If existing quantum mechanics equations (and Born’s postulate) are right and three-party interference doesn’t happen, then the interference pattern when all three slits were open could be explained entirely by the combined patterns of single and double slits being open. A blocking mask allowed the researchers to open and close the three slits independently. Light was sent through the slits, and detectors on the other side tallied up the photons that passed through each. In the new study, Sinha and colleagues made three parallel slits in a stainless steel plate, each 30 micrometers wide and 300 micrometers tall. “What is the point of just advancing a theory in its theoretical form if you don’t have experiments backing things up?” “It’s important that you test all the postulates of quantum mechanics,” says study coauthor Urbasi Sinha of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Although the reason why quantum interference stops at two isn’t clear, Born’s postulate has been widely accepted and used by physicists, yet until now it hadn’t been explicitly tested in experiments. Born’s math puts the interference contribution of the third slit (and any additional slits) at exactly zero. In the 1920s, German physicist Max Born proposed that particle pairs - and not triplets, quadruplets or more - can interfere, causing their wavelike forms to boost and diminish one another. The experiment illustrates some of the strangest predictions of quantum mechanics, including the dual particle-wave nature of tiny objects. The double-slit experiment embodies the mystery at the heart of quantum mechanics, the famous physicist Richard Feynman observed in his Lectures on Physics. NOT A TRIPLE THREAT The interference pattern (bottom) of a stream of photons (blue) traveling through three slits can be entirely explained by the combination of single and double interference patterns, a new study shows. In a new twist on the famous double-slit experiment, researchers have verified a basic tenet of quantum mechanics by showing that adding a third slit doesn’t create additional interference between packets of light. Extending an experiment at the foundation of quantum physics confirms that two is company and three is a crowd.
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