Abstract

We use the single photon Young's doubleslit experiment as an example. The accepted result of this experiment is that a photon interferes only with itself. Some accepted concepts still remain puzzling, however. Examples include the fact that there is no energy loss when a photon's wave passes "simultaneously" through the slits, the single photon's indivisibility versus its wavefront's separability into two parts, and the sudden collapse of a broad wavefront into a photon. An alternative interpretation is proposed. Based on the quantization of a radiation field, one postulates that a vacuum (zero-point) mode can be activated, which may become an EM wave if it is energized by many photons. Thus, a photon is not independent before a measurement but is a unit of energy h "dressed" on a vacuum mode. By using the quantized field approach, one shows that a vacuum mode coherently couples to other vacuum modes by means of the interaction with the two slits. It is as though the incident mode is separated into two secondary modes, which interfere on the screen. The pattern is "invisible" because there is no energy detector to detect it. Energizing the incident vacuum mode by photons automatically leads to the energization of the "invisible" pattern by "guiding" some of the incident photons through the two slits individually and onto the screen.

© 1990 Optical Society of America