On 05-11-2019 02:53, Alan Grayson wrote:
IIUC, as the temperature rises, interference in the double slit C60 experiment declines, and eventually disappears. I don't think this is really a which-way experiment because the interference disappears whether or not which-way is observed. How does this effect the collapse issue? Usually, IIUC, when interference ceases to exist, it implies collapse of the wf. So, is the C60 double slit experiment evidence for collapse of the wf? TIA, AG
Consider the C60 moving through one or the other slit and then ending up at some spot x on the screen. If the state of the rest of the universe when the C60 takes on slit is |A(x)> and it is |B(x)> if another slit is taken, then the interference pattern locally at spot x on the screen will be proportional to Re[<A(x)|B(x)>]. So, if there is perfect which way information for C60 that arrive in the neighborhood of spot x on the screen, then the two environmental states will be orthogonal and the interference will vanish.
In case of the experiment in a thermal environment, the C60 will suffer collisions with photons. The states |A> and |B> will be different due to these collisions, as in every such case the state the universe ends up in will depend on which path the C60 took as the collision it suffered when it took one path would not have happened (instead another collision event at the another slit may have occurred). As the temperature rises, the interference pattern will then fade away as the number of C60 molecules that passed through without interactions near the slits will become small.
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