MIT physicists have confirmed what Einstein once hoped wasn’t true: light really can’t behave as both a particle and a wave at the same time. The team used single photons and laser-cooled atoms to recreate the double-slit experiment, revealing that trying to measure which slit a photon went through destroys the wave pattern. Instead, light produces interference stripes or dots on a detector when its “fuzziness” is adjusted.
The study revisits a century-old debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr, who argued that measuring a particle’s path would destroy the wave pattern. MIT researchers used over 10,000 ultracold atoms, arranged in a lattice with laser light, to test this idea. By controlling the atoms’ “fuzziness,” they were able to produce either interference stripes or particle-like dots on the detector.
The findings match quantum predictions precisely and provide further evidence for the strange rules at the heart of quantum physics. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Source: https://scienceblog.com/einstein-was-wrong-mits-laser-cooled-atoms-settle-the-light-debate