Spectra in nested Mach–Zehnder interferometer experiments

Abstract

By the means of the standard quantum mechanics formalism I present an explicit derivation of the structure of power spectra in Danan et al. and Zhou et al. experiments with nested dynamically changing Mach-Zehnder interferometers. The analysis confirms that we observe prominent, firstorder peaks on frequencies related to some of the elements of the interferometer, but not on others. However, as I shall demonstrate, there are also other, weaker effects related to all relevant elements of the setup. In case of the Danan et al. setup, there are even peaks at all frequencies of element oscillations. When confronted in an experiment, these observations shall challenge the interpretation of the experiments based on anomalous trajectories of light.

The probability of an encounter of photons in nested and double-nested Mach-Zehnder interferometers

“…Figure 5(a) depicts that the detector D 1 detects signal from the modulators A 2 , B 1 , C 1 in the first order and A 1 , E 1 in the second order; the same situation is on the detector D 2 . The latter was already described in work of M. Wiesniak 44 . The detector D 3 detects only the first order signals from A 1 , B 1 , and C 1 .…”

“…Consequently we examine the Fourier transform of the detected signal and we take the Fourier coefficient with the corresponding frequency as a measure of the detected perturbation amplitude, see also Refs. 10,43,44 . In the following, we call it the perturbation amplitude.…”

Do neutrons disagree with photons about where they have been inside an interferometer?

“…The faint trace will be on all parts of this line, but also in a separate loop disconnected from the line. The prediction of this closed loop, which does not start at the source and does not end at the detector, generated a hot discussion [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] which only intensified [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] after the first experiment with photons [22] confirmed discontinuous trajectories.…”

Faint trace of a particle in a noisy Vaidman three-path interferometer

“…The other non-equivalent alternatives are consistent (decoherent) histories 8 , 9 standard quantum mechanics 10 – 12 and many other other alternative studies 13 – 20 . Moreover, even recent experiments and their detailed analyses fail to resolve all the controversial issues 20 – 26 , 26 – 28 . Despite counter-intuitive of a conception of discontinuous path there are analyses 2 , 29 and claims which support the faint-trace anomalous picture as experimentally confirmed.…”