect=1&lq=1* *But I chose to express the wf as a superposition of orthonormal eigenfunctions, each multiplied by a probability amplitude and an arbitrary relative phase angle. See recent posts. Then I calculated the probability of measuring the ith eigenvalue by calculating the norm squared of the inner product of the wf with the ith eigenfunction, applying one of the postulates of QM. Using this calculation, the probability of measuring the ith eigenvalue does NOT depend upon the relative phase angles. AG* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
