From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Tue May 07 2002 - 16:19:58 MDT
Another way to think of the problem is that the general rule in
QM is that interference will occur only when the possible paths are
indistinguishable. But in this case the whole experiment is designed so
that we can distinguish the paths via the remote photons. Whether we
actually look at them or not is irrelevant. The mere fact that the
paths can be distinguished in principle means that mathematically we
combine the probabilities in a non-interfering mode.
Now, this is not a particularly "deep" explanation, it is more of a
rule of thumb. My idea about phase randomization would be a better way
to understand it, but I'm not sure if it is right. The fact remains
that we have no reason to expect interference a priori when we have
distinguishable paths as in this case. The burden is on the proposer
to show that interference would exist, and he hasn't done that at all.
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:53 MST