A thesis on wave particle duality: M J Rhoades 3-30-13 Wave particle duality By M J Rhoades Particle/wave duality and quantum physics:

Attraction of the particle to the wave. Highways? If you make the wave, they will come. (particles) an example is electricity, if we pass a conductor through an electromagnetic field, the electrons jump to the wire and make electricity. Where did the electrons come from? You say from the atoms in the wire. Are the atoms missing there electrons? No, they already have a new electron who moved (or tunneled) in. two electrons in the same space? Seems that way; we made the wave and the particles came. They (Particles ride the wave) and indeed need the wave for transport! These particles are in my theorem are simply super surfers. They are not dual. But both (The wave and particle) are needed. This holds true for Photons, Gamma and electrons and of course they all move on the wave at the speed of light. Electro-magnetic waves all move at the speed of light. (In a vacuum) The particles angular velocity may change but their overall speed is that of light; no matter what the frequency

You can make a radio wave that have no particles and send it through space until it meets a medium in which it interacts (a coil of conductive wire) and the surfers will jump (Electrons).I believe you can make a light frequency wave without photons by passing the wave through an opaque piece of cardboard (Black object) and still have the wave, just like radio waves would pass right through it. Unfortunately we do not have detectors for detecting the wave without the photons. I believe that in making the wave in non-black space time that the photon jumps to the wave from either the Higgs field or 2 Neutrinos producing the photons. The double-slit experiment, sometimes called Young's experiment (after Young's interference experiment), is a demonstration that matter and energy can display characteristics of both waves and particles, and demonstrates the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical phenomena. But, if you used actual surfers riding a wave into a big wall with two passageways in the wall you will find the same result some surfers will go through on one slit and some through the other, if their goal was to reach the beach they would have to follow the no- interfered part of the wave. In the basic version of this experiment, a coherent light source such as a laser beam illuminates a thin plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen a result that would not be expected if light consisted strictly of particles( you would if you believed that particles are just riding the wave). However, on the screen, the light is always found to be absorbed as though it were composed of discrete particles or photons. This result establishes the principle known as waveparticle duality. Additionally, the detection of individual photons is observed to be inherently probabilistic, which is inexplicable using classical mechanics. (Not). If light consisted strictly of ordinary or classical particles, and these particles were fired in a straight line through a slit and allowed to strike a screen on the other side, we would expect to

see a pattern corresponding to the size and shape of the slit. However, when this "single-slit experiment" is actually performed, the pattern on the screen is a diffraction pattern in which the light is spread out. The smaller the slit, the greater the angle of spread. The top image in the image on the right shows the central portion of the pattern formed when a red laser illuminates a slit. Similarly, if light consisted strictly of classical particles and we illuminated two parallel slits, the expected pattern on the screen would simply be the sum of the two single-slit patterns. In reality, however, the pattern changes to one with a series of light and dark bands (See the bottom photograph to the right.) When Thomas Young (1773-1829) first demonstrated this phenomenon, it indicated that light consists of waves, as the distribution of brightness can be explained by the alternately additive and subtractive interference of wavefronts. Young's experiment, performed in the early 1800s, played a vital part in the acceptance of the wave theory of light, vanquishing the corpuscular theory of light proposed by Isaac Newton, which had been the accepted model of light propagation in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, the later discovery of the photoelectric effect demonstrated that under different circumstances, light can behave as if it is composed of discrete particles. These seemingly contradictory discoveries made it necessary to go beyond classical physics and take the quantum nature of light into account. The double-slit apparatus can be modified by adding particle detectors positioned at the slits. This enables the experimenter to find the position of a particle not when it impacts the screen, but rather, when it passes through the double-slit did it go through only one of the slits, as a particle would be expected to do, or through both, as a wave would be expected to do? Many early experiments found that any modification of the apparatus that can determine which slit a particle passes through will reduce the visibility of interference at the screen, thereby illustrating the complementarity principle: that light (and electrons, etc.) can behave as either particles or waves, but not both at the same time. But an experiment performed in 1987 produced results that demonstrated that information could be obtained regarding which path a particle had taken, without destroying the interference altogether. This showed the effect of measurements that disturbed the particles in transit to a lesser degree and thereby influenced the interference pattern only to a comparable extent. And in 2012, researchers finally succeeded in correctly identifying the path each particle had taken without any adverse effects at all on the interference pattern generated by the particles. In order to do this, they used a setup such that particles coming to the screen were not from a point-like source, but from a source with two intensity maximas. It is debated whether this affects the validity of the experiment.

There are many methods to determine whether a photon passed through a slit, for instance by placing an atom at the position of each slit. Interesting experiments of this latter kind have been performed with photons and with neutrons. Delayed choice and quantum eraser variations The delayed-choice experiment and the quantum eraser are sophisticated variations of the double-slit with particle detectors placed not at the slits but elsewhere in the apparatus. The first demonstrates that extracting "which path" information after a particle passes through the slits can seem to retroactively alter its previous behavior at the slits. The second demonstrates that wave behavior can be restored by erasing or otherwise making permanently unavailable the "which path" information.

An important version of this experiment involves single particles (or waves for consistency, they are called particles here). Sending particles through a double-slit apparatus one at a time results in single particles appearing on the screen, as expected. Remarkably, however, an interference pattern emerges when these particles are allowed to build up one by one (see the image to the right). For example, when a laboratory apparatus was developed that could reliably fire one electron at a time through the double slit, the emergence of an interference pattern suggested that each electron was interfering with itself, and therefore in some sense the electron had to be going through both slits at once an idea that contradicts our everyday experience of discrete objects. This phenomenon has also been shown to occur with atoms and even some molecules, including buckyballs. So experiments with electrons add confirmatory evidence to the view of Dirac that electrons, protons, neutrons, and even larger entities that are ordinarily called particles nevertheless have their own wave nature and even their own specific frequencies. This experimental fact is highly reproducible, and the mathematics of quantum mechanics (see below) allows us to predict the exact probability of an electron striking the screen at any particular point. However, the electrons do not arrive at the screen in any predictable order. In other words, knowing where all the previous electrons appeared on the screen and in what order tells us nothing about where any future electron will hit, even though the probabilities at specific points can be calculated. (Note that it is not the probabilities of photons appearing at various points along the detection screen that add or cancel, but the amplitudes. Probabilities are the squares of amplitudes. Also note that if there is a cancellation of waves at some point, that does not mean that a photon disappears; it only means that the probability of a photon's appearing at that point will decrease, and the probability that it will appear somewhere else increases.) Thus,

we have the appearance of a seemingly causeless selection event in a highly orderly and predictable formulation of the interference pattern. Ever since the origination of quantum mechanics, some theorists have searched for ways to incorporate additional determinants or "hidden variables" that, were they to become known, would account for the location of each individual impact with the target.

The double-slit experiment (and its variations), conducted with individual particles, has become a classic thought experiment for its clarity in expressing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics. Because it demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the ability of the observer to predict experimental results, Richard Feynman called it "a phenomenon which is impossible ... to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of quantum mechanics].", and he was fond of saying that all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of this single experiment. aslav Brukner and Anton Zeilinger have succinctly expressed this limitation as follows: The observer can decide whether or not to put detectors into the interfering path. That way, by deciding whether or not to determine the path through the two-slit experiment, s/he can decide which property can become reality. If s/he chooses not to put the detectors there, then the interference pattern will become reality; if s/he does put the detectors there, then the beam path will become reality. Yet, most importantly, the observer has no influence on the specific element of the world that becomes reality. Specifically, if s/he chooses to determine the path, then s/he has no influence whatsoever over which of the two paths, the left one or the right one, nature will tell h/er/im is the one in which the particle is found. Likewise, if s/he chooses to observe the interference pattern, then s/he has no influence whatsoever over where in the observation plane he/she will observe a specific particle. Both outcomes are completely random. The EnglertGreenberger duality relation provides a detailed treatment of the mathematics of double-slit interference in the context of quantum mechanics. A low-intensity double-slit experiment was first performed by G. Taylor in 1909, by reducing the level of incident light until photon emission/absorption events were mostly nonoverlapping. A double-slit experiment was not performed with anything other than light until 1961, when Clauss Jnsson of the University of Tbingen performed it with electrons. In 2002, Jnsson's double-slit experiment was voted "the most beautiful experiment" by readers of Physics World.

In 1999, objects large enough to be seen under an electron microscope buckyball molecules (diameter about 0.7 nm, nearly half a million times larger than a proton) were found to exhibit wave-like interference. The appearance of interference built up from individual photons could seemingly be explained by assuming that a single photon has its own associated wave front that passes through both slits, and that the single photon will show up on the detector screen according to the net probability values resulting from the co-incidence of the two probability waves coming by way of the two slits. However, more complicated systems that involve two or more particles in superposition are not amenable to such a simple, classically intuitive explanation.

Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency. The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency. For example, if a newborn baby's heart beats at a frequency of 120 times a minute, its period (the interval between beats) is half a second. Definitions and units For cyclical processes, such as rotation, oscillations, or waves, frequency is defined as a number of cycles per unit time. In physics and engineering disciplines, such as optics, acoustics, and radio, frequency is usually denoted by a Latin letter f or by a Greek letter (nu). For counts per a time interval, the SI unit, the unit of frequency is the hertz (Hz), named after the German physicist Heinrich Hertz: 1 Hz means that an event repeats once per second. A previous name for this unit was cycles per second. A traditional unit of measure used with rotating mechanical devices is revolutions per minute, abbreviated RPM. 60 RPM equals one hertz.[1] The period, usually denoted by T, is the length of time taken by one cycle, and is the reciprocal of the frequency f:

The SI unit for period is the second. Measurement

Sinusoidal waves of various frequencies; the bottom waves have higher frequencies than those above. The horizontal axis represents time. By counting Calculating the frequency of a repeating event is accomplished by counting the number of times that event occurs within a specific time period, then dividing the count by the length of the time period. For example, if 71 events occur within 15 seconds the frequency is:

If the number of counts is not very large, it is more accurate to measure the time interval for a predetermined number of occurrences, rather than the number of occurrences within a specified time. The latter method introduces a random error into the count of between zero and one count, so on average half a count. This is called gating error and causes an average error in the calculated frequency of f = 1/ (2 Tm), or a fractional error off / f = 1/ (2 f Tm) where Tm is the timing interval and f is the measured frequency. This error decreases with frequency, so it is a problem at low frequencies where the number of counts N is small. [edit]By stroboscope An older method of measuring the frequency of rotating or vibrating objects is to use a stroboscope. This is an intense repetitively flashing light (strobe light) whose frequency can be adjusted with a calibrated timing circuit. The strobe light is pointed at the rotating object and the frequency adjusted up and down. When the frequency of the strobe equals the frequency of the rotating or vibrating object, the object completes one cycle of oscillation and returns to its original position between the flashes of light, so when illuminated by the strobe the object appears stationary. Then the frequency can be read from the calibrated readout on the stroboscope. A downside of this method is that an object rotating at an integer multiple of the strobing frequency will also appear stationary. By frequency counter Higher frequencies are usually measured with a frequency counter. This is an electronic instrument which measures the frequency of an applied repetitive electronic signal and displays the result in hertz on a digital display. It uses digital logic to count the number of cycles during a time interval established by a precision quartz time base. Cyclic processes that are not electrical in nature, such as the rotation rate of a shaft, mechanical vibrations, or sound waves, can be converted to a repetitive electronic signal

by transducers and the signal applied to a frequency counter. Frequency counters can currently cover the range up to about 100 GHz. This represents the limit of direct counting methods; frequencies above this must be measured by indirect methods. [edit]Heterodyne methods Above the range of frequency counters, frequencies of electromagnetic signals are often measured indirectly by means of heterodyning (frequency conversion). A reference signal of a known frequency near the unknown frequency is mixed with the unknown frequency in a nonlinear mixing device such as a diode. This creates a heterodyne or "beat" signal at the difference between the two frequencies. If the two signals are close together in frequency the heterodyne is low enough to be measured by a frequency counter. This process only measures the difference between the unknown frequency and the reference frequency, which must be determined by some other method. To reach higher frequencies, several stages of heterodyning can be used. Current research is extending this method to infrared and light frequencies (optical heterodyne detection). Frequency of waves For periodic waves, frequency has an inverse relationship to the concept of wavelength; simply, frequency is inversely proportional to wavelength (lambda). The frequency f is equal to the phase velocity v of the wave divided by the wavelength of the wave:

In the special case of electromagnetic waves moving through a vacuum, then v = c, where c is the speed of light in a vacuum, and this expression becomes:

When waves from a monochrome source travel from one medium to another, their frequency remains the sameonly their wavelength and speed change. Examples Physics of light

Complete spectrum of electromagnetic radiation with the visible portion highlighted

Main articles: Light and Electromagnetic radiation Visible light is an electromagnetic wave, consisting of oscillating electric and magnetic fields traveling through space. The frequency of the wave determines its color: 41014 Hz is red light, 81014 Hz is violet light, and between these (in the range 4-81014 Hz) are all the other colors of the rainbow. An electromagnetic wave can have a frequency less than 41014 Hz, but it will be invisible to the human eye; such waves are called infrared (IR) radiation. At even lower frequency, the wave is called a microwave, and at still lower frequencies it is called a radio wave. Likewise, an electromagnetic wave can have a frequency higher than 81014 Hz, but it will be invisible to the human eye; such waves are called ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Even higher-frequency waves are called X-rays, and higher still are gamma rays. All of these waves, from the lowest-frequency radio waves to the highestfrequency gamma rays, are fundamentally the same, and they are all called electromagnetic radiation. They all travel through a vacuum at the speed of light. Another property of an electromagnetic wave is its wavelength. The wavelength is inversely proportional to the frequency, so an electromagnetic wave with a higher frequency has a shorter wavelength, and vice-versa. [edit]Physics of sound Main article: Sound Sound is made up of changes in air pressure in the form of waves. Frequency is the property of sound that most determines pitch.[3] The frequencies an ear can hear are limited to a specific range of frequencies. Mechanical vibrations perceived as sound travel through all forms of matter: gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas. The matter that supports the sound is called the medium. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum. The audible frequency range for humans is typically given as being between about 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz (20 kHz). High frequencies often become more difficult to hear with age. Other species have different hearing ranges. For example, some dog breeds can perceive vibrations up to 60,000 Hz.[4] [edit]Line current In Europe, Africa, Australia, Southern South America, most of Asia, and Russia, the frequency of the alternating current in household electrical outlets is 50 Hz (close to the tone G), whereas in North America and Northern South America, the frequency of the alternating current in household electrical outlets is 60 Hz (between the tones B and B; that is, a minor third above the European frequency). The frequency of the 'hum' in an audio recording can show where the recording was made, in countries using a European, or an American, grid frequency.

[edit]Period versus frequency As a matter of convenience, longer and slower waves, such as ocean surface waves, tend to be described by wave period rather than frequency. Short and fast waves, like audio and radio, are usually described by their frequency instead of period. These commonly used conversions are listed below: 1 mHz (103) 1 Hz (100) 1 kHz (103) 1 MHz (106) 1 GHz (109) 1 THz (1012)

Frequency

Period (time)

1 ks (103) 1 s (100)

1 ms (103)

1 s (106)

1 ns (109)

1 ps (1012)

[edit]Other types of frequency

Angular frequency is defined as the rate of change of angular displacement, , (during rotation), or the rate of change of the phase of a sinusoidal waveform (e.g. in oscillations and waves), or as the rate of change of the argument to the sine function:

Angular frequency is commonly measured in radians per second (rad/s) but, for discretetime signals, can also be expressed as radians per sample time, which is a dimensionless quantity.

Spatial frequency is analogous to temporal frequency, but the time axis is replaced by one or more spatial displacement axes. E.g.:

Wavenumber, k, sometimes means the spatial frequency analogue of angular temporal frequency. In case of more than one spatial dimension, wavenumber is a vector quantity. [edit]Frequency ranges The frequency range of a system is the range over which it is considered to provide a useful level of signal with acceptable distortion characteristics. A listing of the upper and lower limits of frequency limits for a system is not useful without a criterion for what the range represents.

Many systems are characterized by the range of frequencies to which they respond. Musical instruments produce different ranges of notes within the hearing range. The electromagnetic spectrum can be divided into many different ranges such as visible light, infrared or ultraviolet radiation,radio waves, X-rays and so on, and each of these ranges can in turn be divided into smaller ranges. A radio communications signal must occupy a range of frequencies carrying most of its energy, called its bandwidth. Allocation of radio frequency ranges to different uses is a major function of radio spectrum allocation.