Natural Science Forum / Physics / Electromagnetism / July 2008

This time, Bill walks to the wall, whisks out a cigarette (though he does
not smoke) lights it and grips it between his lips. He removes a bandanna
from his hip pocket and ties it around his eyes.

He takes a deep breath. "Ready! Aim! Fire!" he shouts.

He hears a multitude of  CLICKS. Puzzled, he removes the blindfold and
watches as the firing squad begins dis-assembling their weapons, obviously
looking for some universal flaw.

He tosses the unsmoked cigarette on the ground and walks away.
*************************************************

A few weeks ago, I suggested that the Double Slit experiment may have been
misinterpreted.

(You know. This is the experiment done first by Young in the 19th Century.
It  "proved" the wave nature of  light. It also led the way to a puzzling
phenomenon wherein light <as well as electrons, protons, neutrons and atoms
and maybe dumptrucks became waves AND developed sentience by apparently
"knowing" about the existence of a second slit even though they were passing
nowhere near it.> It's the experiment from which the statistical nature of
light etc. led us to Quantum Mechanics.)

My suggested alternate explanation was that the slits were simply acting as
slot antennas and were coupling EM energy from one to the other.

Dumb idea. That was the opinion of many. (But not all.)

So... I hopped onto Google Scholar and started looking for construction
details of slits. That way, I could make some back-of-an-envelope
calculations to see if anything I suggested might vaguely fit

What I found exceeded all my expectations.

Here is the abstract from a January 2005 paper published in the Physical
Review Letters entitled "Plasmon-Assisted Two-Slit Transmission: Young's
Experiment Revisited"

Here is the abstract:

"We present an experimental and theoretical study of the optical
transmission of a thin metal screen perforated by two subwavelength slits,
separated by many optical wavelengths. The total intensity of the far-field
double-slit pattern is shown to be reduced or enhanced as a function of the
wavelength of the incident light beam. This modulation is attributed to an
interference phenomenon at each of the slits, instead of at the detector.
The interference arises as a consequence of the excitation of surface
plasmons propagating from one slit to the other."
In other words, something different is happening from what is suggested by
Quantum theory. And that difference appears to be much more consistent with
Classical EM than with playing dice with the universe. In the paper, the
performance of the experiment seems very similar to what I had suggested in
my earlier posting.

Here is a link to the paper:

http://download.antennex.com/listarch/files/Dbl_Slit_Plasmon.pdf

You will have to register (FREE) in order to see it unless you are
previously registered.

Assuming that the experimental results are correct, what does this mean to
the whole panoply of ideas associated with Quantum mechanics?

Bill