In this community, it has been accepted that electrons can self-interfere.
Can an electron interact with itself to create interference?
This video is a good lecture on diffraction gratings and plane waves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHTpxHxuAhY
What I am querying about is related to the stacking of diffraction operations at normal temperatures where wave-form versions of electrons may be observed with stability, even at room temperature.
Put simply, this is an extension of the single double slit experiment wherein a fourier transform (the fringe pattern) of an electron beam can be observed when many electrons are fired one at a time through a double slit.
At this point it is necessary to explain what I already know, in the interest of avoiding this content:
- Electrons fired one at a time are ultimately observed one at a time
- Observation of an electron (directly) always appears as a point interaction with one entire electron
- The observed hits of electrons fired through a double slit one at a time will form the same fringe pattern that many electrons will form after many electrons are fired.
- Electrons fired through a diffraction grating exhibit much sharper fourier patterns
- An electron fired through a single slit produces something different: an expanding wave front. After many single electrons are fired through a single slit, a wide distribution of observed hits will result with a peak in the center
- If which path information is extracted from a double slit, the fringe pattern will vanish and two parallel bars will be present (this proves directly that the diffraction wave is a real, physical thing, so let's accept it and move forward)
What I am trying to understand is how things will change when a single electron is first dilated via single slit diffraction, and then passed through a grating...over and over again.
And, what if half of the distribution is measured, while the other half is allowed to proceed through a diffraction grating?
Or, more simply, what if "which path" information is obtained from a simple double slit downstream from the initial diffraction?
Does this measurement reach back in time and collapse the initial diffraction, and yield a non-diffracted electron detection pattern at the detection plate?
In short, what I am saying is: is a diffracted electron fundamentally, physically different in any way than a non-diffracted electron, and can we observe different behavior between a diffracted electron and a non diffracted electron in any Structural way whatsoever in the context of the double-slit or N-slit?
And what I am driving at is what feels like a contradiction:
- Starting from a "collapsed" state, Electrons self-interfere if and only if which way information of a double slit is not extracted
- If an electron is diffracted with a single slit and no insight is obtained whatsoever (a perfect vacuum), then the electron's presence is a half-circle of distributed likelihood expanding transversely from the single slit
- The half-circle should not be interactive -- it should be impossible to 'determine' the electron by pushing or pulling energy into or from the diffracted probability region
- But when the half-circle encounters a double slit, and which-way information is extracted, the half-circle of likelihood should collapse retro-actively (as if the electron had never diffracted to begin with
- But this requires interaction with the electron's wave state)
Thus, an electron wave state of probability amplitudes is non-real and interactive if the diffracted electron behaves the same way as a collapsed electron.
On the other hand, the electron is real and non-interactive if the diffracted electron does not behave the same way as a collapsed electron, and passes right through the which-way information extractor as if nothing is happening.
So, the following properties could go either way:
- particle or wave
- waves are real by which-way information-based collapse
- waves are not real because no one can interact with a diffraction cloud, just the actual electron
- (Contradiction) But the waves are real (or not real) because a diffraction cloud will not interact with which-way information collection (or it will)
- (Fork 1: Contradiction) If the diffracted electron is fundamentally the same as an electron, then it is interactive and responds to which way information collection, but it is simultaneously not interactive and cannot be interacted with as a cloud
- (Fork 2: Holistic Interaction) If the diffracted electron is fundamentally different than an electron, and it does not respond to which way information collection at a double slit in the same way as an electron. This means that information about the electron's state can be leaked via which-way information collection after diffraction and without collapsing the electron's state or entanglement or what-ever
The two distinct ways to interpret the above amount to...
One (Always an electron, in wave or particle form):
- An electron is fundamentally the same whether diffracted or collapsed
- Meaning that, for energy absorption and emission tasks (photon propagation), an electron can be viewed as the cloud or shell of probabilities
- An electron will collapse regardless of size when a massive interaction (electroweak, weak, strong, whatever nuclear force interaction)
- The collapse is "instantaneous" (if the electron cloud encounters a which-way collection interface, it 'pops' and evaluates to a particulate, determined electron)
- The electron will remain in the wave-form until the cloud collapses
Two (A complicated wave and simple electron particle):
- A wave-form electron is different than a regular electron,
- A wave-form electron is collapsed in the special, mass-electron interaction instantaneously
- (Difference from One) A wave-form electron is effectively invisible to all other forms of energy and matter until the special collapse mechanism occurs
- (More complicated than One) A wave-form electron has continuous components that can be leaked partially (not all of it is quantized)
- (Much more complicated than One) There may be some way to interact with the wave-form electron holistically, but if there is we don't know it
Three (Electron as a Can of Worms):
- The electron is always a particle/wave packet
- The wave packet is self consistent
- The double slit creates indeterminacy in the wave packet's function
- The wave packet is, essentially, missing information that, once supplied by some other particle, fully determine the wave packet's function
- At this point, the wave function evaluates once again to a tightly packed wave packet
- This means the electron is always where-ever it probably is
- It means the electron is where-ever the information supplied to it determines it to be
- It suggests that the electron can be interacted with at any location within its realm of likelihood of existence in the same fashion electrons are always interacted with, at all times
- But, that interaction might be hard or unlikely
Or maybe there is some fourth interpretation (or a mix of the three above) that I didn't think of. I do know that entangled state can be leaked out -- at least there are crypto physics papers that I've run into which claim this. Also, I know that beaming a pilot laser into a resonant cavity can "seed" the polarity of the waves that come out of the cavity (a quantum key distribution hack)...so waves appear to be able to self-interact.
